Weir excited to play after long time away
Grateful Dead icon to perform with Wolf Bros in Berkeley show
Last year marked the longest period Bob Weir had gone without performing in front of a live audience since the Grateful Dead played its first show in San Francisco more than 50 years ago.
“Several times the longest!” he said, calling last week from Hawaii.
Weir didn’t take the pandemic lying down. After COVID19 put his plans on hold for a spring tour with the Wolf Bros and a summer trek with Dead & Company, the 73yearold musician dived into a series of projects at home.
He worked on an opera, a memoir and a concerto grosso. He sang “The StarSpangled Banner” for a NASCAR event over his laptop. He streamed live performances for fans worldwide from his studio in Marin, playing solo, with the Wolf Bros and in a new side project called the Lame Ducks. He also signed a deal with Jack White’s Third Man Records to release a series of new albums.
At some point, he even decided he wanted everyone to start calling him Bobby.
“It’s been a long year and a half,” Weir said.
He said he was taking a muchneeded vacation on the islands before things start back up again: “A little time off is probably a good call.”
Bobby Weir and Wolf Bros, featuring bassist Don Was and drummer Jay Lane, are gearing up to open the summer season at the Greek Theatre at UC Berkeley on Saturday, July 24. It will mark the first concert at the iconic Bay Area locale since it shut down due to the pandemic in early 2020.
Weir has performed at the venue some 30 times, dating back to his first show there with the Dead in 1967.
“I know the Greek quite well,” he said.
The show follows a series of soldout dates for the group at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. The trio expanded to a stagesagging outfit, including Jeff Chimenti on keyboards and Greg Leisz on pedal steel guitar, plus the Wolfpack, with cellist Alex Kelly, horn player Brian Switzer, trombonist Adam Theis, violinist Mads Tolling and woodwinds player Sheldon Brown. It’s the same lineup that will play in Berkeley.
Weir said he felt “liberated, as you might expect” about getting back onstage in front of his fans for the first time in more than a year, especially with the additional musicians.
The tour is a warmup for a Kennedy Center concert series Feb. 913 that will feature Weir and Wolf Bros per
“We wanted to do it basically the way the Grateful Dead used to do it.”
Bob Weir, on his upcoming shows with the Wolf Bros
forming with the National Symphony Orchestra.
“We wanted to do it basically the way the Grateful Dead used to do it, so it just seemed like the thing to do was to take it out on tour,” Weir said. “Everybody goes home and listens to the tapes and all that kind of stuff, and then we reassemble and have at it again.”
As much as he is looking forward to getting back on the road, Weir said the pandemic did offer him a chance to give attention to some of the other projects he has in the works, including an autobiography.
The book will no doubt take a sweeping look at the life of an adopted 16yearold kid from suburban Palo Alto who formed a lifelong bond with guitarist Jerry Garcia and provided a soundtrack for an entire generation in tiedye.
It may take another few years to complete it.
“I’m three chapters in, and I’ve just arrived at the point where I met Jerry,” he said.
“I’ll tell you this,” Weir added. “The hiatus didn’t hurt my other projects. They told me basically that I’m not going to be working the way I’m used to working for a while and we didn’t know how long it was going to be. But, you know, I’ve been writing a fair bit. I’ve got a concerto grosso that I’m working on. I even got a TV show. All that stuff I got a chance to put a little more attention to.”