Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, y'all, it's justin Richmond here. I just want to let everyone know that this episode of Broken Record is recorded and produced long before the coronavirus outbreak. It's with Bob Weir from The Grateful Dead, and since we record of this episode, his Wolf Bros. Tour has been postponed. Hopefully it doesn't also wind up effecting the summer's Dead and Company dates. We'll have to wait and see, but we do plan to keep putting out episodes of the podcast that will hopefully be a bit of a reprieve for everyone who's either continuing to work or practicing social distancing. We hope everyone out there stays safe and stays healthy, and we hope you enjoy Rick's conversation with The Grateful Dead's Bob Weir. Out of all the original members of The Grateful Dead, Bob Weir has had the longest and most productive trip of all the Dead. Formed in the Bay Area in the mid sixties, touring relentlessly until Jerry garcia Is death in ninety five, they were able to keep the audience on their toes throughout their thirty year career with experimental improvised live sets that stretched on for hours at a time. Every show was designed to be a once in a lifetime experience. As we're hearing Bob's conversation with Rick Rubin, the band was never focused on making studio albums or writing perfect songs. It was always about playing live and seeing where the music would take them. It's an objective that has served them well. There's a rabid selection of Deadheads who trade recordings of live shows to this day, a tradition the band started fostering decades ago. As a result, Bob credits the band with creating viral marketing long before the Internet. In addition to the Grateful Dead, Bob is also toured with a number of offshoot bands, including Dead and Company with John Mayer and his latest project, Wolf Brows with Don Was who were on tour Now. If there's anyone keeping the Dead alive, it's Bob Weir, and after all these years, he's still just playing in the band. Bob starts off by Italian Rick about a recent dream whereas oldfer and Jerry visits him with this song that materializes into a giant, playful sheep dog. It's super trippy, but what else would you expect? This is broken record line of notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Mitchman. Here's Bob. We are in conversation with Rick Rubin from Shangola. Do you write songs all the time? What's your process? Like, there's stuff going on, stuff going on in my head all the time, and right now I'm kind of writing all the time, you know. Yeah, it's nice. You know it comes out very very slowly, slower than a slug in a trance. But but you know, I keep at it. Yeah. In the past, he worked a lot with a lyricist, and I understand he passed away. Is that how do you fill that gap or how do you imagine it working going forward? Well, I've always you know, I was working with John Barlow, the lyricistist, but I always wrote like half of the lyrics, or usually wrote half alerts and would your half come first and he would finish them. Generally speaking, Yeah, generally speaking, I would come up with whatever it was that married that lyric to that music understood and uh, and you would have already the framework melodically of yeah, the phrasing yeah, or you know, some big notion of that. Yes, would would how often would a song change from the initial spirit when writing it. Sometimes not at all, and sometimes you get way different. You know, A song is I'm gonna I'm gonna die right in here. A song is a life form. It's a you know, an alien life form. It's organic. Um. I actually I had a dream, um a few weeks back, my old pal Jerry came to me in the dream and introduced to me a song, you know, and the song came in and it was like it was kind of it looked kind of like a great, big room sized etherial sheep dog, you know, it was big and friendly and you know, came up and sniffed me and I batted a little bit, and it came back at me, and it was it was interactive and and and then we you know, then we started playing and singing the song, and then we we were in it. We were in the song part of it. We were part of that functioning organism. Yes, And then the dream sort of trailed off into whatever, into wherever dreams go. But um, that just confirmed my notion that I've held for the longest time that there a song as a live form, and it comes and visits us, and it comes through certain people for whatever its reasons. Are yes and or whatever its attractions are and yes and uh. And when it's time for it to come, it's going to come, when it comes through you or through someone else, it's coming. Yeah, it's coming to this world and it's coming to a sniff around and visit and uh and and hang. Yes. And you know those those characters and those songs, you know, they come and they tell their stories and they're they're you know, they just want to be heard. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. When you woke up, did you remember the song? Uh? Not very well. It was a jazz ballad. Um, we were singing. We were doing a duet on it. When you don't hear many of those, but but in this particular case, you know, jazz ballad. Yeah. Do songs often come to you in dreams? A lot of them? Yeah, that's great. Yeah, you know the good ones. Yeah, it's what a gift. I Sometimes I'll have a song come into dream, but it's hard for me to keep them, you know, it's hard for them to hang around, right. Yeah, you gotta get right on it. Yeah. And what I what I've found is I've sort of made a deal with my a little deal with with my muse. Yes, where you know, no matter what time it day, no matter what I'm getting up, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna pick up my guitar. