First thing’s first: The Weight are most assuredly not a tribute band. Far from it, these guys are really more of an extension of The Band itself, with members who played in The Band in its later incarnations (Jim Weider and Randy Ciarlante) and others (Brian Mitchell and Byron Isaacs) who have extensive relationships with The Band members both musically and personally. The fifth member of The Weight, Marty Grebb, is no different. He lived in Woodstock in its heyday, and his professional and personal relationships with Band members Garth Hudson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel go back almost as far as The Band itself.
This weekend, The Weight will bring The Band’s legendary Rock of Ages concert to life in Brooklyn, with the help of The King Harvest Horns who will recreate Allen Toussaint’s spectacular horn charts. Grebb recently took some time to recount the long and intertwined history that resulted in the formation of The Weight, along with Toussaint’s particular relationship with The Band, the complicated relationship that he saw within The Band’s members, and how the future of The Weight will definitely include an upcoming album of new, original (but still Band-influenced) music.
Take us through your history with The Band. How did The Weight come together?
Well, here’s the long way around the barn—no pun intended—these days I always say it’s because of spiritual connections that are predestined in my own life for me to sort of stumble around in the dark and then run into this person and that person and that kind of a thing. I came to Woodstock through Harvey Brooks and came into a band called the Fabulous Rhinestones. That town, at the time, was really a boom town of music, and Bob Dylan kind of started all of that out. It was formally an artist colony; I did say I’m going a long way around that barn, if that’s all right?
Of course.
The Rhinestones went there to do their first album—I had already met Rick [Danko] and Richard [Manuel], but I hadn’t met Garth [Hudson] yet. I think I’d met Levon [Helm]. Garth sent a piano over for me to use—he had a collection of them already. He scoured the woods and found a bunch of great pianos that were just sitting there for the plucking in ’69. It was so great of him, and we’ve been friends ever since. So for me that was the beginning. I ended up in Rick Danko’s band by knowing him around town, you know, being “wild and crazy guys.” I wrote a bunch of songs with Richard Manuel and Terry Danko, Rick’s brother. Richard had asked me to produce a record of his, and I said “well, that is quite an honor to even be asked, but I don’t have the means to do it, how about if we just write some songs?” Then I was on the road with Rick, and I went out to California, and Rick came out there. Then Richard came out there, and Garth moved out, and then Levon came out. So that part of the picture kept going, and a lot of those songs were written in very “high times” and a lot of misbehaving drunken behavior, everything you can imagine under the moon. All of that material was lost until last year—it was re-discovered and resuscitated, and it may see the light of day depending on the heirs of Richard Manuel.
[Back in Woodstock], I knew a bunch of local musicians, and one was Jim Weider—he was a young guy, younger than me, so I didn’t hang with him that much, but I noticed him and I thought, “Wow, this guy’s good.” So by the time I left town and The Band had disbanded at The Last Waltz, I had worked with all of those guys. Then Richard and I had a group called The Pencils out in California that was very short lived, because The Band had decided to get back together. So, they all up and moved back to Woodstock, they got Jim Weider to be the guitarist and he played with them until they stopped being The Band again, and that was probably another 15-20 years. In that time period, Levon decided, “Well. I want to be up front some of the time, I want to get this guy that I keep seeing around, Randy Ciarlante, who sings great and plays drums, and we can have two drum sets and I’ll play double drums sometimes.” That was after Richard had passed that he made that decision to have another voice, and off they went. So then Jim and Randy, who had known each from Woodstock, were both in The Band.
Then Levon started his own thing, and Levon’s band had Brian Mitchell, and he added Byron Isaacs on bass. Then there was another side car of that, which was Amy [Helm]’s band. Amy was in Levon’s band while he was doing that, and now she has her own band, and those guys are part of the Midnight Ramble Band, which Levon started.
So when Garth had asked me to be a part of his band, I moved from California to Baltimore, because I had a son there. Jim said one day, “I know you’re working with Garth, and we have a connection with him too—how about if we got together and we formed a band and called it The Weight? We’ll do all Band material,” and so that’s how it started. It really expanded from there. We got way deep off into it, and there are really strong connections to The Band itself. I mean, guys who were actually in The Band, and then other guys who were connected with everybody else, like myself.
This growing thing evolved to a certain place where we have been doing more specialized shows, and that’s how the idea of this show at the Brooklyn Bowl came to be, an opportunity to do the Rock of Ages show, and not only that, but some of the outtakes that were issued on a re-release. We have a lot of the original Allen Toussaint arrangements, and then we have some that have been added to by Clark Gayton, who also played in the Midnight Ramble band and was friends with Levon. So we have this big picture of everybody that has these connections all together in one place doing the Rock of Ages show, recreating it and doing it as well as we can. Plus giving everybody a little freedom to add their own sound—we aren’t trying to mimic anything but the heart and soul of what’s there. I know everyone is really excited about it, and each guy has devoted at least part of his life to this music and has a strong connection.
