Jacksonville Times-Union
November 15, 2006
by Tom Szaroleta
You have to admire Bob Weir's passion for music. As one of the founders and chief songwriters of the Grateful Dead, he surely isn't hurting for money. He could be kicking back in the Bahamas, but there he was Tuesday night, playing the Florida Theatre with his band, RatDog.
And it wasn't just a casual play-a-couple-songs-and-say-thank-you kind of show. He played for three hours, running through nearly 20 songs before a wildly enthusiastic crowd. He opened with one of the Dead's most famous songs, Truckin', and closed with another, Touch of Grey. In between he led a smoking-hot band through his 40-year songbook.
Highlight: Sugaree, an old Grateful Dead chestnut originally sung by the late Jerry Garcia. It's not the sort of song you'd listen to and think, "Gee, this really needs a sax solo." But RatDog's Kenny Brooks put one in that took the song to new heights. Two or three times the band built the song to a fever pitch, then, with a subtle hand gesture, Weir slowed it back down to a bluesy shuffle.
Lowlight: A hallmark of the Dead's live shows was a freeform jam early in the second set. RatDog did one of their own, wrapped around Playing in the Band -- a song they had already played earlier in the evening -- noodling away for a good ten minutes. It was some fine playing, but it got kind of old after a while.
Surprise: Book of Rules, a little-known tune from another Weir project, Bobby and the Midnites, was a reggae-tinged masterpiece. And, at about five minutes, it was a welcome break from an evening of long jams.
Neat trick: There's a reason Chuck Berry songs are three minutes long; they're quick and fun and you move on to the next one. RatDog managed to stretch Berry's Around and Around to 10 minutes-plus without making it tedious.
Flashback: Who says hippies are dead? Tie-dye, dreadlocks and patchouli were the order of the day, and RatDog got many in the audience to do that peculiar, boneless Deadhead dance more than once.
Sounds familiar: Guitarist Mark Karan played the leads with that same liquid sound that was Garcia's trademark, yet managed to make them his own.
Encore: Touch of Grey, another song originally sung by Garcia, and an appropriate one, given the aging Boomers who made up the bulk of the crowd. It's a great song, and the crowd loved it.
