| Deadheads Are Smarter |
Bob Weir and Ratdogw/Keller WilliamsMonday, July 9, 2007 Central Park Summerstage summerstage.org Old Friends Flock to Central Park for Bob Weir & Ratdog  Bob Weir leads Ratdog through a sizzling set at SummerStage They’ll pop up once in a while at a folk festival, a Railroad Earth concert, a Rainbow family gathering. But by and large they seem to have vanished, like endangered species, rarely spotted in New York City anymore, consigned to college towns and hippie havens and marginalized into such fringed bastions as Boone, NC, and purportedly much of Oregon. Well, there was a homecoming of sorts Monday night in Central Park. Bob Weir, last surviving guitarist of the Grateful Dead, joined by his constantly touring band Ratdog, played a benefit concert for SummerStage at the park’s Rumsey Playfield, and the lost nation of Deadheads were decidedly in the house. And outside of it. And around it. And all over the environs, actually, to the point where the number of tie-dyed celebrants with a finger in the air (ASL for “I need a [preferably free] ticket”) was incalculable, the pleasant aroma of cannabis omnipresent, and the hissing of nitrous tanks audible in plain earshot of anyone waltzing down Fifth Avenue. The assembled tribes may have been of one mindset but revealed the diversity of the Dead’s legacy of fandom. Dreadlocked “freaks” writhing in ecstasy to the strains of classic Dead songs, the boarding-school/frat-boy contingent of no less passionate fans well represented, plenty of old-timers who no doubt have fond memories of the original Fillmore East, but equal numbers of young’uns who were probably too young to have caught the GD back before Jerry Garcia died...wow, 12 years ago now.  Ratdog brings Deadheads back together in Central Park for a hot night of great music With Weir’s longtime songwriting partner, John Perry Barlow (an esteemed personage in these surroundings, and native of both Cyberspace and Wyoming) on hand, the expectation running through a crowd familiar with the mis-en-scène was palpable. When Weir stepped onstage at the end of opener Keller Williams’s set to duet on the Garcia original “Bird Song” and the Dead calypso cover “Man Smart (Woman Smarter),” the crowd responded with near pandemonium. Back in the day when Garcia reigned iconic, a good number of Heads could be critical of Weir’s guitar playing, supposed corporate leanings, and rock-star-ish enthusiasm. But here in the 21st century, Bobby’s treated like a folk hero. Nearing 60, with his stature as an aging sage accented by his choice of maintaining a long gray beard and whiskers, Weir is welcomed fondly by fans now--after all, he did sing or compose a good chunk of the Grateful Dead’s repertoire. From his space-cadet beginnings in the late ’60s, Weir had morphed into the collective’s front man by their waning years, both by necessity (Jerry’s drug use and decline, keyboardists dying off at a rapid pace...) and by his own commendable evolution as a performer. As an opening act, Williams, the shaggy Virginia native known as the One Man Jam Band, displayed virtuosity, versatility, and plenty of talent. Williams knows the genre and its folkier roots inside and out, though a caveat may be in order lest the schtickiness of a “one-man jam-band” threaten to overwhelm the music. The old bluesman Jesse Fuller (whose songs were covered by the Dead) used to pull it off with aplomb, but too many percussive and vocal McFerrin-isms could ultimately frame Williams as a novelty act. Hopefully his fluency and songwriting talent will carry him beyond such an outcome. Ratdog has been Weir’s working ensemble since the Grateful Dead called it a day in their original guise back in 1995. While Weir’s co-captain in the GD, Phil Lesh, has soldiered on -- triumphantly for the most part--with various amalgamations of musicians sitting in as Phil and Friends, Ratdog has had a pretty steady lineup through the years, with occasional tweaks. On this summer’s tour, the band’s long-standing lead guitarist, Mark Karan, has taken time off for health reasons (he’s battling throat cancer), and he and Weir’s old sparring partner in the GD reincarnation the Other Ones, Steve Kimock, has signed up. Kimock not only knows the material, he feels it. He was unbelievable all night. Keyboardist Jeff Chimenti has also played with the exhumed Dead, Jay Lane has been Ratdog’s drummer for years, and bassist Robin Sylvester was ambitious and inventive throughout the performance.  Kenny Brooks adds some sweet summer sounds playing alongside Bob Weir As Ratdog played a set of mostly GD originals or songs covered by them, the spirit of improvisation proved paramount. While refraining for the most part from long, meandering explorations and aimless jamming, the tunes blended fluidly into one another, the performance succeeding not because these guys are extraordinary musicians but because they are clearly a band and could groove the hell out of familiar material. The band opened with a brief jam that eased into a hazy rendition of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Later, as a nod perhaps to the special symbiosis that John Lennon shared with the neck of the woods in which they were playing, another of Mr. Lennon’s compositions, “Dear Prudence,” was performed and was one of the show’s highlights. Stretched to epic lengths that the Beatles never attempted (at least on record), “Prudence” was a journey taken to a different plane, but it never lost its way. Bobby and band brought out some definite crowd pleasers from the Dead canon, including “Playing in the Band,” Garcia’s “Ramble on Rose” (with its “just like New York City” verse drawing the expected response), and a flashy encore of “U.S. Blues,” replete with a man who could only be described as a bearded hippie emerging from the wings to raise aloft the Stars and Stripes and, on the final refrain, a flag featuring a peace sign on the blue part of Old Glory. Playing for about two hours, Ratdog seemed to leave the masses sated. The Grateful Dead may be no more, but the music lives on. And so do the acolytes. While standing in what must have been the most disorganized and enragingly patience-testing rugby scrum of a beer line I’ve experienced in years, familiar faces and almost-as-familiar doppelgangers kept drifting by from some long-ago, faraway place. Hey, brother, don’t I know you from that drum circle back at Alpine Valley in ’89? To quote from Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row,” a song frequently covered by the Dead (and sung by Weir) back in the day, for one night, at least, the Circus was back in town.
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