BOB WEIR AND RATDOG
EVENING MOODS (2000)
My favorite Bob Weir story is the one where he and Pigpen got kicked out of the Grateful Dead early on. Who knows what the rest of the band had in mind - a power trio? a slicked down four-piece bar band? - but for some reason they felt a drag, and they canned Weir and Pig. Weir's contributions may not have been all that evident early on. Maybe Pigpen was overly effected by the alcohol and they noticed. Still, the next time the Dead played, Bob and Pigpen showed up, plugged in, and their hard-ass bosses didn't remind them they weren't welcome. And thus musical history progressed.
Weir's always been the butt of jokes. I've heard it said that he can't read, is terminally dyslexic, a bit retarded. His demeanor is often one of unrelenting earnestness. Fans complained when he attempted to learn how to play slide guitar during live Dead shows in the early 90s, but, well, he did learn to play slide guitar. Garcia, Lesh, two drummers and revolving keyboards players cast large shadows, and Weir always seemed like an eternal kid with arrested development hanging out with the big guys. Sometimes you think he's playing a real cool part on a live Dick's Pick album, only to realize it's a Garcia rhythm or a cool synth keyboard part, or even Hart and Kruetzmann rattling some bones.
But Weir's and Ratdog's Evening Moods is a sophisticated, moving and brilliantly played work by a very grown up and die-hard musician. By turns emotionally beautifully and instrumentally astonishing, it should be noted in comparison how often polished professional bands just don't sound this interesting. There's not a dull moment on Evening Moods and this success rests largely on Weir's shoulders. Playing among giants may have left him seeming a little dwarfed, but distance is showing just how sturdy an artist Bob has always been.
Ratdog's style is one of dense musical concoction. Weir's writing style is carefully expansive and studiously interesting. The band he uses creates a heady brew. Funky and melodic, lyrical and gritty, stoical and anguished.
Now, the Dead often played with a certain amount of New Orleans soul - how they acquired the tightly wound delicate swing, I don't know - it just seemed to pop up one day. It was there in everything from Garcia's cover of Allen Toussaint's "I'll Take a Melody" in 1976, to self-penned tunes like "They Love Each Other," and all over Wake of the Flood. Even though we know how good the Dead was at this fine clockwork type of rhythm, when Ratdog launch into the 8 minute "October Queen" and its instrumental companion piece "The Deep End," and the sound of Mardi Gras rhythm creeps into the arrangement, you are ready for a familiar workout on a familiar template. But somewhere around the first instrumental segue way, with discordant horn blasts against some magical ensemble work, the feeling of the familiar gives way to jaw-dropping appreciation. Andre Pessis and Bob Weir wrote the lyrics to this tale of one man's yearly sexual rendezvous in New Orleans with an aging beauty. Though the tale is fairly straight forward, the music works with the story almost like a movie soundtrack, adding different shades of emotion all along the way. There's the spooky break. There's certainty and uncertainty. When Bob's character sings about returning to the "congregation that pays my country club and rent," the song shifts into a darker shade of gray. As he tries to figure out the meaning of the experience, the song becomes dreamier, more puzzling, deeper, even deadly. As the band roars off into "The Deep End" we are not sure what the experience is supposed to represent. The banality of the whole event is crushed with conflicting emotion and a sense of an unrecognized consequence happening somewhere in outer/inner space. The instrumentation is cooler than shit. Making a great case of why punk rock isn't the greatest music in the world - Ratdog (Jeff Chimenti (Keyboards), Mark Karan (guitar), Jay Lane (drums), and Rob Wasserman (bass) are augmented by Matthew Kelly (harmonica), and a horn section featuring Kenny Brooks, Eric Crystal, Robbie Kwock and Marty Wehner.
Bob sits looking nearly cross-eyed, oh-so-serious, his guitar in his lap - and it's the look of a consummate musician with the heart of a careful philosopher. This album is amazing, yet Weir and company make it look easy. What Bob Weir is about, what he is informed by, can be traced to Kerouac and Cassady, Robert Hunter, the Dead, blues, r&b, song craft and structure, Eastern philosophy, psychedelia, and much more. Like many diligent students, he has become an incredible teacher. A lifetime of rumination upon just where he fit in with the Dead, has led to a fairly perceptive and self-conscious idea of what he is as an artist. His personal artistry spins away from the Dead carrying a heavy load of aesthetic value.
Bob Weir has always apprehended a roughneck universe. Among the bullies ("Odessa"), destruction ("Ashes and Glass"), dazed confusion ("October Queen," "Two Djinn"), Bob recognizes despair and grace, and he con look both in the eye and do them justice. That these themes are constant through a number of co-writers (John Barlow, Robert Hunter, Andre Pessis, Gerrit Graham) show just what a commanding prescence Bob can be. Ratdog draws the various strands of Bob's non-Dead career (from Ace to Kingfish to Midnites, etc.) together and suggests just where the effervescence lies. It is a credible achievement.
Ratdog's Evening Moods is musical fun from beginning to end. From the dance extravaganzas of "Odessa" and "Corrina" to the humorous epic escapades of "Two Djinn," to the philosophical stance of "Lucky Enough" the band cooks up a storm. And when Bob hits the high notes that may make you swoon on the bridge of "Lucky Enough," you have to give him credit: this knucklehead sure can sing.
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