Josh Kaufman and Bob Weir in Chicago, 10/20/16- photo by Stephen Bloch
Bob Weir remains active and engaged, well over five decades since he first took the stage with The Warlocks. On September 30, he released Blue Mountain, his first studio album to focus on original compositions since RatDog’s 2000 record Evening Moods (here’s a link to his recent discussion with Blue Mountain co-songwriter Josh Ritter). Weir took the road with this material last month, joined by Blue Mountain producer Josh Kaufman and many of the musicians who appear on the record, including Steve Kimock, Jon Shaw and The National’s Bryan and Scott Devendorf. In the following conversation, he looks back on those events, as well as his recent collaborations with Phish, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead and the musicians who will join him at Los Muertos con Queso in January. Weir also shares some thoughts on the future of Dead and Company, as well as the imminent arrival of President Donald J. Trump.
In hearing you speak about Blue Mountain, one thing that has struck me, is the way that cowboys influenced your musical approach—not through their own music but through the improvisational nature of their lifestyle.
There’s that frame of mind that cowboys are famous for that this will get done no matter how that has to happen. I think that does bleed over into my music a bit. No matter how unlikely or challenging something is apt to be you have to do it, you have to rise to the occasion.
In recording this collection of songs, did you have any underlying goals beyond personal expression?
I don’t really have much in the way of goals generally speaking when I write, I just invite a notion to a character to step through and express him or herself and I’m just there with a pen. That goes for the music as well. It gets to the point where I’m willing to camp out and tell those stories and so those kind of characters came through. It’s a place that I remembered, a cozy place where I set up camp and then entertained the quotes that came through.
Was this something that had been sitting in your head for 50 years or did relatively recent events lead you down the path?
It’s both. I had been entertaining notions of doing something like that although for a long time I had no idea how I was going to go about it. Then when Josh Kaufman and his coterie propositioned me with a notion of doing an album and they wanted to do cowboy tunes, it occurred to me, “Well okay let’s go there, let’s look at that” and this is what emerged.
It sounds like the material from Josh Ritter came to you in varied forms, in terms of their completion. With a song like “Whatever Happened to Rose,” for instance, can you share insight into what was presented to you and how you worked with it?
“Whatever Happened to Rose” came pretty intact. I think it was relatively complete, in regards to the lyrics and the music was kind of formed as well. I would sit with the character for a little bit and see what the character had to say—that’s a matter of sort of packing it under your pillow for a little bit and seeing and then breaking it out and playing it to see where the music wants to go and what line here or there needs fluffing up a bit.
The character doesn’t generally arrive fully formed. Generally speaking a character will knock on the door and won’t reveal itself in full detail until you start picking the song around it, until you sit down with a guitar and start working with it. That’s what happened in both these cases. In “Whatever Happened to Rose” I got to know the character a little bit better and some of the lines changed and some of the music changed and all that kind of stuff.
As you went out and toured with this material, I’m curious if any of these songs revealed themselves to you in new ways in the live setting?
Yes there were a few of them. “Only A River” took on a new aspect when we started playing it live. I can’t really describe it very well but it showed itself in a new light once I started playing it—a few of them did. “Gallop on the Run,” to my surprise, became a something of a lovesick ballad, a heartbroken lovesick ballad that I wasn’t expecting. Those two got different on the road. Then musically some of them also expanded as well.
Do you anticipate that you’ll do additional shows with the live unit that you toured with in October? Or that perhaps you’ll head into the studio with those particular players?
It was fun and we were just starting to get good toward the end of tour, predictably enough. We were having too much fun to just walk away from it so we’ll get back to that in a little bit. We’ll have some live shows coming up early-ish next year.
Did going out with those players lead you down the path to writing more songs in that vein?
I’ve been kicking stuff around since I got back but I don’t know exactly where it’s going yet.
The cattle ranch that inspired much of the material on Blue Mountain was owned by the family of John Perry Barlow [who would go on to become Weir’s songwriting collaborator and later co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation]. Last month you performed a benefit for him at Sweetwater [to help defray medical costs from a series of recent ailments].
It was a great show. Unfortunately we couldn’t do all that many of the tunes that I wrote with him because they tend to be real complicated and require a fair bit of study and rehearsal and all that kind of stuff. My hope, which proved to be kind of unreasonable, was that we could do an evening of Barlow’s tunes but then I backed off. I looked at the tunes and that’s a matter of breaking out charts and a few days in rehearsal to get that to happen and none of the folks who were coming to play had that to give so we did the best we could. There were a number of Barlow tunes and fortunately the guys from Dark Star [Orchestra] knew some of the complicated ones, so we got quite a few Barlow tunes in there which was good.
What was his reaction to the evening?
