Yesterday at Shorefront Park in Patchogue, NY, My Morning Jacket played the Great South Bay Music Festival’s closing set for a segment that will not be soon forgotten by any lucky enough to see or hear it. Jim James and band had been off the road since late May, so their appearance to close the GSBMF weekend was special enough, but when they launched into “One More Saturday Night”, Bobby Weir’s rowdy and jubilant closer, the song which has sent crowds out into the parking lots for half a century for the Grateful Dead, they dedicated the track to Weir and to their own years on the road together. It was one hell of a sendoff to the legendary musician and a week filled with celebrations and remembrances of him, but Weir’s passing has inspired an outpouring of music from many different corners that will continue long after this weekend and the Great South Bay Music Festival have ended. And, you know what? That’s what we need right now. That’s what this music is all about.
Here’s your place to speak up if you were at Great South Bay this weekend and this segment applies to you.
My Morning Jacket were just one of a number of acts that fit the Bob Weir Celebration theme that was the focus of Sunday’s festival. It was fitting that Andy Falco of the Infamous Stringdusters curated this special tribute, which drew together Rob Eaton of Dark Star Orchestra, Alwyn Robinson of Leftover Salmon, Eric Finland, and Patrick Falco to jam through the Grateful Dead songbook in a room still charged from the previous day’s activities. This is the kind of impromptu, yet well-planned music that has been happening since the news first broke last January, all around the country, as Weir’s bandmates, collaborators and fellow travelers have paid tribute to their friend and musical companion of many years. In short, this kind of music – unplanned but well organized, sad but celebratory – is exactly what this particular moment in our collective history calls for.
Tomorrow night, Don’s Pick on The Grateful Dead Live is going to fill that very same role, and whatever it is that Don picks this week, if you’re not already planning on tuning in, you should be.
Bobby Weir Wants Symphony Orchestras To Play Dead Music In 300 Years
Bobby Weir Wants Symphony Orchestras To Play Dead Music In 300 Years and he meant it, too, because he has already laid the groundwork for it to happen.
Weir has worked on and off over the course of the last decade with Dr. Giancarlo Aquilanti, composer and senior music lecturer at Stanford University, on a project that most rock critics never bother to write about, because it doesn’t really fit into the narrative of the Grateful Dead’s legacy that they’ve constructed for themselves. This project has a goal that seems incredibly simple, but actually requires an amazingly detailed understanding of the material that the Dead have left behind, as Aquilanti and Weir worked to notate every jam, every chord, every rhythmic variation as a symphonic score that any orchestra in the world could pick up and play. The opening riff to “Other One” becomes a four minute fugue in classical form, and the very same Aquilanti arrangements are rigorously classical in their construction and use the harmonic language of what the Dead were actually playing, every night, on stage.
Weir and his band Wolf Bros., the Wolfpack brass and string ensemble, performed these pieces extensively throughout 2022-2024, including at the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Philharmonic. Weir and company brought the music to Stanford for the West Coast premiere in October 2023, where they played the arrangements with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra at the Frost Amphitheater.
Here’s your place to speak up if you were at any of these shows and want to weigh in on your symphonic impressions of the Dead.
Since Weir’s passing in January, the complete manuscript set has become one of the most important legacies of his career, as symphonies across the country have begun treating these as classical works. Dr. Aquilanti and conductors around the country have been working with the master scores to produce orchestral tribute concerts while teaching their respective young orchestras to integrate the music of the Grateful Dead into their regular repertoire. Weir’s vision of the music, as he called it himself, is coming to light for all to hear.
This Friday And Saturday At The Greek Theatre In Berkeley, Up Next
The most important tribute event on the near horizon is a pair of nights at the William Randolph Hearst Greek Theatre in Berkeley, and the word “important” barely covers it, because there’s so much going on that I’m going to try to write about it all without getting too bogged down in the details, because it’s all pretty amazing.
The Dark Star Orchestra headlines both nights of “The Music Never Stops: A Rex Foundation Benefit and Tribute to Bob Weir”, presented by Another Planet Entertainment and the Rex Foundation, the community-minded charity started by the Grateful Dead family in 1983, of which Weir was an original member of the board of directors. All proceeds directly support the Rex Foundation’s arts, education, and indigenous rights grants, with doors opening at 4:00 PM both days and music starting at 5:00 PM.
On Friday, July 31 – the first night and also a holiday weekend in Berkeley – opener Melvin Seals and the Jerry Garcia Band features Seals bringing the Jazz Mafia Horns to the JGB to give the band’s catalog a full brass workout for a rootsy soulful treatment that’s definitely worth your while, with DSO following up with a special set focused on Weir-penned material and Weir covers, as a way to both honor him and go outside their usual repertoire for a change.
Saturday, August 1, is Jerry Garcia’s birthday, and is also the reason for the very special choice of songs for the set that DSO will play on that night, because it’s a fitting way to honor both Weir and Garcia and the decades-long friendship and musical relationship between these two founding members of the Grateful Dead.
Prior to DSO taking the stage on Saturday night to play the entire Grateful Dead concert from August 1, 1973 at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City – the one show that marked the first time the Dead ever played a concert on Jerry’s actual birthday – Peter Rowan will join the Sam Grisman Project bluegrass showcase (with David Grisman’s son) in playing an acoustic tribute to Old and In the Way, the fabled bluegrass band that Garcia and Grisman formed together in the early 1970s.
Tickets are available through Ticketmaster as single-day tickets or two-day floor and lawn packages.
The Days Between Begin This Weekend
The weekend at the Greek Theatre kicks off what the Dead community knows as the Days Between, the nine-day stretch of time between Garcia’s birthday on August 1 and the anniversary of his passing on August 8, where performances are programmed especially to take note of this particular time of year and the place in the hearts and minds of the community that it holds. This year has extra weight because of Weir’s passing earlier this year and the confluence of the memorial events for both Weir and Garcia, which the weekend in Berkeley and the events surrounding it are poised to capitalize on.
On August 1, while DSO is at the Greek Theatre, Melvin Seals and the Jerry Garcia Band headline Jerry Day, the 24th annual free outdoor community festival held in McLaren Park, the neighborhood where Garcia grew up. A free community festival at an amphitheater bearing Garcia’s name in his home town on his birthday featuring his former keyboardist as headliner is not to be underestimated, either.
What Has Happened So Far, And Why It Matters Now
The tribute activity surrounding Weir’s passing since January has been consistent enough and substantial enough that it qualifies as a special event of its own, and a reminder of what this music represents and why it continues to bring people together, even as the days grow shorter and the years grow older.
At the Oregon Country Fair in Veneta on July 12, the historic Pacific Northwest music and arts festival that traces its history back to the legendary Sunshine Daydream concert the band played there in 1972, the main stage featured a multi-set tribute to Weir that drew together his closest musical collaborators and friends, including Steve Kimock, Jay Lane, Jason Crosby, and Pete Sears – and that’s not a cover band, that’s the real thing.
That’s been the nature of the Weir tribute activity since January, and it’s fitting that it is taking place around the country right now, because Weir’s passing has struck a particular nerve in the community and his colleagues, collaborators and friends feel especially called to respond to it.
My Morning Jacket playing “One More Saturday Night” yesterday at Great South Bay fits into that same tradition, because it wasn’t a tribute band playing a set list of Weir’s songs, it was a band that has a special relationship with Weir himself paying tribute to their friend and musical companion in the very specific way that only they could.
This is the kind of community that Weir built. And this is the kind of music that Weir built. And it’s why it matters so much to so many of us right now.
