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Bob Weir and Phil Lesh bring a mellow vibe to the Utica Auditorium this weekend

The New Times Interview

Bob Weir is a pioneer. Not because of his penchant for writing and performing songs about the Wild West, but rather as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. In 1965 he was one of the earliest settlers of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, the band’s home base, as well as neighbors Janis Joplin, the Jefferson Airplane and other “head” bands. With On the Road cowboy Neal Cassady at the wheel of Key Kesey’s Merry Prankster bus, the Dead took the Haight-Ashbury ideal on the road as they became the unofficial official band for the One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest author’s “acid tests,” which tuned-in and turned-on the lysergic lights coast-to-coast. And, well, you know the rest. . .

For 30 years, Bob Weir was the rhythm guitar ace for the Dead, playing more than 2,300 live shows with the band. During that time, he stepped out of the Dead realm and embarked on a few solo endeavors, but his main focus was always with Jerry Garcia and the boys. After Garcia signed off the earth on Aug. 9, 1995, Weir’s focus shifted to his band Ratdog, which coincidentally played their first gig the day before. Since then, he has toured exclusively with Ratdog, except for a few reunion tours with his former Grateful Dead bandmates, who hit the road billed first as “The Other Ones,” then just as “The Dead” on subsequent tours.

The Dead’s most recent tour came last spring and it was during that time that Weir reignited the musical spark with another original founder of the group, bassist Phil Lesh. While those two have jammed together when their respective bands have crossed paths on the road (Lesh has been touring since 1999 with his outfit Phil Lesh and Friends), they have never hit the road together. But after the Dead tour ended last fall, the duo had the itch to keep the music going, and decided to form a new band called Furthur—possibly derived from the name of the aforementioned Merry Prankster bus, also dubbed Further—along with guitarist John Kadlecik from the Dark Star Orchestra, Weir’s Ratdog bandmates Jeff Chimenti on keyboards and Jay Lane on drums, as well as second percussionist Joe Russo of the Benevento Russo duo.

On Saturday, Feb. 20 at 7 p.m., Furthur will be playing the Utica Memorial Auditorium, 400 Oriskany St., Utica. If you haven’t picked them up already, tickets cost $49.50 and can be purchased by calling 738-0164.

Weir took some time before a Furthur show in Charlotte, N.C., to chat with The New Times about reuniting with Lesh, the psychological impact of digital music, Hunter S. Thompson and recently enjoying a visit to the White House.

When did you and Phil get the idea for Furthur and what’s it been like touring with him for the first time outside of a Dead-related band?

I have jammed with him through the years when Ratdog and his band played together, but during the Dead tour last year we sort of rediscovered our relationship and it just kind of developed from there.

How have the audiences been responding on this tour?

We take them for a little walk in the woods and they seem to love it.

Weir science: Bob Weir performing with Ratdog during the 2005 New York State Fair. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO

I’ve been to quite a few Ratdog and Phil Lesh shows over the years, and I’ve noticed that the audience seems to be an equal mix of young and old. What do you think keeps the audience ever-revolving?

My guess is that our kind of music is something of a rite of passage for a certain kind of person who requires a little bit of adventure in life and in the music they listen to. And that’s what we’re more than happy to provide.

One thing I hear many people say is that they come away with a different feeling every time they listen to an album like Anthem of the Sun or any of the other Dead studio or live albums. Would you say the same goes for you too? And what comes to mind when you listen to the Grateful Dead?

I don’t do that that much because I’m way more focused on what we’re about to do than what we’ve already done. But when I’m listening to something the Dead has done or one of our more recent bands, I’m way more focused on the details and what could be done better and what was well done. So it’s almost impossible for me to objectively listen to it. {Laughs.} Every now and again I get ambushed by a song where I’ll walk into a place and it’s already on and I don’t immediately identify it as us and sometimes I’m really pleasantly surprised by what I hear.

There were many elemental changes in the sound of the Dead from the “acid test” days to the American Beauty/Workingman’s Dead era right through to the 1990s. Is there a time in the band’s evolution that holds a more personal sentiment for you?

Well, the late days, the last two or three years were good ones. After Jerry came through his coma and came out in really good shape, the band was just on all cylinders at that time.

I’ve heard the name “Cowboy Bob” tossed around Dead circles because of your affinity with the old gunfighter and western ballads. Will you be dusting off any of those tunes for these Furthur shows?

