Photo by Ian Rawn


Bob Weir was featured as the cover artist for the March issue of Relix Magazine. In the wide-ranging conversation with Relix, Weir discussed the Grateful Dead’s place in popular culture, forming his band Bob Weir & Wolf Bros, shared dreams and the collective unconscious, and much more.

“Mainstream journalists disparaged the Grateful Dead for decades without paying much attention to the music, before finally coming around and acknowledging that your canon is part of the Great American Songbook,” Budnick noted during the interview. “Were you frustrated by that or was it all irrelevant to you?”

“It was more or less irrelevant,” responded Weir. “What the media generally objected to when they disparaged us was the fact that we weren’t fashionable and we made no attempt to be fashionable. They didn’t understand and couldn’t relate—’These guys just simply aren’t fashionable, what the hell are they doing?’ The music industry is fashion incarnate. Somebody comes up with a new sound and everybody copies that. And then somebody comes up with another new one and everybody copies that. So that was the media’s appreciation of music. That’s how deep it went.”

Weir continued: “[S]lowly, over the years, particularly since Jerry’s passing—although it started a bit before Jerry checked out—it actually started to get across to folks that there’s a body of work here. There’s some really good stuff in there and some amazing storytelling going on. You just have to have enough patience to settle into it. If you do, then you’re going to find that there’s way more there than you might have originally been told by people who didn’t make the effort to listen.

Later, the guitarist reflected on the recent success of Jeff Chimenti and Greg Leisz guest spots with Bob Weir & Wolf Bros, and whether that would lead to the band being fully expanded to a quintet.

“I enjoy the trio because there’s all that room,” Weir admitted. “I hate to sound like a control freak but I can really feel the atmosphere there and that avenue of expression is a lot of fun. Then again, I really love the stuff that Jeff plays. And the texture of the pedal steel is something that I’ve always adored, and Greg is really good at that. Basically, I’m still sorting it out. So to answer your question, I really don’t know whether to shit or wind my watch right now.”

Towards the end of the conversation, Weir recalled the Grateful Dead’s run of shows at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, N.Y., during which Dr. Stanley Krippner conducted what he called “Dream Telepathy Experiments.”

“I remember not being totally satisfied because of the lack of a concrete nature of the results. But I guess that sort of goes with the territory,” Weir said. “I’d love to see more experimentation on that level because that’s a pretty lush topic. The interrelation of the collective unconscious and where we go when we dream—that’s a mighty interesting subject. At that point, you’re getting to some pertinent discussions of the nature of existence. Is existence defined by what we call matter, is it exclusively matteroriented, or is there something deeper? This is a place where science has yet to really establish a good foothold and this would be one place to go to do that.”

Read the full interview here, and subscribe to Relix here.