In a rare Grateful Dead booking configuration, this year’s 10,000 Lakes Festival will feature not only found Dead member Bob Weir and his band Ratdog, but also Chicago’s Mr. Blotto and New Riders of the Purple Sage. Mr. Blotto is touring in support of their latest album, Barlow Shanghai, a collaboration with gifted Dead songwriter, John Barlow.

New Riders of the Purple Sage as fans may or may not know was the brainchild of Jerry Garcia, the late founder of the Dead. He brought together Dead players Mickey Hart and Phil Lesh with David Nelson of Janis Joplin’s Big Brother and the Holding Company and songwriter John Dawson. Eventually, the Dead had to take care of the demands of their own band and New Riders brought in Buddy Cage to fill in for Garcia’s pedal steel and others to cover bass and drums. Today, Cage and Nelson lead the band with Michael Alizarin (guitar/vocals) from Hot Tuna and Johnny Murkowski (drums/vocals) and Ronnie Penque (bass/vocals) from Stir Fried.  Recently, New Riders of the Purple Sage received a lifetime achievement award from High Times Magazine.

Originally, all three bands were to perform on Thursday on different stages at different times, with Weir and Ratdog closing out the Main Stage.  When Trey cancelled earlier this spring, Weir was moved up to the headlining spot on the Main Stage on Saturday night.  Having him headline the festival is a move that Weir is most deserving of but is a spotlight he often shuns.  “I’m not real concerned with grabbing people’s attention,” he says. “I never have been. I want to make music. As a matter of fact if I can make music that just grabs people without grabbing their attention, then that’s better as far as I’m concerned.”

Though it still is Weir’s signature voice that rings throughout Ratdog’s repertoire, the band has its own unique sound and choice of music. That mostly is due to the fine musicians that Weir has gathered around him over the years. Originally, the band was a small trio with bassist Rob Wasserman and a drummer and Weir on rhythm guitar.  When they expanded to a quartet, they began calling themselves Ratdog. Currently, the band is composed of Jeff Chimenti who was a member of Dave Ellis’s Jazz Quartet before playing keys for Ratdog, bassist Robin Sylvester who recorded with Ry Cooder and the Beach Boys and played live with Billy Preston, and drummer Jay Lane who played with the Charlie Hunter Trio, Primus, and Les Claypool’s touring band.  Mark Karan plays lead guitar and Kenny Brooks plays sax. (Editor's Note:  Steve Kimock is playing in lieu of Mark Karan during Ratdog's July tour. Mark is not feeling well and we wish him a speedy recovery).

“They are all good players. It took a while to find them all,” Weir says. “Now that we’re all together and been together for a while, everything that they say about chemistry is all true.  We’ve learned to work with each other. We’ve learned to intuit each other. It’s paying off for us handsomely.”

Though Ratdog started as “a musical vacation from the Grateful Dead,” Weir and the band have crafted a steady gig with their sound. Band members also play in other bands when not touring or working with Ratdog.  “I still play with Rob [Wasserman] often enough in small ensembles,” Weir admits. “What he does works spectacularly well in small ensembles. When you get into larger ensembles, a lot of it gets lost. He can’t be the bass player that he is in a larger ensemble. There isn’t room for that.”

Still, the band enjoys working out of San Francisco where they and the Grateful Dead began. For Weir, using local musicians was crucial to his having a side project.  Bringing in band members from around the country or around the world was always problematic, though many wanted to play with them and did whenever they happened to be in town.

Ratdog over the years then gathered a large repertoire to work with, including Dead material and tunes from Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon, and Bob Dylan. “Whatever fluffs our mullet. We like to keep things in a fairly loose rotation.  And so we need a lot of material to do that so we have a lot of songs worked up. It keeps things fresh,” Weir says.

He and band members are always writing new material.  “I write with all the guys in the band,” Weir says. “Sometimes by myself, sometimes with a couple of them, sometimes with all of them.”

With festivals like 10,000 Lakes and his band‘s website, Weir is sure to have a receptive audience for the CD s the band produces. Weir and Ratdog are currently touring with Keller Williams, who played at 10,000 Lakes Festival last year to audiences as packed tightly as like turkeys started by a crop duster.

Weir attests that kind of response to one of the most improvisational improvisers as Keller Williams is as real hope for our culture.  “If you really want to trace the roots of American improvisational music, I think you go back to Louis Boland in the early days of New Orleans music,” Weir says.  That was before music was ever recorded.  “It’s undergone a great deal of development over the years.  We had a hand in electrifying it in the 60s and 70s.  What we developed was really already tried and true. The mode of operation was you learn a song, you state the theme, you take it for a little walk in the woods and everybody has a crack at it.  That’s been the jazz MO for a long time. It was always the Grateful Dead’s MO and is Ratdog’s MO.”

That kind of improvisation took root in the jam genre, though some bands still shy from that name because of the misconceptions of many about what jam really is and that it really is akin to jazz improvisation. “It’s become a popular way to do things,” Weir adds. “I’m real glad that that’s happened because music is more open-ended and more adventurous. I think it’s good for a culture in general. Art should provide adventure for people. I think that the less adventure there is in art the less of a culture it’s going to be, and the less depth.”

Weir has seen the jam festival scene grow from its early roots in the late 60s as a festival of rock or popular music.  “It’s pretty much the same except for the people who to a degree have refined their abilities to pull these festivals off. I think by and large they’re getting better and better.  They run smoother and smoother. That said, it can still rain to beat hell and all those kinds of things can happen. Festivals are fun gatherings just in general just to begin with.” 

