Thursday, October 22, 2020

Bob Weir - Chillin' With Bobby

Bob Weir is by far the most visible band member to carry on the torch that the Grateful Dead held high for so many years. Aside from the many post-Dead offshoots such as Dead & Co., The Dead and the Further Festivals and his many solo fronted bands like Ratdog, Bobby has hosted many artists in the extended Grateful Dead family and friends at Tri Studios (Tamalpais Research Institute).
 
Tri Studios is a state of the art performance venue. It also seems to be Bob Weir's home away from home when not on the road. Over the years of its existence Bobby has performed many times as a solo act, in special, one-off configurations with others or just sitting in with the band of the night. A nice handful of these performances are available on YouTube, most from 2013. I've gone through those shows and extracted Bobby's solo and small group performances with a focus on minimal, acoustic based tunes and gathered them into a two CD set that mimics a Grateful Dead show.
 
Tracklist
 
Disc One
01 Cassidy
02 Hell In A Bucket
03 Maggie's Farm
04 Stealin'>Deal
05 Most of the Time
06 Peggy-O
07 China Cat>I Know You Rider>Shakey Ground
08 Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
09 Loose Lucy

Disc Two
01 Sugar Magnolia
02 Cosmic Charlie
03 US Blues
04 Looks Like Rain
05 West L.A. Fadeaway
06 Easy To Slip
07 Black Throated Wind
08 Dark Star
09 El Paso
 
Bonus Tracks
Catfish John
When I Paint My Masterpiece

Reality Notes

My goal here was simply to collect relaxed, acoustic based performances where Bob is either the lead vocalist or at least a co-vocalist. There are a few duets here but mostly it's just Bob singing. Instrumentation is sparse if not solo. No more than a few other musicians on a song. The musician line-up is different from song to song. I refrained from listing the other players but you can get an idea of who's there by checking out the sorce list below.
 
I tried to keep the song choice interesting with some songs rarely played and maybe a few first timers. The classic/obvious choices are all unique due the the laid back, stripped down feel. Even songs like Dark Star or China Cat>I Know You Rider feel fresh and new. And the sound quality is incredible.
 
Cassidy was the driving force behind the compilation. It is one of my favorite Dead tunes and at the top of my list of Bobby songs but live renditions rarely match the feel and power of the studio version. This rendition not only matches the original for me but in some ways surpasses it. I've been looking for a vehicle for the track since I first heard it.

If you plan on burning this to CDs each set will fit on a disc. The bonus tracks will not. They were good enough to keep but not quite enough to be slipped into the main sets. If you play this from your computer or other device it makes a nice faux concert with each disc a set and the bonus tracks as the encore. I kept the bonus tracks because they were both nice renditions and Catfish John was seldom heard in my listening of Dead shows. Both not finding a spot in the main sets due to time constraints but too good to throw away.

For the cover I manipulated slightly a nice recent photo of Bob and added the text and logos. For the sources below I linked to the original videos. There is a lot of good music there. This could have been a three disc set but not everything would have been as revealing as the final set list. Enjoy.

Sources
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