Can you talk a bit about Allen Toussaint’s influence, with those horn parts, in making the Rock of Ages such a unique thing?
Well Allen was very complementary to the efforts of The Band, you know, because they were tipping their hat to so many musical styles, including the one he was most familiar with, which was New Orleans music. He was a master of writing it and playing it and worked with so many guys that The Band was a fan of, too. They knew Lee Dorsey, they knew Dr. John, they knew all of those people. One of Allen’s comments was that the way Levon played drums had a bunch of [New Orleans] in it already, but it was “Levon-ized.”
Allen comes to write those charts, and on the way there to Woodstock in the airport, all of the charts he had already written got lost. So he had to re-write everything, as much as he could remember, and it turned out different. I think the flavor of Woodstock, as he said, got more into his second writing of those charts, and he felt more connected than he had, so he was kind of happy that he had to re-write it, apparently. That’s what I have heard anyway. Levon was a big fan of all that music, so this show will be dedicated to the memory of Allen Toussaint.
In a recent issue of Relix, Amy Helm mentioned growing up she had always sort of thought of The Band as Rick’s band and her dad was just the drummer. You were in Rick’s band and knew the guys well—do you have any comment on that or how Rick’s role in the band changed over time?
I would have to say that everyone’s did, and it morphed into this or that at a particular moment. I mean there was a time when it was Levon and The Hawks, so Amy’s statement—with all due respect—I would say we have to look at all the different time periods and see who was on first when. But they all had real strong personalities, very different personalities. Richard was the kindest, most gentle, sensitive person, and that probably has a lot to do with why he is no longer with us. As we know, the planet can be very harsh, and maybe it was too difficult for him to stay here being the artist he was, maybe that finally got to him and that’s why he had to leave, I am not sure. But I never heard him speak a bad word about anyone, ever. Rick was a real animated kind of guy. He was more all over the place, going a lot faster than Richard did, or maybe more than anyone did for that matter. He was the life of the party. Levon was the Southern roots guy, he was the grounding Southern focus of the band. I think it went back and forth—with those guys it was always the sum of the parts, they couldn’t have done what they did without each other, period.
Speaking of the different periods of The Band, I’m curious if there are any eras of that music that The Weight focuses on, maybe periods that are overlooked?
We are trying to do justice and homage to all areas, so we try to drag out as much of the lesser-known pieces that were recorded, even some of the ones very few people know about. The only problem with that is you have to be careful, because people are coming to hear the chestnuts. We want to make sure the audience is having fun, so we try to balance that out. It’s a balancing act, and different guys in our band feel different ways about the whole thing. I am a very much traditionalist, “Let’s play it like The Band, with a little bit of variation here and there.” I want to hear it sound like The Band in our own guise and in our own way that we do it with our human beings, but I don’t want to paint too far outside the lines. Maybe other people in our band do, and that’s ok—it’s the same thing; it’s our brotherhood now, you know?
Have you talked about covering any other full albums or concerts from The Band?
We have. We are not a tribute band; we are a band that is connected to The Band and we are very guarded about that, and so we want to keep the respect level high. I think the Rock of Ages thing is a very special thing for us. Would we ever perform The Last Waltz ? I don’t know about that. There are some other people out there who are doing that. I personally don’t see any reason for it. I see more reason to do our own version with newer material, and some songs that are left over that maybe Levon had a part writing in, or Richard did. You know, stuff that hasn’t been heard that has some of those guys as part writers and ourselves as new writers, either songs we have written individually that are Band-like songs, or ones that we write together—and that’s coming up. That’s our next phase.
Are there plans to record an album?
Absolutely.
When do you think that might happen?
Well, when everybody can decide by democratic vote what those are going to be—that’s what is going to take most of the time, and that’s OK, that’s a good thing. We need to play around with it and get in there and get our hands dirty and mess around and see what happens and see what comes back out of the speakers. We will have an album next year some time. I can’t say when it will be finished—there’s no way I could possibly guess. I would say sooner rather than later, but whatever it takes to get it right.
What can you say about that music—would you say it sounds like Band songs?
I would say it sounds very much like The Band’s music, and I would not be interested in making a record that did not sound like that. I think it would be irrelevant in a way, considering what we are doing. We are so whole hog into this thing, why would we go out and suddenly jump off and sound like Led Zeppelin plays The Band? I don’t think so [laughs], doesn’t make any sense to me. We are going to stick to our guns.
