Loading summary
Transcript195 lines
- [00:00]
Rich Mahan
Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale Collaborating for over a decade now, Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with sustainable kerns of grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing brew that's music to your taste buds. Check out dogfish.com for more details and to find some Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale in your neck of the woods. Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly.
- [00:30]
Jeff Clementi
Foreign.
- [00:35]
Rich Mahan
The Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the Official Podcast of the Grateful Dead. I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season six of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast. I'm your co host Rich Mahan. As always, thank you very much for tuning in. In this episode we have yet another celebration, this one lighting 75 candles for the one and only Bobby Weir. Head on over to dead.netdeadcast and check out all of our past episodes including the complete seasons one through five and you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platforms so you can listen where you like to listen. Please help this Deadcast by subscribing hitting that like button and if the spirit moves you, leave us a review. Very kind of you. Thank you very much. Have you checked out the transcripts we now have available for many of the episodes in seasons one through five? Head over to dead.net deadcast index and click the transcript link on the episode you'd like to explore. Well, speaking of Bobby Ace just announced is the 50th anniversary deluxe edition of Bobby Weir's first solo album and there are a few configurations you need to know about for this new collection. Bobby remixed the original album and he pairs that with a new live version by Bobby Weir and Wolf Brothers recorded earlier this year at Radio City Music hall featuring the Wolf Pack with special guests Tyler Childers and Britney Spencer. Our own Jesse Jarno even wrote the liner notes. There will be a 2 CD version as well as a custom high roller Pearl White vinyl release available exclusively from dead.net, both with a release date of January 13, 2023. A black vinyl version will follow on February 3rd. You can pre order any and all of the Ace releases and some cool Ace merch over@dead.net thanks to everyone who has left their stories over at stories.dead.net we are now asking you to share your stories of serendipity miracles and the most unbelievable, craziest stories ever told. Share those stories@stories.dead.net and you just may hear yourself on the Dead cast while the Grateful Dead return to cinemas worldwide for the 2022 meet up at the Movies this year features the previously unreleased concert film from April 17, 1972, captured at the Tivoli Concert hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. Join us to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Dead's legendary Europe 72 tour with this epic show in cinemas for two nights on November 1st and November 5th. Tickets are on sale at meetupatthemovies.com what would our musical world be like without Bobby Weir? In this episode, we celebrate all things Bobby as he celebrates his 75th birthday rather than looking back. In this episode, we will focus more on what Bobby's doing now and how he got where he is today. Let's hand this baton over to conductor Jesse Jarno.
- [04:16]
Narrator / Host
We don't really understand how it happened either, but this month we wish Bobby Weir a happy, heady and healthy 75th birthday. Like a lot of things in the Grateful Dead world, it came on pretty gradually. The Dead continue to change each and every time they stepped onto a stage, and we spent a few recent episodes of the Dead cast going into the subtle and not subtle shadings of the Dead's music between 1981, 1982 and 1983. And though the Grateful Dead officially disbanded in 1995, it was never in question that Bobby Weir would continue that mission, continuing to change every single year and then change some more. Today to honor Bobby Weir's 75th, we're not going to so much offer a career overview as go deeply into what Bobby Weir is doing now at 75 and how he got here.
- [05:08]
Bobby Weir
First thing I remember knowing was the most of the whistle blowing and the youngest dream was growing upright.
- [05:18]
Jeff Clementi
On the.
- [05:19]
Bobby Weir
Freight train Leaving town not knowing where I was bound no one was steering ride but mama tried.
- [05:28]
Narrator / Host
That was from the brand new album Live in Colorado, Volume 2 by Bobby Weir and the Wolf Brothers, the second of three new releases from Bobby and company featuring his expanded wolf pack. That is counting the live disc of Ace 50 coming in January, but not counting the concerto that Weir just debuted with the National Symphony Orchestra this October, and which will perhaps be coming to a classical venue near you sometime soon. Perhaps the most ambitious project of Weir's entire career. All things told, it's been pretty busy in Weirland, even without discussing how dude got so ripped, so we've got a bunch of friends to catch us up in addition to birthday boy Bob Weird we have with us on this episode, a few of his lycanthropic conspirators. Jeff Clementi has been playing with Weir since 1997. Welcome to the Deadcast, Jeff.
- [06:42]
Jeff Clementi
Between, you know, the orchestra stuff and the new Wolf Brothers with Wolf Pack, I mean, this man's been on a mission. Well, he definitely doesn't like to sit still.
- [06:50]
Narrator / Host
As we were putting this episode together, the band was getting ready for their Kennedy center debut with the National Symphony Orchestra. Please also welcome to the Dead cast.
- [06:58]
Don Was
Doug Don was, we were practicing last week. It might have been while we're doing playing in the band, in fact, but I was just thinking he never, when he was 20, could have imagined that he'd be 75 and playing these things with the National Symphony Orchestra and that it would work, that the songs would have the gravitas to endure for decades and to be treated in such a different fashion and still resonate.
- [07:28]
Narrator / Host
The idea of combining Grateful Dead music with an orchestra has been around for a long time. Robert Hunter's lyric truckin up to Buffalo refers to the first stop of the band's spring tour in 1970, where Hunter joined the group. On the road there, the Dead performed with the Buffalo Philharmonic under the direction of influential composer Lucas Foss. Bobby Weir.
- [08:03]
Giancarlo Aquilante
That was illuminating that, that I don't remember all that much of what we were doing, what we did with them, but we got these little Fender amplifiers, got them special for the gig. They were little Fender Princeton reverbs and they basically, they're, they're practice amps and they're still way, way, way too loud for a symphony orchestra. If you turn it up to where you're actually getting some tone out of it, it's way too loud.
- [08:32]
Narrator / Host
In part because Owsley Stanley had been busted with the Dead six weeks earlier in New Orleans and confined to California. There are no recordings of the Grateful Dead's first and only attempt to play with an orchestra. Dead scholars have assembled a fair bit of coverage of the event, which we've posted links to@dead.net deadcast. Though the event wasn't successful enough to repeat, classical and orchestral music continued to hover around the Dead's music for years. Classically trained bassist Phil Lesh often spoke of creating orchestral music around Dead motifs. The very first performance by the surviving members of the Dead following Jerry Garcia's death was at the San Francisco Symphony, performing space for Henry Cowell with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. But when we spoke with Bobby and the Wolf Bros. It wasn't just a one off Kennedy center gig that they were getting ready for.
- [09:36]
Don Was
He's looking to change music with us.
- [09:39]
Narrator / Host
And those ambitions are the theme of today's episode. And though there's absolutely a through line between the Dead working with Lucas Foss in 1970, their surviving members working with Michael Tilson, Thomas in 1996 and Weir working with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2022, you might be shocked to learn that it's zagging and once again not completely linear. How did Bobby Weir go from being the 17 year old fresh faced guitarist in the Warlocks to headlining the Kennedy Center? In a way, it kind of starts with the Coasters.
- [10:09]
Bobby Weir
I'm a hard fight baby can't get enough of your love I'm a hard fight baby can't get enough of your love When I go to sleep at night that's the only thing I'm dreaming.
- [10:29]
Narrator / Host
Of in September 1965, the Young Band the Warlocks was booked into the in room in Belmont just north of Menlo park, playing five sets a night, six nights a week. Early in the run for the first set every night, they served as backing band for Cornell Gunter leading a version of the Coasters, who also brought a rhythm guitarist named Terry. According to Dennis McNally's long, strained trip, Weir watched Terry so closely that he not only learned the chords, but absorbed unconsciously how to cue a band with the neck of his guitar as a baton. It was an important vocabulary lesson of sorts. The first piece of a language Weir is now speaking with the National Symphony Orchestra.
- [11:11]
Bobby Weir
One little piggy ate a pizza One piggy ate potato chips yeah but this little pig is coming over your house he's gonna nip alone to your sweet lips oh, I'm a Popeye baby can't.
