“There’s nothing like a Grateful Dead concert” is a timeworn Deadheadism that’s been plastered to countless bumpers over the past half century. The phrase is shrouded in the kind of language that can make the world of the Dead feel impenetrable to outsiders, but behind the cliché hides a secret to the longevity of the culture the band birthed. The Grateful Dead live experience exists as a continuum of traditions and disruptions, where new forms and frameworks are birthed in bursts of improvisatory fervor before being codified and incorporated into the band’s extended mythology. There’s nothing like a Grateful Dead concert because a Grateful Dead concert is a moving target—a porous, multi-celled organism squirming and multiplying as it steadily evolves. This is as true now, nearly 30 years after the death of Jerry Garcia and the subsequent splintering of the band, as it was in 1968, 1977, or 1990.
Garcia’s death obviously threw a wrench into the whole enterprise. Dynastic power struggles ensued, and rather than see the disappearance of the Dead’s center of gravity as a creative opportunity to rally around, the band scattered into shifting factions before reuniting one last time in 2015, in Santa Clara and Chicago. Bob Weir, the band’s rhythm guitarist and Earth-bound foil to Garcia’s more cosmic inclinations, emerged as the fulcrum among the surviving members. These days he splits his time between Dead & Company, the massively lucrative touring act in which he shares the spotlight with John Mayer (the most temperamentally Weir-like Garcia proxy that’s come along), and Wolf Bros, a stripped-down group with bassist-producer Don Was and drummer Jay Lane. With both bands, Weir is dialing in different elements of what a Grateful Dead show can be—on the one hand a grandiose, psychedelic spectacle, and on the other an intimate reimagining of a historic countercultural songbook.
There are moments when Wolf Bros sound like a bar band taking wild stabs at the rootsy side of Grateful Dead’s Janus-faced repertoire (which they speckle with cuts from Weir’s sporadic solo outings), but just as often they emerge as one of the most elegant solutions to the post-Garcia conundrum. There is no lead guitarist in Wolf Bros, and when Weir does expand the group’s lineup, he brings in keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, pedal steel player Greg Leisz, and a rotating cast of horn players, dubbed the Wolfpack, to add color. Weir takes center stage and stays put, often wearing a cowboy hat, perfecting his role as a grizzled road dog. There have been previous stints where Weir assumed center stage, rather than looking for someone to fill the space left by Garcia, but Wolf Bros have lasted long enough to establish its own rugged and spacious approach to the music. It feels like a tacit acknowledgement of the need to move on, implying that if Weir is to fully embody the legacy he helped build, part of that is finding other ways to live inside it.