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, uh get enough of it down so that you know, otherwise I'm afraidile's taught visiting. Yeah. And with the way you would get it down be to record something or might it meet generally phone makes it really easy these days. Yeah, so you'll sing it into the phone, yeah, or sing and play it into the phone. How did um, how would set lists work in the band? Well, that's interesting. The way the Dead the Grateful Dead used to do it is uh, Um, Jerry and I, you know, I'd be his journ to start or my turn to start, and and take turns back and forth. Yeah, we'd take place. Yeah, and then well you know, and we'd figure out the first couple of tunes that we were going to do, maybe first three, and then we'd generally come up with what we were going to wrap the set up with, uh says right here on paper. And then and then while Jerry was singing, I had all the time on earth to to figure out what I wanted to do next, And often as not, I'd try to coax that tune out of the one we were playing when when it was done, to route that one up, And then he'd be doing the same thing when I was singing. And would they always come or did you did you have a list of things to draw from or you just always have him in that toward the end, you know, toward the end, it was handy to have a list because there were so many. Yeah, the repertoire got pretty expansive and uh, and we tried to stay up on all the two we brought around, so you know, we have you know, the way we did things. We you know, we never we got around to a tune maybe once a week. Yes, How would cover songs work their way into the set? Uh? Sometimes they just came up, you know, and a signature, a look or something like that would oh we're playing that, Okay, here goes nothing. I noted that there are some covers that would work their way into this, work their way around often, you know, for a long period of time. Are there any that that just didn't work? Oh? Plenty, plenty of them. We try on one who I think we tried Pigpin tried to sing and this is a man's world. Yeah. I think we actually did that twice, just to make sure that it was that bad, because in theory that sounds like that could have been good. Yeah. Yeah, you know, we have no control over those. Can't never tell. You never tell. How different were the members of the band, would you say from each other? Like music wise, taste wise, Well, we had pig Pen who was very, very funky. He was all about blues and not much hells. And then we had Phil who was into classically. He was classically trained and uh and and sort of sort of moonlighted in the jazz world. Mickey was a martial drummer. He uh, he played martial music. He was a national champion rudimentary snarre drummer. So he played one of those big field drums and uh. While emerging Billy's I finally figured out who Billy's a major influence was and he never he I pointed it out to him. He allowed, as I was spot on, was there was a certain era of Ray Charles that that drummer. Yeah, and Billy Billy captured that lilt. And I don't think he I don't think he even knew he did it. I don't think he was thinking consciously doing or consciously attempting to do that. It just happened, yes, And then Jerry was Jerry was all over the place. He loved, he loved, but his I think his deepest love was probably a string band music, country music, acoustic based like like Appalachian would you say or not necessarily? I think Appalachian music, though he was a huge fan of George Jones, Hank Williams, um, Jerry Lee Lewis for that matter. And what would you say? You're where were your how would you describe your foundational taste? A little bit of all of it up. I grew up with the rock and roll radio station on most of the term. But if there wasn't any there were two rock and roll stations, and if if I didn't like what was on either of them, I'd I'd go fishing and christ you know, back in back in the sixties, Um, if you went to a classical station, they played they played modern classical music. They don't anymore. They all played baroque music these days pretty much. I guess that's what they figure the audiences want to hear, and so I don't much tune into those stations anymore. But and then and then there were the jazz stations or the or the country stations, and so I, you know, I I shopped around it all. You know. It was the coolest stuff my brother turned me onto. It was was on Sundays and sometimes on a given evening, you get the uh, the black preachers, and they they got cranked. I think they really got cranked up. And uh, you know, I I found that that that's music to me absolutely And uh, you know, they'd find a theme and they'd work it and uh and and they have another theme and they'd worked out and they'd work them together, and uh, you know, so I fell in love with that stut too beautiful. And then the full boom happened, which are used to call but the big folks here, and uh and a guitar was portable and uh you could you could use it to accompany yourself singing, and you could you could just tell story after story after story with your with your voice, with your hands. And I found my home. How how would you say your relationship to music has changed over the course of your life. He's gotten deeper, you know, I wish I say that I say that