- [11:28]
Narrator / Host
Get enough of your love by the time. By the time Weir recorded his solo debut, Ace, in February 1972, which we discussed at length in our last episode, he had enough of his own songs to alternate with Jerry Garcia and Pigpen. When Pigpen stopped touring with the band that year, the Dead shows became structured around Garcia and Weir alternating song picks. Ace was also the first time Weir directed a session which included not only his bandmates in the Dead, who acted as backend musicians, but but horns on a few tunes and a string section on Looks Like Rain, to repeat a short bit from last time.
- [12:20]
Bobby Weir
Looks like Rain.
- [12:31]
Giancarlo Aquilante
I remember the guy who did the string arrangement that I brought him in and he got a little too busy for me. I just had it in my head that this, this song needs strings. If I had really bothered to take the time to Listen to what Jerry was doing on the pedal steel. It didn't need strings because he was doing that. He was covering that sustained, the sustained. But I was young and young and brash and I wanted strings and by God, I was going to have strings.
- [13:02]
Narrator / Host
Weir would muse about playing more with strings and brass for years, but it would take a while to get there. As we've said, Weir does things gradually, seen or heard in time lapse. It took a little bit of time for Weir's ambitions to emerge and find shape during the Dead's road hiatus in 1975, he took up with Kingfish, who released a self titled album on Round Records. The next year.
- [13:24]
Bobby Weir
There's fog up on the mountain Frost is clinging to the ground Days keep getting shorter. You know the winter's coming round. This sure ain't the farmer's plan. I ain't hanging round I'm packing up my traveling bags and checking out of town.
- [13:53]
Narrator / Host
Heaven help the fool. Weir's next proper solo album was recorded with Fleetwood Mac producer Keith olson in summer 1977, a half decade after Ace, and released in early 1978. To promote it, he assembled the Bob Weir Band, featuring a new keyboardist, formerly of the band Silver, named Brent Midland, who was shortly drafted into the dead. In 1980, with the addition of drummer Billy Cobham, they became Bobby and the Midnights, who recorded a pair of albums in the early 80s.
- [14:41]
Bobby Weir
Libras, lepers, lunatic Hustlers, Whores and Thieves, Fortune tellers, Diplomats Some of you won't believe you know they play with fire too Comes the fail of night. God knows what they do.
- [15:08]
Narrator / Host
From 1984 through 1987, Weir occasionally played with a revived lineup of Kingfish, and in 1987 with Brent Midland and Bill Kreutzman in Go Ahead. But it was during the 1980s that Weir really started to branch from his immediate Dead family, playing in a variety of situations with a broad variety of partners. The heads at Jerry Base have done an extraordinary job mapping the varied world around Jerry Garcia. But I hope that a group of Weir scholars endeavors to do the same someday with the junior dead guitarist. And it was in 1988 that Bobby Weir found his longest term musical relationship outside the Dead.
- [15:45]
Bobby Weir
What fixation feeds his fever.
- [15:50]
Don Was
As the.
- [15:50]
Bobby Weir
Full moon pales and climbs? Am I living truth a rank deceiver? Am I the victim or the crime? Am I the victim or the crime? Am I the victim or the crime?
- [16:12]
Don Was
Or the crime?
- [16:15]
Narrator / Host
In 1988, Weir began to tour with bassist Rob Wasserman. That was from their archival album Simply called Live recorded mostly during their first tours together, Wasserman would pass away in 2016, but would provide a cosmic bridge to the topics of today's episode. In this era, Weir's musical world blossomed. If you're drawing maps of the Bobbyverse and how it connects to other musicians, consider this 1989 performance on the NBC television show Night Music, where eclectic Music producer Hal Wilmer paired Weir and Wasserman with Screamin Jay Hawkins and underground New York art weirdos Bongwater, featuring original YOLA Tango member Dave Rick, plus the vocal group the Pussy Willows to perform naturally you Don't Love Me yet by the 13th floor elevators. Not that this random late night appearance is indicative of Weir's musical direction so much as his increased willingness to throw himself into one new adventure after another, far away from his Grateful Dead comfort zone. By 1995, Weir and Wasserman expanded into a filled out band with drummer Jay Lane and Weir's old kingfish friend Matt Kelly. They launched their first tour as the Rat dog revue on August 6, 1995, just three days before Jerry Garcia's death. Shortened to Rat Dog, the band continued for the next 15 years, taking a break while we are focused on further before resuming for a final run from 2012 to 2014. They recorded one studio album, Evening Moods in 2000. This is two gin out on the.
- [18:03]
Bobby Weir
Road to West Maria.
- [18:07]
Jeff Clementi
In a cloud.
- [18:07]
Bobby Weir
Of dust I met Two Gin One was bright as bright and thin the other was bright Isn't this how all the tales begin?
- [18:25]
Narrator / Host
It was through bassist Rob Wasserman that Weir met another bassist in the early 80s. Don was came into the national ear as bassist in the Detroit band Wass not Was.
- [18:35]
Bobby Weir
Open the door, get on the floor Everybody walk the dinosaur Open the door, get on the floor Everybody want the dinosaur Open the door get get on the door Everybody want that dinosaur Open the door, get on the door Everybody want that dinosaur.
- [18:58]
Narrator / Host
But that blossomed into a career as an in demand Grammy winning producer working with Bonnie Raitt, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Lucinda Williams and a pretty bow tie spinning discography.
- [19:11]
Don Was
Of others in the like early in 1990 Rob Wasserman introduced us. Rob invited me to breakfast with him and Bobby when they were playing in Pasadena as Rob and Bob. Then later that year we all jammed together at an event in Mill Valley during the film festival which is a tribute to Hal Wilner, which is a really eclectic night. Man. I don't remember a lot of it. What I remember comes mostly from Blakesburg's pictures of it, right? It was like Marianne Faithful and Sid Straw and Todd Rundgren, Guido Saducci and Garth Hudson and Bobby and Wasserman and Michelle Shocked. I don't remember everybody who was on the gig, but we played in different combinations. And then jump ahead 25 years. When I started working at Blue Note, Bobby called me up about releasing some of the Tri stuff, some of his solo things. And he and Mickey came to see me, both of their solo things. And the Blue Note offices are at Capitol Tower.
- [20:23]
Narrator / Host
Oh, right. And in 2012, he became the head of Blue Note Records. Don was first gig with Weir is what used to be called A and R. He put a band together, but in true Dead fashion, it was completely accidental and it wasn't for the label he works for.
- [20:38]
Don Was
And downstairs in Capitol Studios, John Mayer was working. And from having made a couple albums with him already at that point, I knew that he was like a huge Deadhead. I mean, he was a Deadhead to the extent that every time we got in his car, the Grateful Dead, you know, the Serious channel was on. And he could identify not, not just the year, but maybe even the tour just by listening to the music. He really knew the. So I called him up in the studio. I said, man, you gotta get in the elevator and come up here. You won't believe who's in the office. And that's how they met. And in the office, the plan for Dead and Company was kind of hatched. And John and I drove up there a month or two later. And that was the birth of Dead and Company.
- [21:30]
Narrator / Host
But it's one thing for a producer to put a band together. It's another to actually hit the road.
- [21:35]
Don Was
And we just stayed in touch. He called me. He called me like in 2018, and he said he had a dream that Rob Wasserman came to him in the stream from the other world, from the other side. And he said, you know, the reason I introduced you to. To Don in 1990 was because when I'm gone, he's supposed to be your bass player. So Bobby called me out of nowhere and said he even had. He even had the name of the band they said it's supposed to be. It was all from this one dream. It was supposed to be called the Wolf Brothers. And it was supposed to be a trio with him and me and Jay. So he said, you want to do it? I was like, yeah. So I asked him for six songs and I went to. I checked into the Bowery Hotel in New York and I just woodshed these six Songs for a week. Nothing, man. I closed everything off. All I did was sit in the hotel room and play. Then I went to San Francisco and we didn't do any of the six songs, of course. Well, we just. We just started jamming on, like an A minor chord. And in the first minute and a half, I could tell that Jay and I felt the groove in the same place, which doesn't happen very often, you know, that you get that kind of a lock with somebody. And it was the kind of groove that it allowed Bobby. It propelled Bobby and his plan, but it also allowed him to phrase things and didn't get in his way. So we played for about 20 minutes, and he called up the managers and he just said, book a tour.
