The long strange trip that is the Grateful Dead and its primary offshoot, Dead & Company, has truly faded into grey with the passing of Bob Weir.
Although Jerry Garcia cast the longest shadow across the legend of the Dead with his dark, complexly melodic songs and his hazy, frayed vocals, Weir’s shadow was more translucent, melodically lighter and rhythmically astute. And his handsome baritone vocals cut a deeper groove across the expanse that was the Dead’s storytelling prowess at its most regal — especially when “Bobby” lifted that voice into a surprising, broken angel’s falsetto. As far as his rhythm guitar work went, Weir’s McCoy Tyner-influenced tonality allowed him to color jazzily outside the lines while maintaining an unusual inner pulse. If Jerry was the folky psychedelic sage, Weir was the soulful country squire, qualities that carried through the younger Dead-man’s solo albums and band projects beyond the Dead such as Kingfish, Bobby and the Midnites and RatDog.
Rather than pick through the dense, lush fields of Grateful Dead and solo band bootleg live concert tapes that could fill a football stadium, Variety’s top musical moments of Weir’s focus on a dreamy collection of tracks from the studio recordings.
Grateful Dead, “Viola Lee Blues” (1967)
Starting with the Dead’s self-titled debut album, Weir and Garcia’s wiry blues guitar runs and boyish vocals meshed together like a Mobius strip across 10-plus minutes of blissful, twanging psychedelia, accompanied by the rumble of Pigpen’s grand organ at full blast. Their intermingling of voices and strings was a joy to behold, whether it was in the harmonies of “Ripple” with Phil Lesh joining in or the latter-day likes of “Throwing Stones.”
Grateful Dead, “Born Cross Eyed” (1968)
On “Anthem of the Sun,” the Dead’s second studio album, Weir had already begun to stretch himself as a singer and as a songwriter. Authoring this noisy, jazzy track all by his lonesome, Weir vocally zig-zagged his way across a cluttered arrangement flush with oddball time changes.
Grateful Dead, “Truckin’” (1970)
Sure, this is the Dead’s most overplayed anthem, its most fun crowd singalong, and its most mainstream moment alongside “Touch of Grey.” But, think back to the first time you heard this lazy, grooving tune co-penned by Garcia, Lesh, Weir and lyricist Robert Hunter: it’s Weir’s chill but smoldering vocals that make “Truckin’” roll along nicely, and gain in intensity only when he shakily intones the phrase “livin’ on reds, vitamin C and cocaine.”
Bob Weir, “Cassidy” (1972)
So, “Ace” may have been Bob Weir’s debut solo album, but it’s the rest of the Dead that back him throughout, and ultimately made the album’s best songs — such as “Black-Throated Wind,” “Mexicali Blues” and “Cassidy” (all three written with John Perry Barlow, Weir’s frequent co-writer) — into Dead concert favorites. Named in part for Neal Cassady, the Beat Generation icon whose spirit all but defines the Dead, Weir’s winding, jangly, near-pop tune is a marvel of two-part harmony, whether sung with Donna Jean Godchaux on “Ace” or with Brent Mydland on several live Dead albums.
Grateful Dead, “Weather Report Suite” (1973)
The three pieces of Weir’s suite – Prelude, Part 1 and Part 2 (“Let it Grow”) – are, far from feeling broken apart, joined in harmony and gentility across the fluid waves of the Dead’s 1973 “Wake of the Flood” album. Contemplating passing seasons and dead flowers, Weir’s deep, lava lamp-like flow of a vocal is as sadly ruminative as Barlow’s lyrics. And yet, Weir’s musical co-write with folky Eric Andersen, with the backing of (then) new modal jazz-influenced Dead keyboardist Keith Godchaux, is bright and open.
Kingfish, “Big Iron” (1976)
Showing off his love of showy country, Weir puts all of his heart and playful gusto into Marty Robbins’ classic “Big Iron.”.Though Robby Hoddinott was responsible for the track’s prickly guitar lead, the backing of bassist-pal Dave Torbert from New Riders of the Purple Sage elevates Weir and the song’s rhythmic bottom to something uplifting and downright prancy.
Grateful Dead, “Estimated Prophet” (1977)
The mesmerizing “Terrapin Station” album was only made more complex by Weir’s hill-jumping, quaveringly soft baritone. A clear standout is the fuzzy, subtle, suite-like shifts in melody and tone of “Estimated Prophet,” with a set of lyrics dedicated to an unwise, but still charismatic, spiritual guru of unnamed origin. One of Weir’s most enigmatic tracks, and easily one of his finest.
Grateful Dead, “I Need a Miracle” (1978)
From the Dead’s swaggering “Shakedown Street” album comes Weir at his boogie-down slickest and most refined as a confident singer. With almost shocking clarity, Weir as a vocalist struts in time with guest harmonica player Matthew Kelly and turns the “Street” into a block party.
Grateful Dead, “Feel Like a Stranger” (1980)
While Jerry laid down his globby, blobby guitar squiggles that had become his latter-day Dead signature, Weir – the singer – warbled freely, woozily and bluesily through a stuttering jazzy groove, until he and Jerry tied together their fates in some genuinely familial vocal harmonizing and a brisk, frenetic guitar solo at song’s end.
Bob Weir, “Gonesville” (2016)
After years of live records with a cast of jazz elites (Rob Wasserman, Don Was) and the beginnings of Dead & Company’s healthy run, Weir popped up with a surprisingly gritty solo album, “Blue Mountain.” Its best, most rousing song, “Gonesville,” featured Beat Gen-worthy lyrics about getting lost and loving it, and a bluesy, stomping, swampy sound co-written by Josh Kauffman, Josh Ritter and Weir himself. Weir’s “hey hey hey” chorus alone is worth the price of admission.
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