Found this article linked on the TOOBoard, Not sure how old it is:
Life After the Dead:
An interview with Bob Weir
By Rex Rutkoski
Bob Weir glances out the window into his garden as he talks. While others might just see flowers, one of the founding members of the Grateful Dead finds musical symbolism in bloom.
“When I go to rehearsal today, when we start playing and bring up a scale that has some alternative places to go, we can start augmenting or diminishing, we can sharp or flat whatever. That’s a garden too,” he explains.
The artistic parallel comes naturally to Weir because he believes music is an entire world in which we reside. “It’s got furniture, cities and subdivisions. It’s got aerospace and heaven above and earth below. It’s a whole world that we live in. It’s every bit as real for me as the concrete world we are touching,” he says.
In his view, there is a bridge between this reality that everyone shares and the musical world. “For me the music occurring at the time, physically when I touch my guitar and play a note, part of my physical self, my corporeal self, is touching that note and that other world. It goes beyond spirituality to the nature of reality.”
The reality of the moment is RatDog, whose 1996 genesis was as a laid-back blues outfit. It has evolved into a rock band that holds to its roots while also embracing some elements of jazz.
Glory Days of the Dead
Weir remains a student of music in all of its facets. Even in the glory days of the Grateful Dead he explored solo work and side bands. Weir’s songs “Sugar Magnolia” and “Playing in the Band” are among the all-time Dead favorites. His “That’s it for the Other One” gave the Further Festival band its name.
RatDog’s repertoire ranges from blues classics such as “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” and “Little Red Rooster” to such Grateful Dead classics as ’”Cassidy” and “One More Saturday Night” to some of his solo material, such as “Josephine” and “Bombs Away.”
RatDog’s first studio album, Evening Moods (2000), added such material as “Odessa,” “Bury Me Standing,” “Two Djinn,” and “Ashes and Glass.” Weir now includes some Jerry Garcia compositions, including “St. Stephen,” “Terrapin Station,” and “Touch of Grey,” in his shows.
In 2001, RatDog released Live at Roseland, a double-CD collection from a Portland, Ore., show, and a favorite among Dead Heads. Hybrid Recordings released Weir Here, a two-CD career retrospective of Bob’s complete oeuvre (one disc studio, one live) in 2004.
Currently, RatDog’s lineup includes Weir on rhythm guitar and vocals; drummer Jay Lane, considered one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s leading artists, an alumnus of the Freaky Executives and the Uptones; jazz/blues/rock pianist, Jeff Chimenti; guitarist Mark Karan, who previously played with Weir in the Other Ones; San Francisco saxophonist Kenny Brooks, a longtime member of the Charlie Hunter Quartet; and Bay-Area bassist Robin Sylvester, who has recorded and performed with Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys and Ry Cooder.
Always, it’s about pushing and motivating one another, Weir says. “Somebody comes up with a new idea to season the pot. It brings things to a boil pretty quickly for a while.”
Never Bored with Jamming
Discovery is the big payoff of improvisation, he says. “You certainly don’t get bored,” he adds. “When something is happening that is new and fresh, it’s generally a fairly joyful experience, and edifying as well.” You take music to a different level and expand the art form when you improvise, he says. “Sure, if you are a soloist and come across a new riff, or something like that, that’s wonderful. But when the band is collectively improvising, that’s when those truly magical moments occur. When everybody collectively discovers a new direction, there is an energy burst and release that occurs that I’ve never seen anywhere else in my life in any place I’ve gone.”
Weir says it is the improvisation that keeps it fresh for him.
“I enjoy playing and singing, but the big payoff for me is finding new stuff,” he says.
He’s aware that he plays a fairly singular style of guitar. “A lot of folks are like me. I can pretty much drive a band with my guitar,” he explains. “That’s not to say I’m not going to go at it with a hammer and chisel and see if I can’t forge a new style in the next while.”
He is thinking now of that moment 35 years ago when Jerry Garcia told him that style is a set of limitations.
“It came up in a conversation we were having and that stuck with me all through those years,” he says. “If I see a pattern to what I’m doing, if I can see a style emerging, my nature is to try to blast through that mold and take it somewhere else. Each time that gets more difficult to do because there is more there to break through.”
The live experience, he says, is absolutely the best. “It is a timeless experience. You go to a place that is really timeless,” he says of concerts. “It can be ecstatic. It can be blue. It can be one thing or another. But all that has ever happened within the musical frame is there. You can feel it. You can hear it.”
There are a lot of people who followed the Dead still in the audience, he says. “The Dead used to have a bunch of new faces up front every three or four years. We would undergo sort of a turnover up there. I would imagine the back of the crowd is undergoing about the same turnover rate.”
Weir welcomes the proliferation of bands in the tradition of the Dead—the so-called jam-band movement. “Absolutely. I think it is a healthy thing for American popular music,” he says. “I think since the demise of the Dead era there had been almost a slowdown of that era. Really highly improvisational music hasn’t been at the fore of American popular culture. And it is the biggest plume in our cap, the carrying on of that tradition. It makes me feel like I’ve done something with my life in helping re-popularize it.”
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Thank Goddess there's only ONE more day til Spring Break!! May start celebrating tonight and go out to Last Day Saloon for some Soup! Scott needs to work on taxes..so, he'll be home (besides too late of an outing since he leaves 4 work at 7AM )..Likely I'll go in with Kemmie...I really have been enjoying the discs from the last Last Day adventure...I know a few friends like Paulyy & Maz are going...If I can get it together it will be fun! I can certainly use the exercise ((dancing!))!
And at last the rain has gone away!
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