- [23:15]
Bobby Weir
That was it.
- [23:19]
Narrator / Host
We'll be dotting this part of the conversation with some music from the trio Wolf Brothers, recorded over a few shows in February 2020 at Sweetwater in Mill Valley.
- [23:28]
Bobby Weir
Please don't dominate the rap, Jack. We've got nothing new to say. Will, if you please don't back up the track. This train's got to run Today.
- [23:45]
Don Was
We.
- [23:46]
Bobby Weir
Spend a little time on the mountain Spend a little time on the hill Heard some se. Better run away of the.
- [24:02]
Don Was
The one thing you can go to a show and expect that you will get for sure is that if we. Whatever happened the time before, it will not happen again. That's. To me, that's at the core musically of what the Dead are doing, which is very similar to. Is what makes it so similar to jazz in its intention, which is that you have. You start with beginner's mind. Every time you play the song, I can be sure that Jay's going to change the bass drum beat. He's going to play what he's feeling that night from any number influences, not the least of which is, you know, what Bobby's playing. So that's why we kind of just. We don't. We ease into songs. We don't go blasting into anything because you don't know where it's going to land. You wait till it lands on something and then. All right, we can. We can build off of this foundation. And. And then you start.
- [24:59]
Bobby Weir
I seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream.
- [25:06]
Giancarlo Aquilante
And I could.
- [25:07]
Bobby Weir
Tell by the mark he left.
- [25:09]
Don Was
You were in his dream.
- [25:14]
Bobby Weir
I tried countless treasure My child upon the sea.
- [25:27]
Jeff Clementi
What you are, what you're meant to be.
- [25:34]
Don Was
Speaks his name the you were.
- [25:36]
Bobby Weir
Born to me Born to me. Cassidy.
- [25:41]
Don Was
Bobby, in his heart, believes that people are there to hear the songs. And he wants to inhabit Those songs, honestly, every night he's a storyteller and he does and he gets. And he becomes the characters who are the protagonist of every song. Or not. Not say the protagonist, but to speak the narrator in every song, he's. He. He becomes that. And like any great artist, that means you do it differently every time, so. But he's got to have the freedom to phrase a line the way he wants to.
- [26:19]
Bobby Weir
There's beetles on the river Fish are rising up like birds Been hot for seven weeks now Too hot to use.
- [26:33]
Don Was
To speak now he went out to shirt.
- [26:39]
Narrator / Host
That was February 15, 2020. A night Jeff Clementi sat in.
- [26:43]
Don Was
The other singers, the great. My favorite singers. People like, like Willie Nelson or Bonnie Raitt or Frank Sinatra. Did you ever try to sing along to a Frank Sinatra record? No matter. Next time you're driving, sing along to that's Life or something. And you will find no matter how far back you try to pull the phrasing, he's behind you, man. And you just think it's impossible. He's so far back he's gonna fall off of the song. Or like with Willie, it's playing live with him is. Is such an exciting thing because if you just go with where you think he is rhythmically in the song, you're. You got it. You have to have really strong internal time because he pulls that phrase so far back like little Jimmy Scott or something like that, that it lands into the next line and he'll run two lines together. But it's super expressive. And Bobby's the same thing. If you, if you just isolated Bobby's vocals and can. And if you can really hear him, he's totally in there every night, man. You know. But sometimes things get in the way and if. If the musicians are laying down too strong a grid, you could. And it sounds like you're fighting Bobby's phrasing, then it makes the. Bobby doesn't sound good because the grid, the beat is the beat. Why can't he sing in rhythm now, man, don't play so much and let it give him room to phrase. So that's the general directive.
- [28:23]
Bobby Weir
I give up cuz I've had enough Dump my blues on down the car she loves you Big river more than me Told that weaving Willa I didn't cry, cry, cry Taught the clowns how to cover up a clear blue sky.
- [28:52]
Narrator / Host
The job also set up Don for a pretty incredible music related pun, I would say.
- [28:57]
Don Was
For the first year and a half, I was haunted by what I call the Phil Spectre which is the specter of Phil Lesh, which is. He's a. He's a total bass genius, man. You know, nobody plays like him. And I don't know how he came up with those parts, but it's. I. It's not the way my mind works, which.
- [29:20]
Narrator / Host
Which I.
- [29:21]
Don Was
Which I think is why Bobby hired me for Wolf Brothers. Because what I'm doing is a little more prosaic. I'm not playing. I'm not weaving guitar lines against Bobby's guitar lines. I'm holding down. It's not even necessarily the tonic, but I'm holding down a note. And it's about tone, too. It's about having a round, warm sound that. That surrounds his voice. But I'm not playing like Phil. But I felt I had to. I was. I really. You know, I came out there. You know, I'm a. I'm a stranger in to this audience, and I'm not playing the same stuff they're used to hearing. And I was haunted by that. And it made me play too much.
- [30:07]
Narrator / Host
Don's not making a wall of sound of either the Lesh or Spectre varieties, but holding open a space for Weir. To Weir. We spoke with pedal steel player Barry Sless from the expanded Wolf Pack, and Don's intent rumbled through warm and clear.
- [30:21]
Barry Sless
Don is just super solid and super supportive. He's not trying to do anything fancy. He's actually, a lot of the times seeming to me, and from hearing some of the things that he said, looking for just the simplest way to support the songs and support Bob's vocal and make the song come across. And a lot of times he finds that, you know, he might go, hey, if I just play one quarter note over this instead of playing a line there, I feel like it makes his vocal come out better and make the song speak better. And he's a record producer, too, so I think he's coming from that space in the way that he plays and into really making sure that the song speaks the trio.
- [31:07]
Don Was
I viewed it like it was so quiet and there was so much space in it that I felt like, okay, this is like a folk concert at Carnegie hall in 1960. You know, if you were back in Judy Collins or Harry Belafonte or something like that. At Carnegie hall, there were bass players on the thing. There was a bass player with Peter, Paul and Mary who played real simple stuff, but it was intimate. And I thought the trio. If you love Bobby, man, it was like being in the living room with him. It was really intimate, and you could really Hear his guitar playing unencumbered and hear how he's telling stories with the vocal. You could appreciate his storytelling. His guitar playing is. It's like, no one plays like that. It's. It's. It's the most radical approach to rock and roll guitar like that I know of.
- [32:02]
Jeff Clementi
Really?
- [32:03]
Don Was
Certainly. And it's super interesting. It's brilliant, and it's inspir.
- [32:18]
Bobby Weir
Got your muting the street to come true love. Most of the time they see men crying at home. One of these years, they better be going out the door and down the street.
- [32:34]
Don Was
For people who aren't musicians, I would say that playing in a band is like being in a conversation. You listen and you say something and people respond. And now you can go to a party and there may be conversations that bore you. I used to have to go to a lot of parties. You know, I got three grown kids now, but I can't tell you how many parties I was at where parents were saying, oh, you know, we. We just applied to usc. You want to slit your wrists at these parties. You get in some conversations that you just don't want to be in, man. But then maybe at that same party, you get to the back of the room and Noam Chomsky is there, and he's saying stuff that'll blow your mind that you never get to read in the newspaper and you never hear on cnn. And that will change your whole approach to how you think Bobby is the Noam Chomsky of the guitar. He's that guy at the party who will blow your mind and say, whoa. It opens up so many new possibilities for playing if you. If you just listen to them.