Well, we’ll do some of them and sooner or later we’ll have them all worked up. Just the other night we did {Marty Robbins’} “El Paso,” and we do a nice job with that tune. The original recording was sort of a ¾-time waltz, and we sort of make it a jazz waltz and have a lot of fun with it, sort of a walking, tumbling hit. It also seems like we do a decent job with “Mexicali {Blues}” and we haven’t done “Me and My Uncle” yet, but we’ll get to it.

Dead in Syracuse: Bob Weir(above) and Phil Lesh (below) perform at the War Memorial during a 1973 gig.

I recently watched that Festival Express documentary about the 1970 train ride through Canada, and the scene with you, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin and Rick Danko kind of stood out in the film. What were your impressions of that tour and why do you think that kind of camaraderie no longer exists in contemporary music?

My observation is that since the advent of the CD and digital music, there’s an inherent problem with digital music that has yet to be addressed, and that is it just doesn’t sound as good as analog recordings. As opposed to analog recordings, digital recordings raise your stress level; your brain doesn’t like it much. And for that reason, music isn’t as big in our culture as it was back then. In recent years, given the digital information age, the fact that if you want to make a sure bet for yourself, you go into finance and technology. Music is no longer getting the best and brightest of our culture. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, if you were bright and had any musical talent, you went straight for music because you could make a pretty damn good career for yourself. It’s not like it was.

The Dead seemed to be a part of every major musical event during that timethe Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock, Altamont, Watkins Glen. Did it seem at the time that you were involved in something that now seems to be mythical moments in the annals of popular music, or were you just taking it all in stride?

I guess we kind of took it for granted back then that we were in a hell of an era.

How about the festival scene these days? Is it still fun to get out there and play in front of those large, open-air crowds?

It’s big fun to play to a lot of folks. There’s usually monster sound systems and it’s a fun little workout.

I’ve read that you’re an avid mountain biker and that you’re on the board of the Rex Foundation and the Rainforest Action Network along with John Densmore of The Doors and a few other notables, but what are some of the other endeavors outside of the Dead that people might not know about?

Ahh, let’s see, what do I do . . Right now, I’ve got a project that’s not outside of music, but is outside of my normal realm. I’ve got a project I’m doing with the Marin Symphony Orchestra. We take a bunch of Dead tunes and arrange them for a symphony, and learning to score for a full orchestra is one of the challenges I’m taking on right now and being in that realm, I’ll be able to score movies and write my own orchestral parts.

You’ve been singing “The Music Never Stopped” for quite some time now. Do you still see that being the case and what are maybe some of your plans beyond this Furthur tour?

Right now, I’m tuned in on Furthur. We’re learning each other and how to play our new instrument, which is the new band, and let them play off of us.

You’ve been playing with Ratdog for quite some time now, and also with the Dead, who you obviously have a long history with. Is it a challenge playing with a new group of guys and learning from each other to the point where you can just feed off each other?

The fun part comes when, for instance, with Ratdog, everybody learns each other’s moves and learns how to intuit each other, the end ration gets pretty fast and furious. And with Furthur, I’m pretty confident that by the time we get into this tour, we’ll get to that point and we’ll be able to do that kind of stuff. Right now, we’re still learning each other, but we’re getting the job done. I’ve been doing some listening to our performances, and we’re getting there.

Starting with his Hell’s Angels book in 1966, the late great Hunter S. Thompson repeatedly expressed his affinity for the Grateful Dead in his work. Did the Dead ever cross paths with Hunter?

Hunter was a good friend of mine and we had some either glorious or inglorious moments, depending on how you want to look at it. {Laughs.}

The Dead’s reach seems pretty long, influencing everyone from Thompson to our current president, Barack Obama, a self-professed Dead fan. The Dead supported Obama during his campaign, for which the prez repaid you by inviting you to the White House after his inauguration. How did that come to be and what was it like being in the White House after experiencing both the Nixon and George W. Bush presidencies?

{Laughs.} I’m not surprised at anything anymore. The Dead were on tour in the area and one of the higher-ups in the Secret Service invited us by the White House to take a tour and he opened the door to the Oval Office and let us go in and we got to spend a little time with {Obama}, I guess at the taxpayers’ expense. {Laughs.} He’s a great guy, and I’m pleased with his performance so far and I think he’s the right man for the job because it’s an awful job and I wouldn’t wish it on a mad dog. But you know, if someone has to take that responsibility and do something with it, I think he’s the one.