As a contributor to The Post and Courier, South Carolina's largest newspaper, I profiled dozens of popular musicians, including Grateful Dead guitarist and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Bob Weir — one of my personal heroes.
Bob Weir and Ratdog bring music legacy to the Plex
by Michael Lovett
Publication: The Post and Courier, March 16, 2006
For Bob Weir, who served 30 years as vocalist and rhythm guitarist for the Grateful Dead, reminiscing can be a dangerous act. As Weir's friend and fellow musical journeyman Bob Dylan sang in his 2001 song, "Honest With Me": "These memories I got, they can strangle a man."
Because Weir stood front and center at events that, for many of his peers, exist only in the haze of LSD flashbacks, Preview led the 58-year-old on a trip down memory lane.
Among the tidbits gathered on Preview's recent stroll through Weir's cognitive archives are the following gems dating back to July 28, 1973, the day the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers Band and The Band played for a crowd of 600,000 people gathered in Watkins Glen, N.Y.:
"What I remember most from that day," said Weir, whose current group, Ratdog, performs tonight at The Plex, "is Bill Graham and his damn cowbell."
Weir recalled the distinct pleasure enjoyed by Graham, the festival's promoter, in pounding out the beat to "Sugar Magnolia" and other tunes throughout the Grateful Dead's five-hour set.
"Man, he (Graham) worked that cowbell," said Weir. "His timing wasn't bad, but the cowbell is a very loud instrument. It rides right on top of everything.
"The other memory of that show," continued Weir in his characteristically convoluted storytelling style, "was the jam we had after everybody played their individual sets.
"I remember (The Band's bassist) Rick Danko playing a violin with a flat pick. By this point, Danko was several different kinds of sideways, and he turns to me on stage and says, 'You know, Bob, I may never feel this way again.' I was prepared to think there was an upside to that statement."
Behind Weir's happy memories, however, lies a touch of sadness, rooted, perhaps, in the fact that the protagonists of both stories have long since passed away. Graham was killed in a helicopter crash in 1991; Danko died of heart failure in 1999.
Referring to the latter, Weir lamented, "He was a good friend. He's sorely missed."
With so many of his real-life peers gone, Bob Weir relies on the constant artistic inspiration provided by the immortal inhabitants of his songs. These characters - the gold-stealing nephew of "Me and My Uncle," the love-struck military captain of "Peggy O," the dark-eyed pessimist of "Shakedown Street" - continue to drive Weir's creativity night after night with his band, Ratdog.
"The characters keep developing," said Weir. "They keep getting older, wiser, richer, poorer - they keep revealing themselves over time."
And because Weir fully invests himself in his role as storyteller, the stories don't get stale. "If you're a singer, you're a storyteller, and as a storyteller, what you work toward is the ability to lose yourself in the character you're presenting," said Weir.
"When I'm on stage, I'm nowhere around. Sure, I'm this guy with a birth certificate and a passport, but I'm only there in the flesh. Mickey (Hart, drummer for the Grateful Dead) said it most succinctly, 'We're not in the music business. We're in the transportation business.' "
With Ratdog, Weir reinterprets several classic tunes by the Grateful Dead and Dylan and performs new material written with lyricist Robert Hunter, the latest of which, "Tuesday Blues," just may sneak onto the set list for the band's Charleston performance.
As an all-star performing group, Ratdog amounts to so much more than the world's most authentic Grateful Dead cover band. Drummer Jay Lane is a founding member of Primus. Keyboard player Jeff Chimenti, guitarist Mark Karan, saxophonist Kenny Brooks and bassist Robin Sylvester are all accomplished Bay Area session musicians in their own rights.
Like the Grateful Dead, Ratdog plays in a loose improvisational style, focusing more on the subtle interplay between musicians than on hotshot solo performances. Unlike the Grateful Dead, however, Ratdog makes creative use of horns to achieve the frenetic feel of Dixieland jazz.
Another key difference between the two bands: Ratdog is here, live and kicking. The Grateful Dead is now just a memory.
IF YOU GO
Who: Bob Weir and Ratdog
Where: The Plex, 2930 Aviation Ave., N. Charleston
When: Tonight at 8
Cost: $26.50-$39.50