- [33:44]
Narrator / Host
Jerry Garcia made some observations about Weir's guitar playing that resonate pretty strongly with Don's comments. These bits are from David Ganz and Blair Jackson's interviews from 1981, reprinted in Conversations with the Dead. We've linked, of course, @dead.net deadcast. Thanks, David.
- [34:01]
Jerry Garcia
Well, on the guitar, he's copped to haven't been influenced by people, but I can't hear it, you know, I mean, I can't hear it in his playing. I know that he thinks that it's true, but I really. I swear to God, I can't hear it. I mean, he says he's been influenced a lot by, like, Pete Townsend, you know. Yeah, I can't hear it.
- [34:19]
Barry Sless
I can't say as I do either.
- [34:21]
Jerry Garcia
Yeah, and he's, you know, and a couple of other people, too. It's one of those things that you don't you'd have to be weird to understand exactly what he meant, you know, or to have followed the evolutionary path that he's followed. There are ideas that Weird has that I would never have had. And in fact, maybe only he has. And that's like his unique value, which is he's an extraordinarily original player in a world full of people who sound like each other. I mean, really, he has really got a style that's totally unique, as far as I know. I don't know anybody else that plays the guitar the way he does, with the kind of approach that he has to it. And that in itself is, I think, really a score, considering how derivative almost all electric guitar playing is. I hear my influences to some extent in myself. With Weir, I have a real hard time recognizing any influences in his playing. I mean, that I could put my finger on and say, well, that's something that Weir got from X and such. Even though I've been there along for almost all of his musical development. You know what I mean? I didn't play with him since he was 16 or 17.
- [35:27]
Narrator / Host
Did he hide it well?
- [35:28]
Jerry Garcia
I just know where he gets it, you know, I have no idea where he gets it.
- [35:31]
Narrator / Host
He does listen to other things.
- [35:32]
Jerry Garcia
Sure. He listens to an awful lot of stuff. He really. He keeps up more than anybody, I think, probably in the band. Probably.
- [35:40]
Narrator / Host
He seemed to have a ton of.
- [35:41]
Don Was
Records at his house.
- [35:42]
Jerry Garcia
Yeah, he does an awful lot of listening, but he doesn't do much stealing. I mean, you know, out and out kind of stealing. He's like. His ideas are.
- [35:54]
Narrator / Host
He's Cage.
- [35:55]
Jerry Garcia
Yeah, they are. He is cagey. He's an interesting player. He really is. It's interesting to play with him. And he and I have worked together and have discussed our relationship guitaristically, musically, together so much that just. There's a lot of our playing together, which is. I mean, it ends up being, you know, having an interesting complementary quality to it, you know, because we're both so different from each other. It's neat.
- [36:28]
Don Was
It makes it fun when he's backing Jerry or John or someone. Well, when they're doing something that's specifically a solo, he's. It's almost like a hype man in a hip hop group. He's. He's shouting things that encouraged the guy to go forward and he's feeding all kinds of. He's very sophisticated harmonically, you know, he does know modes and scales and that kind of thing. He. He's got. He's got knowledge of music theory and he's feeding you stuff that you can play off.
- [37:32]
Narrator / Host
For Don, it was a wondrous new world in many ways.
- [37:35]
Don Was
I wasn't coming in with a lot of preconceived notions. I think that was refreshing for Bobby. And the whole thing really kind of blew my mind. I wasn't quite prepared for it. First, the most incredible thing is the exchange of energy with the audience.
- [38:06]
Bobby Weir
There. Better lift the sun I don't know don't really care Let there be songs to fill the air.
- [38:32]
Don Was
The audience is really unique. The audience. I can see the faces, man. I can see what they respond to. I see them reacting to songs. For me, the nights that we get to play Ripple as an encore, which is like every four or five nights when I. I see the. The audience, I see, you know, people hugging each other and crying and all singing along, and I. I get. I still. After all this time, I still get choked up every single time by how. How much that means to people. You can see it a little bit with the Rolling Stones. I don't even know how many Rolling Stone shows I've been to. But you experience that, but not on that level as a Grateful Dead audience.
- [39:22]
Bobby Weir
Where there is no pebble talking Speak.
- [39:26]
Giancarlo Aquilante
No wind to blow.
- [39:32]
Don Was
Reach out your hand.
- [39:36]
Bobby Weir
If your cup be empty.
- [39:41]
Giancarlo Aquilante
If.
- [39:41]
Bobby Weir
Your cup is full May it be.
- [39:47]
Narrator / Host
Again but then the pandemic hit, and the road closed itself to what was essentially still a new band. A lot of people who were able to stay home during the lockdown took on new projects. Some people learned to bake bread or knit. We started a podcast. Bobby Weir worked on his long game to change music during COVID We couldn't.
- [40:08]
Don Was
Get out and play, but we were going nuts. So I used to drive up there, like, every other weekend. We just jam just to play, just to keep our fingers moving. We go to Tri, and at some point it was like, well, let's invite Jeff to come play. You know, let's do something a little different. And then Jeff came and played, and it felt great. Like, really great, man. You know, because the conversation between Bobby and Jeff and Jay has got some deep history to it. And they really. They go in real deep together, the three of them. That elevated the game considerably.
- [40:43]
Narrator / Host
Jeff Kamenti jumped from the Bay Area jazz scene into rat Dog in 1997 and has played with Weir in numerous projects since, including Further the dead and the 50th anniversary fare thee well shows. His musical papers surely contain a deep meta history of Weir's career, getting into.
- [40:59]
Jeff Clementi
Rat Dog and so forth and moving on into the Dead. And all through the years I was constantly writing charts and as the repertoire expanded. But I got a couple healthy sized books, charts and I just keep with me just in case, you know, because sometimes you haven't played something for a long time. So let me take a little look at this again real quick and. But obviously internalized pretty much all of it. So that frees it up even more for improvising or whatever. I mean, it's just like you can kind of forget about like having your face buried into music and let the ears take over. Well, I was definitely going to recordings and stuff and then a lot of times I had to figure out, okay, which recording do I reference? Because things always change too. Or it could be a combination of just say if I was listening to one song and then try to find like four different versions of it and then see what's going on and then pull that stuff out, pull that stuff out. See where, you know, are we still living here or not? Or, you know, because stuff had changed.
- [41:50]
Narrator / Host
Coming back to play with Weir, he discovered Bobby had some new moves.
- [41:54]
Jeff Clementi
It was just him, Don and Jay. He had to cover a lot of ground. So it's just, I think it really expanded. I mean, he's just got this whole new vocabulary going on and it's really, really cool to, you know, watch happen and hear happen. And Bob likes to view this as, you know, he wants. He wants to be like an old R B soul band.
- [42:15]
Narrator / Host
An old R B soul band with a pedal steel guitar player.
- [42:19]
Jeff Clementi
Yeah, he's got to have a twist, I mean.
- [42:22]
Don Was
And then we were trying to think of another instrument, didn't want to do the regular formula, but pedal still seemed cool. And we called Greg Lease started coming up and jam, but it was just a jam. And then we thought, man, this is really good when we do some live streams from here. And so we did this series of livestreams.
- [42:40]
Narrator / Host
Pedal steel guitar player Greg Leese is one of those names that shows up everywhere once you start looking at album credits. I recommend his work with jazz titan Bill Frizzell. I'm an enormous fan of the pedalsteel guitar and think it's a brilliant decision to have a pedal steel be the only other guitar in a band with Weir carrying a flavor of Jerry Garcia's playing. While rarely locked into signature parts, especially.
- [43:03]
Don Was
In this 10 piece configuration, there's a lot going on. So much of the time there is no soloist per se. Even though people, if you listen to their isolated tracks, you'd say, oh, that's A pedal steel solo. Oh, wait, Jeff's playing a solo on the piano. But it's just lively conversation. So it becomes a little more. The lines become blurred.
