Bobby Weir? Where do you start? You’re a 13-year-old Upstate NY kid trying to learn guitar, and you hear Europe 72 and Hot Tuna’s first record, and it’s like WTF is that? You discover Grateful Dead just as they’ve gone on hiatus in 74 - maybe forever.

Your brother’s best friend, who’s four years older and has a car and is cool, asks if you want to go see the New Riders of the Purple Sage - “Garcia plays with them”. I’m in. Lots of old “Wall of Sound” speakers and Alembic guitars on that stage and a terrific “country psychedelic” vibe. Yep. I found those too. There’s something going on here. Dead tendrils are everywhere – CSN, Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, David Bromberg - the band members pop up in most things I’m hearing.

1975 - I’m 15. My brother’s friend, I’ll call him Rusty, as that’s his name, asks “Wanna go see Garcia? He’s playing at Cornell”. Why yes! I should state that my brother was more of a Grand Funk guy, so Rusty took me. Mom liked him, and he was a good driver even under “challenging” circumstances… The Garcia Band was Nicky Hopkins (Stones/Rod Stewart), Ron Tutt (Elvis), John Kahn (Mike Bloomfield/John Lee Hooker), and it was a glorious way to start a lifelong adventure. I felt like I’d stepped into a foreign country that I never wanted to leave and everyone there was my friend for life. Many still are.

A month later, we’re in Syracuse for Kingfish, Mathew Kelly’s band that Bob Weir had joined up with while Dead was off the road. They put out one brilliant studio record, which Weir brought Lazy Lighting/Supplication and some cowboy tunes to. The Keith and Donna Godchaux Band were the opening act with Billy Kreutzman on drums. So I’ve now seen everyone in the Dead except Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart!

By 15 or 16 years old, I’d seen a LOT of concerts, but nothing prepared me for what was to come - Grateful Dead were back together and on the road again.  Upstate NY was always a second home for them, and the audiences always treated it like Christmas morning when they arrived.

I stood outside the Syracuse War Memorial with a few of my tribe and soaked up this feeling of home and possibly some “enhancements”. When they kicked off “Cold Rain And Snow,” it was like a rainbow of sound opened up and washed over us. Crisp, clear audio. All instruments loud, distinct, and separate from one another, vocals fully present - not like the mushy, distorted din of most mid 70’s hockey rink shows I’d seen.

But wait. What the hell was Bob Weir doing on his fancy Ibanez guitar? I had a pretty good idea of where Garcia was coming from in the folky, bluegrassy, roots rock vein. But Weir was a moose of a different magnitude! Crystalline tones ducking and weaving in and around Phil and Jerry, punctuating and coloring in all the subtle and nuanced shades of harmony in the music. Now you hear him, now you don’t… No connection to my experience with rhythm and lead guitar roles in rock music, where one chunks away on big fat chords while the other shreds a “solo”. These guys were having a full blown conversation between seven extraordinarily different musical viewpoints that likely would crumble if anyone was absent in the mix. Throughout the night, I marveled at Weir’s uncanny placement of little stabs, chimes, and 12th fret and above shading that seemed to be the glue that held it all in place. Giant hands and chord shapes that clearly didn’t (and still don’t) exist on my guitars. He clearly had invented a style and process for ensemble guitar playing that wasn’t there prior to the Grateful Dead. 9/28/76 - go find it. I was hooked.

The next few years found me chasing short bits of Spring and Fall Dead and Jerry Garcia Band tour stops in the NY area - blessed to have seen Cornell 77, Englishtown 77, Colgate, Rochester, Binghamton 77 (big weekend). All of these shows were featured in the Dick’s Picks series of releases, so my perception that I was witnessing some special nights was borne out later on. The Dick’s Picks soundboard releases are wonderful examples of the clarity and precision that the Dead could muster at times.

I attended scores of other concerts during this period, but the cyclical nature of Dead tours were almost like medicine that was required to carry on and recharge seasonally. Hard to explain, but very real nevertheless.

The band took lots of twists and turns with various members slipping into addiction, new keyboard guys, edgy coke-fueled tours, and new technologies shaping the sound (some questionable IMO). Nothing changed the constant quest for reaching further into the unknown, and Bobby seemed to be especially curious about searching new creative avenues. Bobby and the Midnights paired him with jazz legend Billy Cobham on drums, Little Feat bassist Kenny Gradney, Alphonso Johnson on bass for a slick, LA style musical outing that was brilliant, if somewhat distant from Dead world. Ever changing gear tweaking was a constant in Bob’s world to the very end, often holding up getting doors to a show opened while he made things “perfect” on stage.

