“Do you ever wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it!” Daisy Buchanan utters this claim while indolently wiling away a hot summer afternoon on Long Island. I can relate, not to the indolence necessarily, but I often fail to fully notice solstice, the late or early sunset, the apex or nadir moments of light. Usually, it's the fallout that I notice. In January, light gradually lingers; by late July, dusk is thick. Being present is not easy, but it has me thinking about Bob Weir.
For most of my Deadhead years, Bob, Robert Hall Weir, has been referred to as "Bobby." He was the youthful element, the "very, very, youthful, ebullient, but a very, very dirty softball player," as Bill Graham referred to him at the Felt Forum in 1971. He was the guy I could count on for a smile, a gaff, and a shrug. Bob was the athlete sweating profusely at center stage trying to whip up the audience or fire up his band mates. To some of my friends, disgusted with what they considered histrionics, he was "Hollywood Bob." To a tape trading friend, way back when, he was the guy Jerry kept around for "vocal support." To me, especially now, Bob Weir was the guy who never missed the moment.
Stationed between the cacophony of Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia, the thrashing of two drummers, first Billy and then Mickey, the wildly disparate keyboard players Pig Pen, Tom Constanten, Keith Godchaux, Brent Mydland, Vince Welnick, and Bruce Hornsby, Bob was always already there. Someone has to be the keel on the rudderless ocean, and at some point in time, that keel, more and more, became Weir. Naturally, these were not my first thoughts as a fan of the band. When one first falls into this music, it is one thing, a singular sound, an organism of its own.
As a GenX Deadhead, I fell into the Grateful Dead mid-career. Like many Deadheads, I didn't mean to be a Deadhead; it just happened, little by little. My sister's first show was Bobby and the Midnites. It turns out that they were sharing the bill with the Jerry Garcia Band. It was 1982. We listened to Shakedown Street a lot, and Dead Set was my understanding of a Grateful Dead show. The music was the music, and the people were the people, and in my imagination, it was all one thing. Still, if I'm honest, it was Bob who pulled us in and Jerry who set the hook. And for us, Bob was there, setting the tempo, finding the middle, anchoring the path, opening the door.
Music and consciousness are funny. We animate sound visually in our listening imaginations idiosyncratically while finding common ground on the dancefloor. After falling into deep Dead listening by 1985 and 1986, when I heard the old 1960s recordings, and after I had begun to piece together who was who doing what, Phil and Jerry protruded diagonally on a vertical like two combustion chambers complete with cooling fins while Bob was the meeting point above the drive shaft. All that energy has to pulsate downward and drive the machine forward. It has to be bolted down to a chassis, too, lest it spin off forever into dissipation.
Bob was the uptempo songster to whom we could relate. "I Need a Miracle." "Music Never Stopped." "Good Lovin'." "Sugar Magnolia." "Estimated Prophet." When I first fell into the Grateful Dead, I had no idea who Pig Pen was. That came later. Collecting tapes helped expand my palette, helped add color to the inner canvas of understanding what it was that I was hearing. Bob singing "Dark Hollow" on 4/29/71 or hitting that China Cat riff in "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad"; Bob building the China> Rider transition bridge; Bob pulsing downbeat tempo on Dead Set's epic version of "Greatest Story." Bob dangling his legs off stage after falling during "Sugar Magnolia" on 3/21/86. Naturally, that was panned by friends as "Hollywood Bob." I sorta liked it.
This past March when the 40th anniversary of my first three-night run at the Hampton Coliseum (1986) passed me by, I once again missed the moment. I didn't bliss out on headphones for each corresponding date. Instead, I caught snippets where I could during the morning commute, between class prep and assessment work, shoveling snow and doing dishes, conducting parent-teacher conferences and figuring out how to teach post-pandemic 21st century A.I. saturated teens, taking care of family. I caught sound snippets between worries about my mother and grandchildren. I missed the moment; cluttered mind, I wasn't present.
Perhaps this was Bob Weir's greatest gift: being present. Knocking on the door of Morgan's Music on 12/31/63. 17 or 18 at the Acid Tests. Fired and yet not leaving his band in 1968. Remaining ever joyful and silly and present between the serious maestros Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia. Resisting the rejection or dark dismissal that was Mickey and the Hartbeats. Softly approaching the mic for "Dark Hollow" in an acoustic opening set on 2/14/70. The die was cast, and the Grateful Dead's anchor was set along the keel of Bob Weir's presence.
Showing up and being present is not something that garners rewards. There are no jobs that I know of where you earn Employee of the Month by simply showing up. Yet, as a teacher, I know that this is one of the most important duties I can serve. Teenagers go through volcanic and seismic transitions on a daily basis, and day after day, we are there for them. It's not glamorous. It's not rewarded. And everyone in society at one point says, "I could do that. Nothing to it." To those folks, I say, "Try it. . . . For fifty years." It isn't always something that works, but it's the foothold, the constancy "nailed to a pine wood floor" that holds it together.
In many ways, Bob held it, the machine, together. He carved the path of the keel. He chose to find the middle, the compromise between eccentric polarities, the negotiated center of the conversation, the common ground that we are seeking despite our gripes. Musical minds seek resolution, the bow that brings all disparate elements to the coda, the final punch line of the poem. This, too, is an underappreciated role that Weir played over the years. Bob, the hot cylinders firing on either side of him, has to channel it down to the drive shaft. At some point, it has to connect and make sense.
For years Mr. Weir's thousand mile stare made no sense to me, as if the residue of Longshoreman's Hall hadn't been shed. Now, though, what I see in that blank stare is listening. I see a self dissolving in the moment and becoming one with the music, plotting the course that is no course, setting ego aside. Bob's thousand mile stare is about someone who mastered being in the moment, never missing the little tidbits passing by in time and absorbing them. Why do we miss the equinox? Because we ego-seek it, trying to map it, trying to clasp the "gold ring" that "just slips away." Bob's mastery was to be there, present in the moment, navigating the space of waiting to see what evolves, being here now.
Weir's signature distant stare while playing is the image of presence, of truly not thinking about what came before or what will come, latching on to the moment that is. It is anushasanam, ego death, flow state, an amoeba metamorphosis in time signatures to bring us back. As any athlete knows, it doesn't always happen. Sometimes, you fall off the stacks and hit your butt and dangle your legs off the stage; sometimes, you're bug-eyed pushing the volume, and the trailer has become unhitched. But when it's working best, you and those around you don't even notice. It's a presence which seems to have always been there. And now it's gone.
More than ever, I'm grateful for the time I spent with Bob Weir. Grateful Dead, Bob and Rob, Ratdog, Furthur, Dead and Co., Wolf Brothers. There may be more. As long as I show up and listen, now, make myself available to the moment, erase my needs, be present in my own time, I will honor him. And I will miss him. Dearly.
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