Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star
July 12, 2007
by Emily Gilmore
Bob Weir can't remember which show it was when he first met Keller Williams, and he can't remember what band he was playing with at the time, but that first encounter has led to numerous other collaborations.
"The first time I met him I was playing with him, and that's been sort of the foundation of our relationship, our friendship," said Weir, the former rhythm guitarist for the Grateful Dead and current leader of RatDog.
Weir and Williams have shared the stage many times since that first meeting, and Weir recently joined Williams, a Fredericksburg native, on Williams' latest album, "Dream," which was released in February. Weir provided guitar and vocals for the song "Cadillac."
And now Weir and RatDog have joined Williams for a tour that will stop at the Charlottesville Pavilion on Saturday.
Known for his innovative looping techniques and a laid-back performing style that made him a favorite among the jam-band set, Williams has performed this summer in a group known as the WMD'S with Keith Moseley, Gibb Droll and Jeff Sipe, but Williams' dates with RatDog will be solo.
He and Weir both approach their music the same way, which makes them fitting tourmates.
"In developing tonality, we both tend to listen to possibilities and then try to take a given possibility and develop it into something--into an event, a moment," Weir said. "It's the time-honored jazz m.o., just a different set of standards."
This creative aesthetic has drawn third- and fourth-generation Deadheads to the band, Weir said.
"Our audience has, over the last year or so, in general, kind of molted. At least what I see in the front rows, is it's become many years younger."
He saw the same thing happen with the Grateful Dead, he said, and it makes sense because the music that he and RatDog play is for a certain kind of person, he said--a person who requires a little adventure in his or her life and, therefore, in his or her music, as opposed to those who prefer slick, structured shows.
"The less predictable the show is, the better night we're having," Weir said, "and that's not always what you get when you go see a band."
RatDog, which has two albums under its belt and tours for four to five months of the year, has an extensive repertoire that is so big that the band can go a couple weeks without repeating a song, Weir said.
The Grateful Dead didn't bother with set lists, Weir said, but he plans each RatDog show in advance. He consults databases to make sure RatDog doesn't repeat songs it's played recently or songs that it played the last time it visited a market.
RatDog performs a number of Grateful Dead tunes, and Weir estimates that RatDog has more Dead songs active in its repertoire than did the Dead at any point in its existence.
The band has evolved a great deal since Weir and bassist Ron Wasserman started playing together in the late 1980s to give Weir a "little vacation" from the Dead, he said. The duo eventually became a quartet, which led to RatDog, which played its first show in 1995, right around the time Grateful Dead lead guitarist Jerry Garcia died.
Staying on the road was the therapy Weir needed to deal with Garcia's death, but he wasn't yet ready to play the Dead songs audiences wanted to hear.
But after a few years, "I started getting lonesome for those tunes," Weir said, so RatDog began to play them.
Still, the band isn't just a Grateful Dead tribute band, and it's got some big plans for the near future--a tour with the Allman Brothers Band is scheduled for later this summer, and RatDog plans to begin recording a new album soon, Weir said.
And so, even as he nears 60, Weir is going strong as a member of that class of rock musicians who have been playing for decades for the sheer love of the music.
"It's all I've ever wanted to do," he said, "since I was 8 years old and learned to tune a radio."