pretty easily. Though. Let me think about that, because you know, I wasn't all that deep when I was a kid. Yeah, or I don't think of myself as having been all that deep when I was a kid. But at the same time, when I was a kid, well, what mattered to me mattered a lot, and so I guess I was kind of deep. And so I won't I can't say that the music the music has always been. I'll just say that the music has always been where I live, Yes, and you know the rest of the rest of this world, I'm just visiting, yes, completely interested. Do you remember the thing that made you want to start playing? I think it might have been seeing Elbows on TV where I was seven or eight or nine, something like that. You know, and look at that guy. He's Wow, he's into it, he's having fun and he's doing well. Yes, he's making real music, and I can relate to that, and uh, I gotta do that. Yeah, imagine seeing that as a kid for the first time. It was so outside of anything else going on in culture. It must have just been like a real revelation. Yeah, it was, well, it was you know, I couldn't I couldn't feature anything else. You know, I was seven years old maybe eight, um, you know, so there's as strong as strong desire to be a cowboy at that at that age. But I figured I could at least work two together. Yeah, kind of, you kind of did. When the when the band started, I think of the early days of the band that's primarily electric, which was which was sort of what was going on at the time. Is that? Is that not accurate? Actually? You know, the band that turned into The Grateful Dead was Mother mccree's Uptown Jug Champions. And we were a jug man. We were a damn good one. Wow. Um we you know, a pig then made us authentic, yes, you know, because he was nothing but authentic. Yes, he was just born a couple of decades too late and in a white body, but the rest of it was authentic and uh and and Jerry was an apt student of the of of whatever musical vein he was he was diving into. And I applied myself. And so the three of us were the core of that of that drug band. And we had a sort of a uh we had folks come and go in the rest of the band. And then that band turned into uh, turned into the Grateful Dead after about a year. But we that first year we were playing. You know, what we excelled at was the old jug band music. And I don't know if you play stuff on play music on, but we could play, Yes, should I pull something up now? We could listen and talk? Sure? How about new Minglewood blues. Well there's a hundred Grateful Dead versions. See if there's it, there's Noah Lewis jug band. Yeah, that's it, that's it. Magnificent, that's glorious, that's perfect. It's interesting that jug band music. Those those musicians were, they were the guys. The river boats had the minstrel musicians. They were the minstrel musicians. And they do that stuff on the deck of a boat for tips and stuff like that, and I guess it's basically busting and uh. And then when they come to a town, they'd hop off the boat and everything was portable. They just they just go hit a street corner and h and play in the dark count and they'd be like a washboard and a jug washboard a tin jug because a tin jug, yeah, people think of the porcelain jugs, but those those only make one note. A tin jug. It sounds like a tuba. I see, and I see, I know. I think I just learned something hearing that that that I never made the connection before. But in old country music kind of umpah baselines, right, yeah, maybe that's maybe it came from the nature of the jug because you can only kind of you can only get you know, the rhythm of it, Yeah, to be kind of umpah. Yeah, yeah, that's true. There's not a lot of not a lot of percussion on and you don't have so many choices of notes. Even you could get more than one note. It probably wasn't a wide range. No, you kind of you were you know, you had to yeah, narrow, narrow range. Yeah, how would you change if you were playing a jug? How would you change nutes? I see, just the sound the sound you made as well? What changed it? I played the jug. I also played the washtubool occasional guitar. Yeah, yeah, and that out amazing. And then how did it? How did that band morph into the Dead? Um? So, after about six months of playing in that band, um Jerry wanted to take a sabbatical that summer, and so he left. He had to find somebody to take his beginning in intermediate intermediate students. So he got me to do it. And uh and so I had a job at the at the at the music store, doing the Morgan music and um. And then when he came back, I kept a bunch of those students and he just concentrated on his advanced students and uh. And so we were both working there and pig Pen would come in and uh, Pigin would sweep the floor is uh. We were all working at the at the music store by you know, by the end of the summer. And uh and the son of the owner of the music store wanted to be in a rock and roll band. So so uh when made a little deal with him, you can play the bass, um, and we'll uh, well, we'll go be a rock and roll band. And that lasted for four or five months. And then the guy he really wasn't going to be He wasn't cut out for it. And uh, Jerry knew this guy Phil from I don't know where, from from a party I think they met at and uh and you figured the guy's a trumpet player. But the bass, if you're going to pick up an instrument, the one you're gonna be quick as to pick up is going to be base and so um, he just sort of conscripted him. Yeah and uh and uh went to work. Yeah, he's