- [43:33]
Narrator / Host
When the band hit the road in summer 2021, resulting in the two live in Colorado albums, Lis was replaced by Barry Sless, who's been playing on and off for years with David Nelson, Phil Lesh and many others. He took up the pedal steel in the mid-90s.
- [44:03]
Bobby Weir
My brother Esau killed a hunter the year 2009. And before the killing was done, his inheritance was mine.
- [44:17]
Barry Sless
I started playing, like, with David Nelson Band or around that time, which would have been like 1994. There was some guys that were using effects like Sneaky Pete used to use, like some phase shifting and phasing on his pedal steel and some distortion. So I had heard some of his outside of the box playing. So maybe that might have given me a little idea like, hey, you know, there's potential here to get outside of the box.
- [44:50]
Bobby Weir
Sam.
- [45:23]
Jeff Clementi
Jeff Clementi, Barry's been killing it. And Greg as well. Prior, you know, I mean, it was just. I was blessed to be able to play with those two guys on pedal steel. Even if they are playing the signature parts, it's going to have a little bit of different twist to it because, you know, just nature of the instrument. But at the same time, yes, it can be very solo oriented, it could be very rhythmic oriented, yet it also could be like this giant, like, puffy cloud pad, you know, that you can't really achieve on any other instrument.
- [45:49]
Barry Sless
A lot of times I'm trying to not make it, like, obviously sound like a pedal steel like you might expect in a country song or something like that, and trying to play it in different ways that fit the song. And then like, every now and then, like, Jeff or Jay will like, hey, can you cop this, like, Jerry part on the pedal steel? That's kind of the line that he plays in this song. So there's some of that also where I'm listening. Try and figure out some of those signature underlying parts for some of the songs that nobody else is playing. We'd be out on tour and we'd be doing a sound check on a song and he was like. One of them would be like, hey, can you cut this? This Jerry line here, I can't remember. Maybe like, Music Never Stopped might have been one of them.
- [46:38]
Giancarlo Aquilante
It gives me a little more room because pedal steel, for the most part is. Is more of a sustained sort of instrument, which means that there's less, there's There are less notes being played, you know, more of them, more being. Are just being held out as opposed to new notes and more of them, which gives me. It just gives me more room to work on the guitar, which is kind of what I'm looking for there. And I've developed sort of a slow hand approach to guitar playing. And you know, I like to hang notes and let them take, let them change color and stuff like that and just watch as they, as they change color. And if there's another guitarist playing on top of that, you minimize that effect greatly. So at the same time, I've always wanted to play with the pedal still. So I finally got one.
- [47:27]
Barry Sless
I don't know anybody that plays like him unless they're somebody in a cover band that's trying to sound like him. Very rhythmical, really creative, really open to the muse and fun to work around and, you know, play around. It gets very unique tones and a tonal range that none of the other guitars or instruments have. And well, in Wolf Brothers, there aren't any other guitars other than metal steel, so. But it's just a very unique sound and unique approach. A lot of melodic, moving chords and innovative single note lines.
- [48:05]
Narrator / Host
I love the way Weir keeps the groove turning inside out. A new speedway boogie.
- [48:36]
Jeff Clementi
My upbringing has been more from the jazz world. My understanding of harmony and theory and stuff like that was a big benefit for me moving into this. But just seeing like some of the way that he connected certain chords together. I remember early on going like, that's kind of, that's interesting.
- [48:52]
Barry Sless
When I was playing with Phil, we didn't do a whole lot of Bobby songs. So it's a whole lot of new material that I had to learn that I had never played before, that I've heard before, but never sat down to play. And some of the tunes are pretty, pretty complex.
- [49:11]
Bobby Weir
Compass Carter Spinning Help is swinging to and fro where's the dark sky.
- [49:40]
Barry Sless
Lost Sailor Saint of Circumstance Might be a few chords in there. Victim or the Crime. You know, there's. There's some other ones. There's some, some chords that don't just fall naturally on my tuning. On the pedal steel, there's been some challenging chord inversions where I'll have to go, okay, how can I comfortably play this without contorting my body with this pedal and this lever?
- [50:09]
Jeff Clementi
You know?
- [50:10]
Barry Sless
And yeah, there have been a few moments where it's like, yeah, how can I play this chord on the pedal steel? I know how to play it on guitar, but where can it fit comfortably on the Pedal steel. Pedal steel can kind of be a. A beast.
- [50:50]
Narrator / Host
It's almost as if Lost Sailor and Saint of Circumstance are rites of passage.
- [50:54]
Jeff Clementi
In Weir's band, especially first charting out some of the first stuff like Sailor Saint might have been, like, one of the first things I had to chart out in Rad Dog. And it was just like, whoa. Like, man, this is, like, beautiful. I mean, like. But this is, like, very, you know, I don't want to say adult, but it was, you know, it was, you know, it was adult, you know.
- [51:28]
Bobby Weir
On down.
- [51:31]
Don Was
Wait for.
- [51:37]
Bobby Weir
My Reason.
- [51:49]
Don Was
He said, yeah, you know, learn Lost Sailor, say in the circumstance, we'll try it tomorrow night. Tomorrow. Those songs are really hard, man. You know, And I know when I got to saying the Circumstance, well, I was trying to learn it. I. I write it out and it's a primitive kind of chart that I make, but, like, just a chart where at least I could keep track of odd bars and when there's an odd time signature change. And I remember when I was trying to break the code of saying a circumstance, I was actually mad. Like, why did he have to put all this in it? But once you learn it, man, once you internalize it, the. It's genius, man. It's all there for a reason. And it's. And these songs, they. They kind of. They roll off your fingers like melted butter. It's just so. It's so easy to play. There's so many ideas you can have. There's an infinite amount of approaches they become. I remember after the first tour that I did with Bobby with Wolf Brothers, when we got together the second time. I remember the first time we played Lost Sailor. I had the same feeling I have when I see an old friend. Man, it was really good to see that song and play those changes again. And I really. I missed it. That's. I've never experienced, like, a friendship with a song.
- [53:59]
Barry Sless
You never know what he's going to do.
- [54:00]
Don Was
He's.
- [54:00]
Barry Sless
He's spontaneous in the moment, and it could always change. And that could be his guitar playing or where he sings a vocal line or, you know, like, he might not come in singing a line where you always heard it and you expect it. And he might let the music breathe for a couple measures before he comes in, and that could be different every night. And the same goes for his guitar playing. And he's soloing more in this band than I've heard him solo before. And it's really cool because he has a really unique approach that's just distinctly Bobby. Nobody else Solos like that, and then some of the rhythmical stuff borders on soloing too. It could kind of be chordal soloing with single note lines thrown in, but can work against somebody else that's soloing at the same time.
- [54:54]
Jeff Clementi
We're all trying to give each other space, and especially Bob's been soloing a lot more, which has been great. He's been killing it. And just watching him, he's growing all the time still. I mean, coming out with new stuff and when he's playing, he's like, whoa, where'd that come from? You know, And I just love just in everybody as a musician. I think, you know, the learning aspect of it never ends if you let it. So you're constantly searching.
- [55:16]
Narrator / Host
There are Weir solos all over the Live In Colorado albums. In early 2022, the band hit the road with a destination, Radio City Music hall, and a pair of shows celebrating the 50th anniversary of ACE. One of those Nights will be released as a bonus disc on the upcoming ACE50 release, which we talked about extensively last time. But it wasn't all that happened that week.
- [56:06]
Barry Sless
We had a really fun tour, all the shows leading up to Radio City, including Radio City. So we were already in a pretty high space. So adding that to it was just a little cherry on the top.
- [56:17]
Bobby Weir
Black floated wind Whispering sin Speaking of life that passes my due.
- [56:32]
Don Was
Forced me.
- [56:32]
Bobby Weir
To see you done Better by me.