Music, he says, is a great vehicle for bringing people together in a large venue. “Once everybody’s together, the festival takes on its own life. The people who come bring a life to it. Not just the bands-- everybody.  It’s a purist communal experience.  Over the years, it’s become a fundamental fixture in the American cultural scene…The people who come to these kinds of festivals to hear improvisational intuitive music are the kind of people who understand that without cooperation, and a great deal of cooperation, this kind of bird won’t fly. They intuitively, innately understand this and work like that.”

Weir likens the cooperation among festival goers and those who run festivals to working out a jam in a band. “No amount of brute force is going to get a jam off the ground….The people who are playing have to listen to each other, and then coax it out, coax out the thread. The kind of approach that a person takes to music or to life in general is the kind of people who are looking for something that they obviously haven’t yet found.  In every improvisational flight that we take, we try to find something new; we try to do something in a new way. It takes a whole lot of cooperation. It’s a total team effort. The people who appreciate this kind of music are kindred spirits so they are going to work together to make the festival work on other levels just as patrons.” 

Bob Weir, who has dedicated his life to music since he was eight and could turn a radio dial, sees the festival as a metaphor for life. It is all one great artful improvisation, one that no one should just cover note for note from someone else’s song, but one that should be written anew each day, coaxed out with the day’s doing, and with bold adventure once in awhile.

Janie Franz,

The Grateful Web

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More Janie columns:

1.	The White Iron Band (6/16/2006 6:44:38 PM - http://www.whiteironband.com) Their hard-hitting tunes make the Kentucky Headhunters seem like lite rock, and they can sweet talk you out of a band mood with the strike of a chord or the honeyed blend of multiple-part harmonies.
2.	Phil Lesh Legacy (7/14/2006 5:00:43 AM - http://www.gratefulweb.net/photos/photoInterface/photos.aspx?direct=Bands/Phil_and_Friends) But it is Lesh himself who is venturing out to major jam festivals this summer in search of the vibe and some answers. He’s looking to explore why the jam scene keeps going and what it all means. As part of a long-term oral history project, Lesh has started formally dialoging with people of his generation and young people today about the 60s, what some have thought was a Golden Age of enlightenment and music or a time of unachievable idealism and unrest.
3.	Enchanted Ape: An Enchanted Experience (7/16/2006 6:17:05 AM - http://www.enchantedape.com/ ) Enchanted Ape takes their name from Thomas Carlyle’s (1843) written comment about non-conformists, where he states, "...and thou art as an Enchanted Ape under God's sky, where thou mightest have been a man, had proper schoolmasters and conquerors, and constables with cat o'nine tails, been vouchsafed thee...."
4.	Umphrey’s McGee: Layers of the Unexpected (7/16/2006 4:45:30 AM - http://www.umphreys.com/ ) An Umphrey’s McGee show is a musical extravaganza as the band members trip in and out of musical genres. This band is unique even in the jam scene because of the musical diversity, not only within each set, but within each song. Audiences can hear jazz, rock, ambient space music, Primus-edged metal, and even country wedged up against each other.
5.	Blues on the Prairie: Backyard Barbeque and Blues Fest (1/1/2007 2:44:03 PM - ) Blues legend Buddy Guy showed up in a striped shirt and overhalls. When I had seen him before, he wore polka dots and changed guitars like a fashion statement, including a white one with black polka dots on it. There was another change, too. Guy had only a four piece band. Back in 2005, he had a very talented saxophone player with him. The current configuration, however, is top-notch. They are master musicians in their own right, and hold up well in Guy’s nightly game of dueling instruments.
6.	The Bands of 10,000 Lakes, Part 1 (3/15/2007 10:49:07 AM - ) With warmer temperatures, jamfans are already looking toward summer festivals. To tempt you further, we’re going to take a look back at last year’s 10,000 Lakes Festival in Minnesota, the new kid on the festival circuit that is drawing fans to its musical honey and its truly sweet location.
7.	Unity the band: Bringing the Love (3/16/2007 8:17:47 PM - ) Though reggae, like American hip-hop now, is found all over the world, roots reggae differs depending on where is it nurtured and grown. “The difference with reggae we have in the island,” Pita says, “is we have a little bit more of an African flavor, our African heritage and Indian nature. It’s old style. It’s almost a little faster than reggae, but it has a little pop to it.”
8.	Turbine: Always Turning Out The Good Stuff (3/17/2007 5:38:42 AM - ) In 2005, jammers at the 10,000 Lakes Festival were floored by the power duo from New York City, Turbine. Ryan Rightmire (harmonica, acoustic guitar, vocals) and Jeremy Hilliard (electric guitar, vocals) had audiences awe-struck when they launched into their set. “There was a moment after the first long jam of the set, and no one was making any noise during the song, ” recalls Hilliard. “We finished and for a second, we were wondering what was going to happen. Then everyone sort of exploded.”
9.	GB Leighton: A Roots Rock Band to Watch (5/17/2007 9:16:03 AM - ) It’s been said that fine, delicate wines need to mature slowly. For bands, sometimes that’s true. In GB Leighton’s case, it has taken almost two decades of songwriting and serious performing to develop into a force that is poised to take on the musical world. That maturing is grounded in Brian Leighton's songwriting, his powerful vocal delivery, and the backing of a phenomenally talented band.
10.	The Bands of 10,000 Lakes 2006, Part 2 (5/23/2007 2:32:41 PM - ) Day Two actually begins with an experience that happened in the wee hours of the first day of the festival. In the VIP campground where all the bands, media, and high-end ticket holders were camped, a lone saxophone began to play from someplace deep in the trees. It was soothing and pleasant after so much high energy music and dancing that first evening. After a few minutes, across the campground, a trumpet answered the soulful moan of the sax. For a few minutes, the instruments did this quiet call and response that eventually drifted away into the night. It was a jazz lullaby to nudge us into sleep so that we could be rested to enjoy the first full day of festival adventures.