"Live @ NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert (w. Wolf Bros)" music video by Bob Weir
Added: 09-03-2020
Genre : Rock & Alternative, Live In Concert
Description : Bob Weir And Wolf Bros: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
March 2, 2020 | Felix Contreras -- When I produce a Tiny Desk Concert, one of my most important jobs is to make sure they run on time and that the performance sticks to our set time limit (roughly 15-minutes). So when Bob Weir and Wolf Bros achieved lift-off during a pre-show sound-check, it was my unthinkable responsibility to tell the guy who practically invented the jam band to... stop jamming.
Weir is a founding member of Grateful Dead, a band that launched countless jams from 1965 until the death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia in 1995. And it also fell to me to keep looking at my watch during the performance, even as I realized that my favorite "Dark Star" jams alone lasted well beyond our fifteen-minute performance window. But the magic space behind the Desk has a way of bringing sharp focus to the task at hand, leading to exquisite performances that go well beyond the pale.
Such was the case in this gig by Bobby and his Wolf Bros, Jay Lane (drums) and Don Was (bass), as they played a set that was rich in Grateful Dead lore and that will likely create new memories for the Deadheads who were in the room and beyond.
"Only a River," from Weir's 2016 solo album Blue Mountain, feels like a memorial to Jerry Garcia, with a reference to the Shenandoah River, a body of water Garcia famously made reference to on the song, "A Shenandoah Lullaby." Weir turns the chorus into a mantra and seems to evoke the spirit of his fallen bandmate.
And what would a Grateful Dead-related performance be without a Bob Dylan song? The intimacy of the Tiny Desk turns Weir into a sage Master Storyteller during a version of "When I Paint My Masterpiece" with its reference to Botticelli and a lonely Roman hotel room.
With the addition of special guest, Mikaela Davis on harp, the final stretch of two Hunter-Garcia tunes takes on legendary status. When Weir switches to electric guitar midway during "Bird Song," I looked at my watch because I knew we were in for some time travel. And the band didn't disappoint as the rhythmic interplay between Weir and Davis showed off his singular rhythm guitar style, honed from more than thirty years of playing alongside one the most idiosyncratic lead guitarists in modern music.
And I ain't gonna lie: I teared up at the end of "Ripple," Grateful Dead's fifty-year-old sing-along from their album American Beauty. And it wasn't because of the treat of being just five feet from the action, but because of the song's celebration of hope and optimism, found in the spirit of all of the band's music. Bob Weir continues to evoke that spirit every time he picks up a guitar; and as we all sang along at the end, we evoked that spirit too: "Let there be songs, to fill the air."
Indeed.
SET LIST
"Only a River"'
"When I Paint My Masterpiece"
"Bird Song"
"Ripple"
MUSICIANS
Bob Weir: vocals, guitar; Don Was: upright bass; Jay Lane: drums, vocals; Mikaela Davis: harp, vocals
CREDITS
Producers: Felix Contreras, Morgan Noelle Smith, Maia Stern; Creative director: Bob Boilen; Audio engineer: Josh Rogosin; Editor: Maia Stern; Videographers: Morgan Noelle Smith, Maia Stern, CJ Riculan; Associate Producer: Bobby Carter; Executive producer: Lauren Onkey; VP, programming: Anya Grundmann; Photo: Laura Beltran Villamizar/NPR
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A founding member of the Grateful Dead, Bob Weir's musical legacy (separate from its cultural implications) will be of an utterly strange rhythm guitar player and songwriter who grew up in one of the most lasting outside bands of the 1960s. Playing with the Dead until their dissolution following the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, Weir has since made his musical homes in RatDog and the Other Ones.
In 2014, wheels started turning for a 50th anniversary celebration for the Grateful Dead. First came The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir, a documentary that debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014. Then, in the summer of 2015, the Dead reunited for farewell concerts in San Francisco and Chicago. Weir, Hart, and Kreutzmann subsequently toured with guitarist John Mayer as Dead & Company, a tour that went into 2016. In the autumn of that year, Weir released Blue Mountain, his first solo album in 40 years. Largely co-written with singer/songwriter Josh Ritter and co-produced by Josh Kaufman, who has played with the National and helmed albums by Ritter and Craig Finn, Blue Mountain was a low-key, atmospheric update of Weir's signature cowboy songs.
Tags : 2020,
20s,
Bob Weir 