an unusually great bass player. I wonder if it's because he started as a trumpet player. Well, he you know, he um, when he's playing, he's visualizing the he can read music and he's visualizing the music that we're all playing, and you know, in notes and staffs and stuff like that, and in color. You know, when I'm when I'm playing, I also visualize the music. Um, but it's more an ethereal kind of deal. I just see lions and and uh and colors and stuff like that. Pre um pre acid. Did you see music that way? Yeah? I wasn't aware of it. Yes, but you know, you know, I think maybe the first time I took ASID, you know, I realized, okay, well you're hallucinating. But you always do that, yeah, yeah, I just oh yeah, okay, well that's what hallucinating hallucination is. Yeah, but I've been doing that for since I can remember. Yes, it just it just allowed you to recognize it was already happening. Yeah, we'll be right back. After this quick break. We're back with Rick Rubin's conversation with Bob Weir. When you think of the Dead, do you think of the music over the years in phases or do you think of it as one thing? Well? Both, How would you define the phases as you were experiencing it? Well, there was there was pret acid test, and then on Jerry's birthday in August first of nineteen sixty five, we all took it ausid except Pig Benny to read you never did, and right right about them, we fell into the acid test and things got way different real fast. And so there was that phase. And that phase lasted through our first record, which was I guess sixty seven. Yeah, And so that was a couple of years there, sixty five to sixty seven, and we were well, actually that phase lasted a little longer, lasted through the late sixties where we were pretty pretty committed to experimentation that that was probably our focus. Then after that in the early seventies, and I guess it was right around the time that Crosby Stills in nash moved into northern California to Marine County and we started, you know, it just sort of rubbed off that those guys, those guys were song oriented. They thought you know, they weren't about planned they were about songs and the overall sound of it and uh and how it fell together. And um, particularly Jerry and I became enamored of that approach. So like Uncle John's band might have been around that time, Yeah, yeah, speak to that. Yeah and uh, and we started thinking in terms of songs. And I'm not sure that everybody in the band even to this day thinks of the material in terms of songs. You know, a song, you know all hailed the song and in capital in gold gold capital letters. Um, I'm not sure everybody is on that same page. And you know some of the guys are still, oh yeah, what's what's a song? A song as a set of Corey change isn't a melody that you play? You play through and uh and I'm I I started leaving that behind the song plays me around that time. Um, it's really interesting. The idea that not everybody in the band might be on the same page could lead to very interesting results. Well, yeah, that's that's that's you know, it keeps sayings interesting. Absolutely, you get different perspectives. Absolutely. I don't know even had to asked this question. Was the band democratic, Like was it a democratic process. There was, so everybody had to say pure and simple and was it majority rules or would you know there was would there ever be a case where everybody likes something and one person really didn't like it and you would decide not to do it because they didn't like it. Every now and again, there was one gun I won't go into names. One one guy who was histed on on veto privilege. Yes, and I think that's a privilege. I don't think that's right. Yeah, um, but nonetheless we granted it to him. Yes. Um, I'm not sure that that was the best way to have gone about that. Yes, But aside from that, everything was democratic. The best idea usually went out. Jerry was real. I won't say forceful. It wasn't forceful at all, but he had a way of getting his ideas across so that people understood them. And uh, and I I like to think that I was also pretty good at that, you know, presenting a vision very quickly and uh and uh and succinctly and uh you know, you know, in a way that was palatable for the guys to pick it up. Yes. How did the audience taping start where the audience would tape the shows. Well, I started sample because Japanese started miniaturizing quality recording uh units. You know, I guess you were started with it. But but then you know, Sony and Panasonic and all those guys were making and um NACAMICI we're making really high quality recording units, and people just started bringing them to the h to h the gigs and recording the gigs. You know. At first, you know, they they'd have their you know, their microphone trees, you know, and they were, uh, they were causing a little bit of friction out in the audience because people didn't want to have to look peer around. Those things block people's views. So we we had to hurt them together into one place. And at that point our record company at the time, Wash was hammering us. You know, you got to shut this down. These guys are these they're recording your music and then they're not going to buy your records. And this came up. I remember one time in a you know, we had a board meeting. You know, we have to get together and in and decide all kinds of stuff, and one of the one of the issues was the record company Wash was insisting that we do something about this this taping