Attention Dead Heads everywhere! Attention! There may never have been a musician that has evolved more dramatically than Bob Weir. Bob Weir’s Ratdog started as a laid-back blues ensemble in 1995, but became a snarling rock band that has a fabulous jazz trio at its heart. Of course, all those forms are simply different facets of Bob Weir’s unruly musical personality. Even when his first band, the Grateful Dead, was playing close to 100 shows yearly, Weir needed other outlets, and he developed a solo career that began with albums like “Ace” and “Heaven Help the Fool” and continued through his side bands “Kingfish” and “Bobby and the Midnites.” He then settled into a special duo partnership with the distinguished bassist Rob Wasserman. As their music evolved, they reached out into musical realms that required more players. RatDog was born and began to grow. Bob Weir’s music covers the majority of the Grateful Dead songbook, including Garcia classics like “Standing on the Moon,” St. Stephen,” “Terrapin,” and “Touch of Grey” and Pigpen’s “Lovelight,” as well as Weir’s complete solo repertoire from blues like “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” to the psychedelic stylings of his Grateful Dead classics like “Playing in the Band,” “The Other One,” and “Throwing Stones,” to his own Dead rockers like “Cassidy” and “Sugar Magnolia.” The 2000 release of the Rat Dog’s first studio album, Evening Moods, added a bevy of hot tunes to the song list, including “Odessa,” “Bury Me Standing,” “Two Djinn” and “Ashes and Glass.” 2001 saw the release of Live at Roseland, a double-CD collection from a Portland, Oregon show, and a big favorite among Dead Heads. Hybrid Recordings released Weir Here, a two-CD career retrospective of Bob’s complete ouvre (one disc studio, one live) in 2004. With or without Ratdog, Bob Weir continues to tour worldwide.