- [56:39]
Barry Sless
Better by me really, the. The only preparation is we. We did a rehearsal in New York at a soundstage before we set up at Radio City, and we had some of the guests come in.
- [57:00]
Narrator / Host
Two of those guests, Tyler Childers and Brittany Spencer, can be heard singing on Ace50. But the music they made with another guest isn't out just yet. The towering jazz bassist Ron Carter, who played with Miles Davis from 1963 to 1968, which alone is enough to make him an all timer.
- [57:18]
Barry Sless
Don is the president of Blue Note Records, and, you know, maybe his relationship with Ron was just artists and label president in the past. I think it was cool for him to meet in the space of both of them being players. Don was super stoked to have him there.
- [57:38]
Jeff Clementi
When it first came up, I was like, seriously? Because obviously, I mean, I was familiar with him most of my life. I mean, and I was just. First I was wondering, how did this happen? You know, and is he really gonna come? You know, and then get confirmation he's coming, but not only to the gig, he's coming to the rehearsal. It was like, oh my God. So it was just. I was really excited obviously. And it was just. But he was, God, such a nice gentleman and obviously, you know, you can't say enough about his playing, obviously. So it's just. It was like kind of the epitome of what you thought he would be. Everything you thought he would be and more.
- [58:13]
Don Was
The rehearsal which is recorded, he also did other one, he came and rehearsed and he was mind blowing, man. He was really. It was really something. It was a. For me personally, it was a very big deal. When I, you know, this bass that I played with Bobby, it's like really huge, man. It's a 6 4th size bass. Most people play either 3, 4 size or, or a full size. So this is like base and a half and it's an old, it's 200 years old. So it's so big. When I bought it I thought, man, I wonder what Ron Carter would say about this. Would he think this the stupidest thing because it's so big it hurts. It hurts my shoulder to reach around it and it's a lot of weight to sport for a three hour show, but it sounds really good.
- [59:00]
Narrator / Host
On the first night at Radio City, Carter took over Don's bass for a beautiful version of Darkstar that found him weaving with Weir's guitar, Clementi's piano and Sless's pedal steel.
- [59:10]
Jeff Clementi
But then when it came to the actual gig, like, you know, all of a sudden he started doing some stuff before the tune even started. So it was like we got into this little improvised conversation with each other, mostly just the two of us, you know, and it was a special moment for me. Again, it just was like, wow, this is really happen. And then, you know, then we got into the tune and of course he killed it and you know, his whole approach of orchestration with the bass and it just was really incredible. I think he knew what song he was gonna play, but I'm not sure, you know, how much he listened to it beforehand because it was like all of a sudden I'm like, he's looking at me. And I was like, okay. So I started like barking chord changes, whatever I felt pinched myself. It's like, look at me, I'm. I'm barking chord changes to Ron Carter, like, give me a break.
- [60:36]
Barry Sless
We did Dark Star, so there's a lot of room for improvisation there and something that he's well acquainted with. So it was kind of a good fit in that there was plenty of room for us to stretch and go in any direction. And having his voicings there were really cool and great to play off of.
- [61:24]
Narrator / Host
Of course, this wouldn't be a Weir centric episode of the Deadcast without getting unstuck in time. Another part of Bobby Weir's story in 2022 has a slightly different arc, rooting in a different project that began life a dozen years ago. In 2010, the Marin County Symphony approached Weir about playing a benefit and they went looking for an arranger, symphony board member and Deadhead. Helen Baldovinos had heard the Stanford Marching Band's arrangements of Dead songs and called the Stanford music department. There she found Giancarlo Aquilante, an Italian composer and professor who very much didn't have anything to do with the Stanford Marching Band's version of Dead tunes, but took the meeting anyway.
- [62:03]
I
My first reaction, it wasn't really. I was not that much interested. I'm a classical musician, I do my own things. And even though I knew about the Grateful Dead, but I really didn't know much about their music. Another factor, I'm originally from Italy. I moved here as an adult and I didn't grow up with that kind of music.
- [62:27]
Narrator / Host
It was a country. The Dead skipped entirely on their seven trips overseas.
- [62:31]
I
I always was in the classical world, so I didn't know them very well. And my first reaction was, I'm not sure about this. Then the more I was thinking about it, then I said, well, maybe this could be, you know, a different experience, something to open up my. At the end, I said, why not? So I started to work with Bob for the First Fusions debuted on May.
- [63:00]
Narrator / Host
7, 2011 at the Frank Lloyd Wright Design Marin Center. First Fusion was a two part performance in the first half titled Raising the Dead. Weir and a selected crew of Rat Dog musicians join members of the Symphony and the Quartet San Francisco to play pieces including Cassidy and Birdsong. In the second half, reinventing the classics, Weir and the Symphony played a suite that moved through some of the Dead's most expansive work, including portions of Darkstar playing in the band and the days between.
- [63:29]
I
I suddenly discovered a new world. I discovered a new world in music. Something that I kind of, you know, I didn't know much about rock and roll. I didn't know much about Grateful Dead. I didn't know much about that world, period. It's amazing how much materials in the Grateful Dead songs there, there is that it's material to be translated into these amazing ensemble of the orchestra that I did not find in other songs from other groups. So is this a coincidence that we're doing this or this is something that they, in their subconscious they thought about it or is that a coincidence? I. I don't know. It was really quite of an amazing experience to work with Bob, who's. He's very knowledgeable about music in general, not. Not just in his little world of rock and roll or big world of rock and roll. So he's very knowledgeable.
- [64:32]
Bobby Weir
So.
- [64:35]
I
I realized that there was so much to learn. For me, the first fusion was really an experiment. We saw that it's possible. So the first fusion gave us confidence that it's possible. Now how can we improve that?
- [64:49]
Narrator / Host
Plenty of ambitious projects have declared themselves to be volume one, or the first part in a larger series. It took a few years, but Weir and Aqualente were serious that it was only a first attempt. We'll be listening to a few bits of the Kennedy center performances from early October 2022 during the next segment of this episode. Far more than first fusion, Bobby and Giancarlo hope that this will lay the groundwork for a long running project that can move from orchestra to orchestra.
- [65:55]
I
Improvisation was not part of the. Of the first fusion. Improvisation was a. It was a crucial aspect in classical music. So in the baroque time, I'm thinking about the basso continuum, I want to go into the details, but the keyboard players was always improvising on some what we call figure bass. They were. They had some numbers similar to what you say, sheet symbols today. Like, you know, the jazz players, they have C minor 7 or D minor 6, and then they improvise over those symbols. In the baroque time, there was something very similar to that. So improvisation is nothing new to classical musicians and in particular to composers. Composers were trained to improvise their instrument, mainly the keyboard, because it's like. Improvisation is like brainstorming. So you sit at the piano, you kind of play, you fold around and it could be structured or not, but it's a way to get ideas. Basically it's the equivalent of brainstorming. My first composition teacher, that was a crucial training. So improvisation for me, I was nothing new, but I always did it in the classical world, which today is kind of unusual. So it's unusual for classical musicians. That idea of improvisation is kind of lost even among composers. But somehow I always had that in my tools.
- [67:33]
Narrator / Host
Certainly it's possible to argue that one of the main differences between classical music and jazz is racism. The tradition of improvisation has intersected with classical music for centuries and in more recent centuries around jazz especially. Charlie Parker regularly played with string arrangements in large ensembles, for example. And composers from Duke Ellington and Count Basie to Charles Mingus and Sun Ra and countless others have used orchestral and orchestral forms, but each had to negotiate it for themselves. This is Charlie Parker performing the seasonal classic Autumn in New York with Strings in 1952. That was more of a jazz rhythm section backing up strings than an orchestra, but something of how jazz and orchestras sometimes combine. But conversational music in the Grateful Dead tradition is something else we've been struggle on.
