Weir and Wolf Bros, Boston

We'd go see Bob Weir play with anyone.  Well, maybe not Drumpf.  But he was touring with a three-piece called "Bob Weir and Wolf Bros," him with Don Was on bass and Jay Lane on drums, and we had to go see them.  This was going to be an unknown quantity for us, however.  We've seen Jay Lane and he's great, but we weren't sure where this trio thing was going to go with Don Was, who's done some great stuff throughout his career but wasn't the first person you'd think of when you speculated who might sound great "with the Dead."

So we only got tickets to one of their gigs at the Boch-Wang-Citi-whatever theater in Boston, that I'll always think of as the Boston Music Hall, on Friday November 16th.  Presale/Ticketmaster sucks and we somehow ended up in the last row of the balcony, but that turned out great.  I think both nights ended up selling out.  It was sure packed even back in the hinterlands of the balcony on that Friday, and I think everyone there had a good time.

We'd seen large chunks of several of the Wolf Bros gigs on webcast, and had formed opinions about the band before we saw them live.  The impression that they weren't as full of possibilities and magic as Bobby & Phil or (e.g.) Furthur held true, and it's not debatable that Lane is a monster rhythm player and that Was can get a solid tone from his bass and not make mistakes.  But the most significant thing when we saw them live was that they truly were "Bob Weir and a couple of guys."

Weir just dominated the soundscape with an entire evening of fantastically-Weird guitar playing (first few songs on acoustic and then mostly his walnut guitar) and a lot of flawless Bobby vocals.  He didn't start drooling on us, or do a lot of jumping up and down, but his singing was spot-on.  A couple of vocal highlights were his uplifting verses on Easy To Slip and his serious funkiness on Speedway.  Also see below.

And the stage setup, at least the musical setup they fell into time after time, emphasized the fact that this was a BOB WEIR show.  He seemed to own most of the stage with his large oriental rug and his amps and guitars.  Was had a pretty huge speaker/monitor setup himself, but would end up backing up close to Jay's drums most songs, and the two of them would have the hawk-eyes on Weir, sometimes nodding their heads in unison, constantly aware of what he wanted to do next.

They had another, smaller rug and a mike stand set up to Bobby's right side, and we'd been speculating who would guest (there have been many guests on this tour), but no one appeared.  Possibly another musician was scheduled, but then was caused to cancel by the snow/ice storm we'd just had up and down the East Coast.  But after a while we were fine with the fact that there wasn't a guest.  This was Bobby's show and we were there to dig that.

So there we were up in our top-row-left seats, not too far away from where I sat back in 1973, after Sarah and I met Dave in her garage after both working at home that day (snow in the morning and then rain all day).  We bopped down to Kinsale for dinner and then it wasn't too far of a walk down Tremont to the Theater District, which was already pretty crowded (Boz Scaggs at the Wilbur that night, etc.).

The crowd was not late-arriving and the show got started without a lot of delay.  The threesome came out and lit into it with no big drama.  This was the Grateful Dead after all.  And the first song was one we three had talked about over the last few days, specifically the cover that Ratdog did in Boston, four years ago.  Here's the setlist:

Set 1:
Easy to Slip
Friend of the Devil
Me and Bobby McGee
She Belongs to Me
Lay My Lily Down
West L.A. Fadeaway
Lost Sailor >
Saint of Circumstance

We were delighted by the opener, as mentioned, and loved FOTD, which he of course he did as a cowboy song rather than as a funky blues.  Then the song I've been waiting for for so long that I'd forgotten I was waiting for it: Bobby singing gently to us that there was nothing left to lose, after that mistake in Salinas that is.

OMG, I have to take a moment here and mention how basic to my love of music Me and Bobby McGee is.  Back at 17 (see tomorrow's concert), I knew Janis's cover of that great Kristofferson song well of course, but when I heard the Dead do it on Skull and Roses my mind was bent permanently.  I've always been a country music fan at heart.  I'd never seen it performed by a Dead band (not counting DSO), and this was pretty spectacular.  No Lesh, but Lane was doing a pretty good Billy and Bobby was doing what he does best.

Then a monumental Dylan song to calm us all down, great musicianship here, and then some more Bobby greatness with one of the best, tragic songs from his cowboy album, Lay My Lily Down.  West L.A. mellowed us back down ... this had a long, long, intro.  And then Sailor/Saint.  I have to admit that I missed the middle of this fantastic Bobby creation for a bathroom/beer break.  Of course, I remembered the sage words of a fellow bathroom-breaker back when we saw Furthur in that theater and Bobby had started singing Black Peter.  This was a little like that.  And I had a chance to find the one beer outlet that had Sierra Nevada left!

It was an interesting first set.  I had enjoyed it wildly, but it was strange.  I commented to Dave at the end of the night that it was "Dead karaoke."  Bob's a great musician, I've watched him for years and want to see him more, and his "Wolf Bros" trio was very successful musically.  But I couldn't help thinking about what might have been as much as I was invested in what was happening in real time.

Was was solid but no Phil.  Lane was great but was filling a role rather than thinking about what he could do.  And as good as Bob was at coloring the whole guitar soundscape, I could still imagine another guitar.  And it was Garcia's guitar, playing around him, ripping the world apart when he took the chance, and laughing at Bob's excellence and naiveté.  And of course Jeff Chimenti would have been good too!

Whatever, we were having a fine time up in the top of the balcony.  We were standing up of course, but didn't really need to, we had an un-unobstructed view of the stage.  And the sound was pretty impressive for being that far back!  There was some whirling going on in the top-balcony lobby behind us and Sarah joined it a few times.  There was very little usher presence up there and so we all hung out.  The one down-side was that it was a long, steep climb.

Time for the second set and they came out and started up while I was still straggling back uphill:

Set 2:
Peggy-O
Tennessee Jed
Scarlet Begonias >
New Speedway Boogie >
I Need a Miracle
Stella Blue
Not Fade Away

This set actually seemed shorter to us than the first set had been, and it was not as full of high spots.  As mentioned, Bob was at the top of his game for Speedway, and he really was fantastic on vocals for the three preceding songs, though he didn't nail us to the wall on these.  Miracle was what you'd expect, but Stella Blue was him back to being pretty perfect.  He was strumming that walnut guitar, pulling up newly-invented chords out of thin air, and singing with power and right on key, like an excellent vocalist should at the end of the night, not letting any emotional twist go untwisted.  This was a wonderful ballad introducing the end of the night.

Geez, did he get audience participation for NFA and then for the encore (Touch of Grey)!  I'm a little jaded (my fault), and had my coat on by the middle of the encore ... dah-de-dah, we will not fade away in the grey today.  But the audience loved it and was rocking until the last note.  The band did a little group bow and a little namaste, and then were gone, as were we ... we had a long downhill trek ahead of us, immediately that is.

Out on the sidewalk the rain was pretty much gone but the dentist's convention was going strong.  Can't Trump do something about this?

Tremont and Stuart was a huge clusterfuck at that time of a Friday night, and the fact that two corners of the intersection were under construction and that the dentists had taken over reality added to the confusion.  We ended up going way around the block, over to Charles Street, and approached the Common from over at the Edgar Allen Poe statue.  Wow, you didn't think there was that much uphill work in the Common, but we finally made it way back up to the top.

Dave grabbed his stuff and screwed for the T and we got out of town pretty quickly ourselves, and were back home at not too long after midnight on a Friday.