My move to Montana in 1982 to work in Yellowstone led me to Bozeman in the off seasons, where I fell in with my brothers, Gary Small and Rich Robiscoe in the Hyalite Blues Band. We knocked around the Rockies for about eight years playing a cool blend of blues, Santana-style rock, Dead, and white boy reggae. I tried to incorporate the idea of ensemble playing into what we did as much as possible, and this continues to color everything we’ve done as Hooligans for the last 30 years with Robiscoe and drummer Ron Craighead and many others. The idea of music as a conversation is an altogether unique way of treating it - like having dinner weekly with the same five or six longtime friends and seeing where the conversation goes. Someone just broke up with a girlfriend, got fired, had a baby. You always end up somewhere new and unexpected. David Crosby called the Dead style of playing “electric Dixieland”.  That description works, and Weir was, in many ways, the architect of that avenue.

Fast forward into the early nineties, where I  accidentally became a concert promoter and was lucky enough to be part of the musical changes in SW Montana over 35 years, a thousand shows, 50 plus festivals at Grand Targhee, Red Ants Pants and others.

Many Dead related artists found their way into our sphere over the years. Hot Tuna, Merl Saunders, Steve Kimock, Melvin Seals, Robert Hunter, and yes, eventually Bobby Weir himself.

While the first time we booked him with bassist Rob Wasserman we were heartbroken when he cancelled for what management often refers to as “exhaustion”, we soon got back on track.



We produced Ratdog (Bob’s main post Dead band)  for a show in Missoula on September 16th, 1998. I know the date because my sweet wife, Bridget, went into labor and had our daughter, Al, on the 15th.  We wisely resisted the idea of a dear friend of naming our daughter Ratdog! All day long I was freaking out about how to handle the show if I couldn’t make it (and not getting to work with Bobby!). Fortunately, it was a smooth and easy birth (for me!), and Bridget gave me the green light to head west. Weir and his crew were a joy to work with. No rock star bullshit or vibe - just a band ready to “take a handful of songs for a walk in the woods,” as he said in a Bozeman Chronicle interview. He was extremely interested and fun to talk with about babies (he had a six-month-old) and music, and seemed to possess a childlike joy in living and creating this environment of discovery and joy for others. A pretty refreshing perspective for an artist of his stature. Then there’s the part where his tour manager and I were backstage making fun of his questionable decision to sing “Misty”, a classic Errol Garner jazz standard made famous by Sarah Vaughn and Johnny Mathis, not realizing that Bobby was offstage for a bass solo and within earshot of our good natured ribbing. He said nothing, but we did get a heavy dose of side eye from him as he walked back to the stage. Ouch.

The guy had a sense of humor about all of it and certainly had been on the receiving end of joking since his days as the 17-year-old ”kid” in the Dead. Endless jokes about his “Daisy Duke” shorts, Izod Lacoste shirts, on-stage rock star posturing, pink guitars, aviators, and goofy personae followed him wherever he went. We took my soon-to-be mother-in-law to a show at the Boulder Theater, and she loved the music but had some rich commentary on his choice of shorts for stage clothing!

In 2001, we secured a date with Ratdog, at MSU campus. Whether it was the odd venue (Shroyer Gym) or timing, the show didn’t sell as well as expected, and we moved it to the much smaller and better vibe of the Emerson Center. The band came and played a stellar show for 700 lucky Montana Deadheads. Weir was once again gracious, kind, and engaging to work with. He had already done quite a bit of environmental work with people in Montana - another thing that made him a special human. Genuine concern and activism for causes crucial to survival. Another aspect of his ethos that is virtually unheard of in the music business is that, after the show having to be moved to the much smaller room, my company lost a fair amount of money on the show. About three weeks later, I received a $5,000 check back from his camp to soften the blow. NOBODY DOES THAT!

Having seen every post-Jerry ensemble that Bobby has been part of, getting to know many of his crew members and literally dozens of musicians who have been invited into his world and onto his stage, I have never heard anyone report anything but how gracious, generous, inquisitive and kind he was, whether they were high brow players, parking lot fans, or someone soliciting donations for a particular cause. All attributes we’d do well to carry forward.

Endlessly searching for new ways to present his work with Grateful Dead, Dead and Co, The Wolf Bros, RatDog, Weir/Wasserman, Midnites, various symphony projects, stage plays, and countless one-off collaborations with other artists (Joe Strummer! Sammy Hagar! Yikes.) Bobby lived his life fully and fearlessly in search of the next magic space in the muse, and we’ve been blessed to share the air with him for all of these years. He reminds us all to not be afraid to slow down, breathe deeply, and enjoy the ride.

“This is more fun than a frog in a glass of milk,” Bob Weir.
Thanks, Bobby, always a hoot.   

Tom Garnsey has been a Bozeman resident for many moons, sings and plays guitar for Hooligans, and is a long time follower of the Grateful Dead.