- [68:46]
I
How do we preserve that idea of improvisations, which is a crucial part of the Grateful Dead music? What makes them special in a way, what makes them big songs to be transformed and different and renewed every time they play it? So how we translate that into an ensemble that notoriously does not improvise? Bob and I, we've been sort of banging our head and how we're doing. So he has some crazy ideas. And I say, Bob, this is not possible. And I have some crazy idea. Bob said, no, this is not part of the Grateful Dad. That's not how we're doing it. So we needed to find a solution somehow. So I decided that most likely among a symphony orchestra, there are going to be some musicians within the orchestra that are capable of improvising. Out of these 80 musicians, I'm sure every single major symphony orchestra in this country, they have some musicians that they come from different backgrounds. They play in classical orchestra, but they've been exposed to jazz and rock and roll, so they have some knowledge about improvisations. So we're going to leave to the conductor sort of to invite or to ask who's willing to take those sections to improvise.
- [70:39]
Narrator / Host
But here's what we meant when we said that Weir was working on his long game.
- [70:42]
Giancarlo Aquilante
We knew all along that we were going to do this. So I knew that I was shopping for like five guys who could cover string parts, could cover wind parts, and then lead the charge in the. In the orchestra when that time comes. But when that time comes. But first I needed to tour with them and, and get them sort of get. Get them and us all on the same page. And so that's what we've been doing.
- [71:11]
Don Was
Bobby booked these symphony dates and this is something that he'd been developing for 10 years. And so he, you know, he. He is primarily a disruptor by trade. So. So Bobby was thinking, well, why can't the orchestra solo? And of course, the answer is obvious. They're not. That's not what they do. That's not what the people who are there are there because they. They blend into. They do. They're anti soloists almost. They blend into an ensemble, and they can read the page well and blend so that it sounds like one unit. That's. That's their skill. So standing out is almost antithetical. It's like having your back. Backup singer, like. Like the Ikettes did not upstage Tina Turner. You know, you don't do that. But he thought, I. I get that, but why don't we put some ringers in the sections? Let's take a cello player who can solo. Let's take a violin player who can solo. Let's take a brass guy. So we auditioned five different categories, right? And it was for the symphony shows, so that people in the orchestra could solo. And we picked these five guys who. And it was kind of cool. So they started doing these live streams with us because it added some other element. And at times it was chaotic and sounded more like Sun Ra than the National Symphony Orchestra, but we liked that, too. So then we start. We started getting away from the written orchestrations that were planned for the symphonies, and they started arranging parts, but it just kind of grew. It wasn't by design. And then we took it out on tour and it was. It was pretty nice.
- [73:06]
Bobby Weir
Sam.
- [73:47]
Narrator / Host
That'S the other one from Live in Colorado, Volume two. It's actually the members of the Wolf Pack who've taken on the challenge of writing the charts for the band, rotating arrangement duties amongst themselves. But integrating the Wolf Pack is only one part of it.
- [74:01]
Giancarlo Aquilante
One of the projects that we're working on is getting a symphony orchestra to improvise, and that's a pretty major challenge. But we have a number of techniques that we're going to employ to do that. But they all involve having a little crew of people that we travel with who we can then seed into the audience, into the orchestra, and they can sort of lead the charge in the improv sections. And for the time being, they're going to be. They're going to be the guys who are going to be leading the charge on. On the improvisation. At some point, we've got some more advanced techniques that will get entire sections improvising of one voice, but that's going to take a little doing and maybe some iPads and stuff like that. But for now, just those guys. We'll see them into the orchestra and they'll. They'll see what they can pull out it during the. During the extended sections of the. Of the concerto. We'll see what they can. What kind of magic they can make.
- [75:09]
Don Was
They're all players who have played in orchestras, but can also solo and have worked. You Know, like, I think Mads, the viola player, worked with Stanley Clark, and. Yeah, I mean, they, they all do other things.
- [75:22]
Narrator / Host
You know, One of the ringers they're bringing along is Jeff Clementi.
- [75:26]
Giancarlo Aquilante
I'm. I'm a little concerned at having a piano involved, you know, and Jeff's a great player, but that's, you know, he's got two hands. That's a lot of notes. And you have to think that. You have to think that kind of stuff through when you're working with, you know, 80, 90 pieces.
- [75:42]
Jeff Clementi
I've done symphony stuff before, but the unique thing about this approach is that normally it would be the symphony accompanying the band, the standard scenario, but this is more like we're actually accompanying the orchestra. So they're taking a lot of spaces to where it's like orchestra only soloing and stuff, and having their own solo sections. And then they may trade back and forth or then it becomes us, you know, we're improvising in there. We're gonna figure this out too, because, I mean, it's gonna be ever evolving. Sam.
- [76:51]
Narrator / Host
As you may have imagined, Jeff has internalized the music pretty well by now.
- [76:55]
Jeff Clementi
Even with the symphony stuff. I'm not actually looking at music per se. I'm looking at written roadmaps, but I got my own notes on there, like for cues or this or that, because otherwise I'd be flipping pages through score really fast if I had to read it. I got him down to, like, where I'm looking at one page per song, but, I mean, everything's. I made detailed notes.
- [77:14]
Giancarlo Aquilante
We're bringing Jay, but we. We're bringing. Bringing Jay with two kids. One of them is a. Is a very, very quiet kid. I. I rode back from D.C. a number of years back, and the guy sitting next to me on the flight was Tony Bennett's drummer. I just heard him the night before this benefit that we did there, or a gig we did there, and he was telling me all kinds of tricks that he uses to. To quiet down a kit. A rock and roll trap drum kit, all by itself, unamplified, is twice as loud as an entire symphony orchestra. And so we've had to go through some hoops to. To quiet the band down and still have guys feel like they. They're leaning into the music. Like I say, a rock and roll drum kit is. Is twice as loud as an entire symphony orchestra, unamplified. And you just gotta do something about that or. Or the. The symphony players will just get up and leave. They all have DB meters on their Music stands. And if it gets. They have to protect their ears. You don't get a second chance. They'll get up and leave if. If it gets too loud. So we have to quiet the band down or there's no point in even trying to play with an orchestra. And so we've done that. We've put a lot of work into it. I'm not sure that you'll be able to hear from the audience the fact that I'm playing through minimal amplification, but I'll be playing through minimal amplification. And the piano will be acoustic.
- [78:51]
Jeff Clementi
You'll be.
- [78:52]
Giancarlo Aquilante
You'll be hearing it acoustically. And I don't think there's going to be much, much. Well, it depends on which kit Jay is playing, because if he plays his regular kit, it's really, really quiet. But that might still be too loud, in which case we're also bringing electronic drums, which are pretty good these days.
- [79:15]
Narrator / Host
As a ranger, Giancarlo Aquilante is handling air traffic control.
- [79:20]
I
We reserved some sections in these orchestrations where this pattern is repeated. And every. Every single instrument has what we call the chords. You know, I inserted the chords like a jazz musician will have. You know, they have these charts with chords and symbols and. And among the orchestra player, I'm sure there's someone who understand exactly what that means. In the National Symphony, it might be the trumpet player. In some other orchestra, it might be the clarinet player. And so the result, it will be completely different. Each time we play those songs. It's going to be a connection between the band, mainly Bob, and the conductors that these sections are going to be repeated as it is in the traditions of the great roulette, until Bob says, time to move on. And then the conductor will communicate that to the orchestra, and they will say, time to move on. So will it work? Will not work. We'll try. We'll see.
- [81:04]
Don Was
We have a couple of key things, like there's. There are areas that are specifically designed for soloing that are going to rely on nods and gestures between Bobby and the conductor as to when that section is over. So there are some things that will just keep going on till we say we're done. There are other things where you absolutely can't do that, and you have to play it as written.