phenomenon, and we kicked it around and decided we're, hey, we're not cops. Uh. And we wouldn't feel good about that because we know they wouldn't feel the audience wouldn't feel good about being shut down like that. So let's let's get them at least all in one place and so that they don't obstruct the view of the folks who weren't recording, and and just leave well enough alone. The was the record company was displeased about this, but it turned out real well because you know, they they made their tapes, they'd make one or two generations of duplicates and uh and pass them around all hand to hand, direct eye contact and that kind of thing. And uh. And we're credited with inventing viral marketing, yes, and uh, we're backed into it. Yes. And the fact that, if you think about it, it also most places to the strength of the band, the fact that it's so different from night Tonight that a recording that's made once every two years in a recording studio is only going to be that one day in the recording studio, whereas if it's different every day, And if you're a fan, I want to hear all that right, you can you can indulge all the sophist where you can summons to debate this dark star as opposed to this dark star. It's fascinating. It's also fascinating how the reality of the moods of the people playing it could so impact how the song, how the song is interpreted. Yeah, and um, and the audience gets that experience too, you know, really does change the car to changes wildly. Yeah, it feels like the the your contemporary bands slowly morphed into the ones that that continued into more traditional structured three minute songs, and their record sounded like what they made a record, and then they performed that record live and whereas your band, for whatever reason, never really did that. It feels like it was always free and always open. It's just due to the personalities, you think. Yeah, it was our approach. Um, you know, if we were to if we if we were to try to do stuff, you know, out of road, just the way it was the way it was on the record tonight again for the four hundredth time. You know, I'd be up in a bill tower with a sniper's rival no time at all. Yeah, Um, I just I can't do that. I'm not gonna out for that. Um. And some folks too, some folks are more technicians. Um. But and that's where they get, you know, they you know, and they can bring a bunch of expert technique to to a song and this song will live just fun that way. But but that's not how we did it. Yeah, I guess that would be like the difference between classical and jazz, Like classical was more about playing the part as well as you could, and jazz was about, well, we have this theme that we're starting with and we're going to see where it goes and can go somewhere else every night, Yeah we we Ours was the jazzmo yeah, which is again maybe when you started, people were doing that, but that seemed to be a lost start, like like it if other than your band, there's not a lot of bands that continue doing that. Yeah. Yeah, I think you have to be pretty gifted in that particular approach to pull it off. Not everybody was. They'd have their moments, but the safe thing to do was to uh, to practice and the only thing we practice was our approach. Yes, whereas other people practice the song, Yes, we can't do that, Yes we would like give it away. It has to happen in the moment. Yeah, amazing, it's an amazing stories. There's um it's so the trip is so unlike anything else. It's it's interesting to talk about it because it's just such a unique it's such a unique thing from the outside. I started as very much of a song person in my life, so it took me a long time to get into the band because it seemed more about playing than it seemed about songs. Until until later, until I understood more. Yeah, like I say, some of the guys in the band, and some of the louder ones in the band were about the playing and not about the song. Yes, that was How did it work out that you had two drummers? Long complicated story. I'm not sure anybody understands. Somebody went and heard I wasn't there that evening, but somebody went and heard Mickey playing at the Straight Theater on Haye Street. I think that's how it happened. Billy and they dragged Billy and Billy gott met him and they got to talking and let's try kicking kicking around with two drummers. Were there any other bands that had two drummers at that time. No, and I think well, at that point also we were listening to a bunch of Indian classical music, North Indian classical music, and and that's classical music, but it's h there's you know, there's a lot of improv that goes on in yes, and the rhythms are really complicated, and the rhythms are complicated, and so we you know, the rhythms were so complicated that it sort of expanded our awareness of what you can do with a rhythm. You know, how you can adjust this part, adjust that part, and then put an underlay it under this part. And it looked it just seemed to us that there was room for another drummer to go into some of those places. I'm not sure I was ever really all all together sold on on the two drummers two drummers business, because it started to take it more in the direction of playing and less in the direction of songs. Yes from me, Yes, um, it definitely complicates things. Yeah, yeah, I remember in the there's the the Wrightful Dead movie, right, yeah, that and there's only one drummer in that. Yeah, and that seemed really good, you know, that was we were hot that was a good