Well of course he wishes he could’ve been there but that would’ve been a bad idea. He needs to rest, he needs to recuperate. He’s on the upswing but he’s got a long row to hoe.
I just saw a picture of you rehearsing for the Los Muertos con Queso event at the end of January. Can you talk a little bit about what that process was like? I think some people might be surprised that it’s over two months out and you’re already working on it.
We thought we’d get a jump on it. Tommy Hamilton was in town here and he’s part of the band. Dave Schools, lives a bit north of here but not far and Jeff [Chimenti] is in the San Francisco area so we’re all fairly local and with Tommy in town we took it as an opportunity to get in some rehearsal. We got a couple days in and had a lot of fun.
Did you have an idea of what you wanted it to be going into that?
We know a bit about what folks are going to want to hear but we don’t know until we all get together and start kicking stuff around what the band is going to be really good at. We know that folks are going to want to hear some chestnuts, so we worked up a bunch of chestnuts. We did a lot of choral vocal rehearsals, so that we have a good vocal blend and everybody knows the parts—the vocal parts are fairly complicated in many cases. We figured we ought to get a jump on that so we have plenty of that to offer and then as far as straight up playing is concerned we’ll just see where that takes us. Everybody’s a good player.
You also recently sat in with Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. People would be interested to hear your reflections on how they interpret that body of material.
They offer a younger and more zestful approach than us old guard guys do. It was fun working with them. I didn’t work with the full electric ensemble. We were all on acoustic guitars and upright bass so it was a different approach to the music then they generally offer. But it worked well. It was a lot of fun.
Let’s jump to Dead and Company. It sounds like there might be plans to tour some more and also to record. What can you say about that?
We’re looking at all of the above. I’m more interested in recording I think than some of the guys—I just think it’d be fun to get into the studio with that outfit [laughs] But nobody buys records anymore so we’d have to view it kind as a hobby. That said I’d love to do that. We’re also looking at some dates in the not too distant future.
I remember interviewing you after Evening Moods came out and back then you mentioned the challenges of recording and releasing an album. Has your recent experience with Blue Mountain animated you to go back into the studio?
I just enjoy the process. It’s like the difference between dashing off watercolors and doing a layered oil painting. It’s a different medium and I enjoy working it just for the fun of doing it. Getting stuff right but not too right…
Last month you performed with Phish in Nashville. In addition to some of your own songs, you sang one of their tunes. How did that come about?
It was actually suggested to me that we might want to do the tune and so I listened to it and I figured, “Well this might be fun to sing.” So I proposed that to Trey. He liked the idea so we went ahead and did that. It was a matter of I was in the same town that they were in for an evening and I was off and they were playing, so I was there with bells on.
It had been a while since you’d appeared with Phish. I’m curious if you noticed any changes in their sound?
I didn’t hear a huge change. I heard definition and refinement and stuff like that to their approach. Their basic overall sound was the same as it was 10 years ago when I sat in with them. The Grateful Dead didn’t change much in its overall thrust over the decades. We got bigger and more developed and all that kind of stuff and that’s what they’re doing.
Trey has spoken about everything that he took away from the Fare Thee Well experience, some of which he hopes to apply to Phish. I’m curious if he said anything to you about any of that after the Nashville show?
I’m sure he did. I’m not entirely sure that I heard it that way. [Laughs] We just had fun playing together he’s a great player.
Do you anticipate that down the road, the two of you might do something again together?
I’d be surprised if that doesn’t happen. But we both have to have a little time on our hands and both of us are hellaciously busy right now.
Final question: There are a number of people out there who are anxious and frustrated about the looming Trump presidency. What do you say to those folks?
We absolutely have no choice other than to accept this as a challenge and to rise to it. We’ve got to play the ball as it lies. I’m actually kind of fired up about it.
I’d say that people who might be inclined to sleep through stuff or be uncompromising in their approach to politics and might have some thinking to do because we’re in new territory now as far as I can see.
Every day things progress, every day things roll on. We’re down the road now. I don’t expect it’s ever going to be comfortable or cozy with regard to politics. I don’t think that happens. So it’s just a matter of how much of it you can indulge and endure and how much you’re willing to participate. Everyone has to have to sort that out individually and then offer what they have.
Going back to the 2000 election if every Deadhead in the state of Florida had voted it’d be a very different world today. There are enumerable parallels with other folks with regard to this election as well.
The way this government is set up if you want to be an absolutist you’re always going to be on the outside. If you want to be reasonable and you work with people you might get some progress made. It’s a personal choice that one has to make and I prefer to be involved. I have kids, I want to try to make things happen I want to try to shape things.
I’m not going to insist on having everything my way exactly or I’m going to take my ball and go home. We live in a democracy and it requires our participation, otherwise the folks who want it the most and oftentimes those are the greediest among us will be glad to step in and take it.