- [81:35]
I
The first Fusion did not have these improvisation sections, but this time they will have. And also we have many more songs. So I orchestrated about 20 songs so far. The 20 songs generated 650 pages of orchestral score. So we're talking this much. And when it translated. So when you generate the parts for the single instrument and we're talking, I can't remember five, four or five thousand pages of music at the same time as in the Dead traditions. I tried to add something because these songs were transformed through the years dramatically. So the way we see it in these orchestration is a further transformations. So it's a continuation of these songs to be transformed through the years. Helen or Bob, they will send me all kinds of different versions, old versions. And this was in the 60s. This is what we did in the 70s. This was within the 80s. And so I would listen to all of them. And in order to formulate some ideas. It was not just a mere listening. I really need to go inside the music. I need to go into the really. The mechanics of the music. How these chord progressions are set, how do they work. And how these improvisations are based on that chord progression. Why is Jerry Garcia is doing this, using this sort of pattern here? And then in the 70s, this was different. And then later on, that pattern kind of changed. So with all the respect for any person knowing the music of the Grateful. That I really was not just listening and say, oh, this is a beautiful songs. I really like it. I really had to go inside the music. As pass a Stanford professor, I would say, you know, I really need to analyze it. Not just, oh, it's so beautiful. There are two verses and listen. I really like that. That. That doesn't do anything in music. Yeah, I really needed to understand the mechanics. The chord progression, the melodic lines and how they connected. Like, I would do it with a moderate. Like the analysis that you would do of a Moser symphony or a Beethoven symphony. We go inside and say, why did he write this note? And why is that? And why is that? So once you understand that, then I said, how can I make it my own? The introductions of the other one. So the main melody. I used the main melody to have an orchestral interlude at the beginning. And I created a fugue out of it. So an old technique kind of lost within composer of writing fugues. So I used some ideas from the Grateful that I get those ideas. And I built a fugue around it for an orchestral part. Or I would take. I would take some ideas from Jerry Garcia's improvisations. You know, I will find some patterns that he might be using in different songs or something that we're recording. So I figure he must have been attached to that. And I would use these again either to write a fugue or to write an interlude bass that will be My main theme that will be transformed, modified, harmonized differently, and you name it. Things that we do in classical music.
- [86:11]
Jeff Clementi
Sam.
- [86:36]
Bobby Weir
I do not.
- [86:43]
Narrator / Host
How does the song go?
- [86:45]
I
They've been trained that way. The band trained the audience in a certain way, and they follow it. Now that songs evolving into something else is expected. They don't want to hear the song the same way. If they play three concerts they want to hear. And they play the same song those three nights, they want to hear it differently. That's how the. The Deadhead audience has been trained. And that's now. It's a feature of the band.
- [87:18]
Don Was
We need a lot of rehearsal and more than the orchestra can. Can give us. We get two days with them in dc. So the arranger made these MIDI files for us of synthesizers playing all the parts. But at least it enabled us to get concrete versions of the forms of the songs. Because the one thing that's really different, certainly at this stage of the game, is the verse has to start at bar 72, not 73, not 83, not 52. So like with us, you know, when Bobby starts singing the second verse, that's when we start playing it. But we can't do that with an orchestra. So that required a lot of rehearsal and. And I'm really impressed by. With Bobby's work ethic and learning these arrangements and. And being able to stick to them. That required a tremendous amount of discipline and a whole lot of work. And he's worked really hard at it, much harder than I have. Because no one's going to notice if I miss.
- [88:29]
I
The way we rehearse. I have MIDI files. You know, the computers generate the MIDI files of these orchestrations. So that's what we have for now. We, you know, we don't have a real orchestra to rehearse. And so they were playing over these melodies, so I had to stop them. And I say, guys, you know, here you really need to play softer because there is the English one and the bass clarinet. Using some ideas that I took from Jerry Garcia's. And I used it here because I think it fits. And it's Dark star. So I'm using this low clarinet. I'm using the bass clarinet. I'm using the English one because it's a dark sound. So you need to respect that. You need to. That needs to bring out. Because it's like bringing Jerry Garcia soul alive again here. So that's how I envisioned all these orchestrations.
- [89:24]
Don Was
He really wants to disrupt the tradition, some traditional aspects of the orchestra and introduce improvisational elements. It's not without precedent in the old, you know, hundreds of years ago, orchestras would play pieces that weren't necessarily finished because the composers were still alive. And. And they would improvise. If the composer hadn't gotten to the end, but they were trying out a piece, they'd just figure out a way to get out of it. So there's some historical precedence for it, but it's. It's really not done in modern times. But Bobby's got this whole thing involving iPads for the whole orchestra and color cod.
- [90:09]
Jeff Clementi
It.
- [90:38]
Don Was
He's looking to change music with this. I think that.
- [90:42]
Jeff Clementi
That.
- [90:42]
Don Was
That's. I think that's 50% of the. Of his interest in this. It's. It's the. It's to change things. And I think the other 50% is, well, look, I just turned 70, right, and Bobby's five years older than me. And at this age, man, you understand the limitations of your active playing time. You know. You know, optimistically, you got 15 years, which flies by at this. At this point in time. And I think Bobby's concerned about serving the songs and making sure that the songs survive all of us, you know, that they. They keep going. And. And he's very interested in finding ways to keep the music alive, to keep it fresh and alive and. And doing it with orchestras is. Is one way of doing it. I think he shows at the Kennedy Center. Well, I think they'll be good, and it's certainly high adventure for us. I think it's just a start.
- [91:49]
Giancarlo Aquilante
I'd love to incorporate the penal steel, but that's.
- [91:52]
Jeff Clementi
That's.
- [91:53]
Giancarlo Aquilante
There are two. Two damn many strings now. We've gotta. It's just too busy. I'm thinking we may try to. We may try to work the pedal steel in for. We're booked again in the winter, I guess, and we may try to work the pedal steel in at that point. But first we need to, you know, one foot at a time. We'll keep it rolling. We'll keep. I've got a. A couple of MIDI guitars at this point, and I'm gonna. I'm getting up to speed on them so I can actually write. Otherwise, I can't write music. But now if you play a MIDI guitar into. You play a line on a MIDI guitar, it'll. It'll write that out for you. I'll be working with Giancarlo, I think, and my. My orchestrator and. And we'll be. The idea is to get. We have like 20 songs worked up now, and it's going to take four nights to play them all. So they're all fairly lengthy pieces, and by the time we get on stage again, we'll have a bunch of new songs. My plan is we'll have a bunch of new songs, and so you'll never be able to tell what songs you'll, you're never going to know what songs you're getting until you get there, just like, just like a Dead show. And there's going to be considerable, a considerable amount of improvisation as well. We're looking to really bring something to classical music that it's not known for.
- [93:23]
Narrator / Host
Bobby Weir's Long Game extended back a few years, building a band that accommodated classical players with deeper improv chops. But the game is even longer than that. As we were preparing this episode, I read an obituary of Sue Mingus, who for decades tended to the legacy of her late husband, the genius composer and bassist Charles Mingus, keeping both the Mingus Big Band and the Mingus Orchestra running in tandem to showcase different parts of his musical world. Between Dead and Company, Wolf Brothers, the Wolf Pack, and unnamed orchestras to be named later. I have no interest in counting how many parallel threads of the Dead's legacy we are as tending to, but suffice it to say, lot of strands.
- [94:05]
Giancarlo Aquilante
We're not real concerned about what people are saying about the next bunch of gigs. My major considerations when I'm, when I'm, when I'm trying to decide this or that with the music is what are people going to think about it or going to be saying about it in two or 300 years?
- [94:51]
Rich Mahan
We'd like to thank our guests in this episode. Bobby Weird, Jeff Clementi, Don Was Barry Sless and Giancarlo Aquilanti. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz for contributing audio from his interview archive. Thanks very much for tuning in. Don't forget to like and subscribe and keep your tour stories coming by recording yours over@stories.dead.net executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast Mark Pincus and Doran Tyson. Produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.