phase. Yeah, was it an interesting experience when like the touch of gray thing happened and all of a sudden you're have music on the radio and on MTV, and yeah that, you know, the predictable thing happened too. It took one of us out. Uh, you know, it took Brent out, you know, too much too soon. It's invariably doesn't work out. Yeah. Now we so so gradually and so slowly became famous that um, we were able to you know, remain yourselves, Yeah, remain ourselves, but were too much too soon. Phenomenon hit hit Brent because he hadn't he hadn't been through all that developmental face and it took him out. Wow, you'd been a banded twenty years at that point, more thirty thirty. It's it's really must have been a wild Yeah, just just so unusual. And I can't even say good or bad, just like what a new mention, It's like what a new direction, unplanned seemed like. But songs were good, well, the song as We're good And also we'd had them on stage for a while, so they'd they'd matured, they'd grown faces, I see, and they matured before you recorded them. Yeah, oh that we've been playing some of those songs for like, you know, five or six years. It was getting long about time to make a record. Yeah, we'll be right back with more from Bob Weir. After the break, we're back with Bob Weir. I think the thing that first pulled me, the thing that first made made me understand the band more interestingly, was more that that second folk phase. And I think it was the reckoning. When I heard that, it's like, oh, I I see my way in and through that. It allowed me to expand through the whole the whole world of the music. Well. Interestingly, while on the subject of the song as opposed to the playing um in Debtco, now the drummers are getting are going to get teleprompters so that right in front of them, right under their noses, they're going to be the lyrics of all the songs, because you know, your average your average seventeen year old in our audience probably knows more lyrics than world our songs than Yes, I think that's going to change our focus, could change, could change it dramatically. Yes, is John Mayer always in that band or sometimes well, when that band's playing, he's gonna. That's interesting. How did that work out? He's a great guitar player. He's an interesting combination. He went through his dead phase about I guess he hit that about five years ago. But he's John Mayer, so he can do something about that. Yes, and uh and uh I remember talking to him about it. We he was we we both kind of got into our dead phase at a similar time and we were sharing notes and so uh and a friend of a mutual friend of ours, Don was We got together in Don's office. Uh and uh John was downstairs working in the studio there and uh, I was visiting Donna. He said, listen, I'm going to go down and get to John John Mayer and uh he was real interested in what I what I was up to at that point. And uh, he had a TV show, the Late Late Show, I think it was a late night TV show that he was guest hosting, and he invited me to, uh to come and play on that and so I figured that was uh, you know, Keltner was on drums, So I figured, okay, I'm not I'm not gonna miss that opportunity. We uh, you know, we got there for the sound check and plugged in and they gave us two songs slots, and we plugged in and we started started playing. In a couple hours later, they said, okay, you guys are done with sound check. We're unplugging you now because because we just we started playing, we didn't stop. Yes, And so I figured, okay, well let's do something about this. Yes, and uh and he he was thinking the same thing. That's great. Yeah, so cool, what a cool combination, and so great that the band it found a way to carry on. Yeah, well, the music music, you know, there's life there there. Yes, you know, there's absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. Do you think there's a reason them and I can't think of another example of a band who have had so much impact, so much success, so much importance, so much love, yet never really connected as well on the record side as on the live side, is it. Do you think there's a reason for that. I've pondered this and was it ever a frustration or was it not an issue? Well? I like I like recording is um, but the recordings that we're kind of famous for, our live recordings, Yes, and those are you know, like the difference between a painting and a photograph. Yes, the photograph captures captures the moment, and if it's really, if it's really a spectacular moment, then you've got you got something you can hang on your all a painting, it's something you you go into, layer by a layer and and tell the story. And I've always enjoyed, always enjoyed, you know, studio recording. But some of the other guys didn't, you know, they you know, they get frustrated, you know, while going over this again, trying to get it perfect. It almost to me, it almost feels like a missed opportunity because I think there could have been there could have been really great records. But maybe maybe in the same way that the other bands gotten more strict in their performances to imitate the record the recordings, maybe your bands records could have been more like you were live, like jazz albums. Well, that's that's what I'm thinking. I really want to get into the studio with jedko Um and that it feels like playing that's placed to the strength of what you do. Yeah, and just get relaxed and in the studio and get into a studio groove and and and then just crank some stuff out. Yeah, I bet it's not going to be good. Yeah, I would think so. I mean, you know, pretty much virtually any night that we play there's we're gonna we're gonna have some moments we've never had before. Yes, and uh and I've got a stack of a stack of those moments that I'm about to wade into and see if i can make some songs out of them. And uh, and you know, it could it could be. It could come to pass that we end up making our first record at our sound checks in uh on this on a summer tour. That would that'd be fantastic. Yeah, I mean, we've got all the facility there. Ye, what's this summer's tour looking like? Looking like? Is it a US tour? Yeah? Great, we're starting to talk about going to Europe. Has Dead co played Europe yet? No? Not yet. That's going to be good. Yeah. How many times did the Dead go to Europe for tours? Only? Like three or four? Maybe five? Which in the in the length of time that you were doing what you were doing, that's barely scratching the surface. It was such an enormous undertaking. And and and there was also the drug issue. The guys, some of the guys didn't want to go without bringing Mama. Yeah, and uh, and that was that presented its challenges. Were there other bands in the scene at the time that you lacked as as the band was happening in the early days? Yeah, what what was the music that spoke into we were big at I was big into the band. Yeah, the guys who built this place. Yes. Um. Then we'd go through phases. I mean we had our Saturday night fever phase. Marley was always a big popular but reggae in general. Um, and we had our country phase kind of early on. You know. Then I discover a composer, for instance, that would influence my writing. You know, Bartalk got got under my got into my head for a little while. How many solo albums have you made? It depends, first off, if you consider Bobby in the Midnights of solo album. I never thought about that. Yeah, but if that's the case, then I went to three, four, five, yeah, eight or ten. Yeah, it's a lot. I can't wait for this next one. The little trio Wolf Roses Is it's a lot of fun. Tell me about it. Well, it's just me and and my drummer from Rhett on jay Lynn and Don was one of the things I wanted to talk about is U You were talking about writing, and I'm pretty much writing all the time. I've got this, I can maybe play a little bit of it, I can't real ball and I'm so that's a tune I'm working on for an opera I'm writing, Beautiful. What struck me when you played that is it's not uncommon when someone is playing a song on the piano to play the rhythm part with their left hand and the top line or the melody with their right hand. But rarely would rarely would a guitar player who sings play what you just played, because you played both the rhythm guitar part and so more like you played it more like a piano where you're playing the melody along with the and most songwriters I know who would play that song would just be playing the chords and would be even humming the melody if they didn't have the words, humming the mild. But it's very interesting that you chose to do it that way because it it First of all, it's really satisfying to listen to and I just don't hear people play that way, right Beautiful. Um working with some folks in Nashville on this and kind of kind of cracked up about this. It's uh, it's gonna be a big project. I've been recording some of the music in Nashville and uh had got a producer about the name of Dave Cobb, who's really good, good guy like him a lot, wonderful guard. Yes and U and we're working on this, and he's of course very interested in me getting this, uh, getting the lyrics, getting lyrics to all the U all the music that we've written. And I was we had some wonderful sessions there. He gambled a little crew in the studio that that we we just just popped out a bunch of great tunes. He had no notion I was going to be writing an opera until reasonably. Yeah. Amazing. How it works, amazing and so much fun. Doesn't matter how long you've been doing it. The the discovery process remains like this epiphany moment where that sense of almost I can't believe it's happening, right, Yeah, you know, doesn't get old. I know, you know it when it's there. Yeah, And it's such a great feeling. It's such a I don't know, I feel it in my whole body. When it happen, it's exciting. The spine becomes electric, absolutely become weightless. Absolutely. Yeah, same can happen with the performance. Like even a song he played one hundred times one night, he just hap, well that's where I'm at. I was meaning in the writing process. But say it's it's the same. Yeah, it's the same thing. When those when when the ordinary elevates to the extraordinary, it's unbelievable and so beautiful. The music just pass you on the head and says, Okay, now's your time, and how's your little movement here? So great, I'm going to show you a little something cool man. Well, thank you for talking. Well, I'm not pleasure, pleasure, thank you for playing all right. Thanks to Bob Weird for opening up about his creative process and sharing everything he's working on with Rick. You can check out Bob Weird dot com to stay update on everything he's working on. We put together a playlist of our favorite Bob were songs. You can find it by visiting broken record podcast dot com. Broken Record is produced with the help from Jason Gambrel, me LaBelle, and Leah Rose for Pushkin Industries, our the Music Boat, Kenny beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.