Bobby Weir, invigorated by friendships with John Mayer, Sammy Hagar, believes 'live music has to rebound'

With his grizzled beard and weathered brow, you can see the rock ’n’ roll longevity etched into Bobby Weir’s face.

At 74, the acclaimed rhythm guitarist for The Grateful Dead, Dead & Company and Wolf Bros – just a sampling of his resume – is still joyfully immersing himself in music and thrilled to have at least one tour in his immediate future.

Weir and Wolf Bros, the group he formed in 2018 with Don Was and Jay Lane, will be joined by keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, pedal steel player Barry Sless and the string and brass quintet The Wolfpack when they hit the road March 9 in Nashville, Tennessee, for a run of 13 cities.

But first, the Wolf Bros firstr vinyl collection of recorded material, “Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros: Live in Colorado,” will land Friday.

While Weir’s February gigs with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., were bumped to Oct. 5-6 and 8-9 because of COVID-19 concerns, he’s still working on – “God willing,” he says – a summer tour with Dead & Company.

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That outfit, featuring Grateful Dead members Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, along with John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti, remain a touring behemoth. Last year, the band ranked No. 5 on Pollstar’s Year End Worldwide Tours chart with a gross of $50.2 million.

Chatting from his home in Mill Valley, California, Weir talks to USA TODAY about his love of vinyl, the “fun” of performing with Mayer and his musical legacy.

Question: You have the shows coming up this fall in Washington, D.C., with the National Symphony Orchestra. How challenging is it to rework your music into a symphony setting?

Bobby Weir: The challenge is enormous, but as you might expect that’s why we did it. You live from challenge to challenge, in the art world at least. Otherwise, what are you doing? We could have done the shows (as planned in February), we’re pretty much ready to go. But the extra time we have will give me time to sit with the audio fellows we have and just learn how to breathe more life into the arrangements. With the Wolf Bros tour, it’s looking like, knock on wood, the omicron effect will be in the rearview mirror. Here’s hoping something else doesn’t pop up.

Q: With both Wolf Bros and the symphony, you’re working in a more structured musical environment than the improv-heavy side of the Dead. Does that challenge different parts of your musical brain?

Weir: It’s really not that different. There’s a number of bars on the chart and that’s how many bars you’re going to play, no more than that. Wolf Bros is not going to do anywhere near what the Dead does and I’m getting so I know the arrangements.

Q: You and Sammy Hagar get together to jam sometimes. That does not seem like the most likely pairing?

Weir: We’re neighbors and he’s a dear friend of mine. We go back years, and the unlikeliness of the pairing is something that we delight in.

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Q: How is your Sweetwater Music Hall holding up, given the continued challenges to independent venues during the pandemic? (Weir is among the venue’s ownership group.)

Weir: It’s still limping along. The pandemic has been really, really hard on clubs. One of the things we did is turn it into a nonprofit and that has helped us a lot. We were running it for profit – though it never really made one. Live music has to rebound. I can’t imagine living in a culture where live music on the club level would no longer be available. It would be a world I don’t want to live in and I don’t think I’m alone in that feeling. The government has to step in and in this case, it did. We got our Small Business Loan and that helped substantially. Clubs have had to make some pretty serious reductions in cost, but we’ve done that and there’s still music, and that’s what we need.

Q: This new Wolf Bros release is the first on vinyl. What do you still love about that format?

Weir: It just sounds so much better. The audio information you’re getting is more complete than what you’re getting on most any digital medium. (The album) is a pretty good representation of how we sounded in June! We’ve been rehearsing a bit and I tend to think the band sounds better.

Q: When you’re with Dead & Company, what do you love most about playing with John Mayer onstage?

Weir: John is endlessly inventive and he loves the songs. He throws himself at them and he’s a fabulous technician and can play pretty much anything you throw at him. It’s a lot of fun playing with him. Sometimes fun isn’t the most apt word I’d use to describe what we’re doing. Maybe it’s something else. It’s deep and it’s living, and that’s what we do, those moments of living.

Q: Aside from The Grateful Dead, you have such an incredible history with Furthur, Ratdog, Dead & Company and Wolf Bros. What do you think your musical legacy is after so many decades of creating?

Weir: I’m going to let people in the future decide the legacy. There are great musical cultures and great music to be found. But there is nothing quite as magical as the American songbook. I spent 60 years or so delving as deep into it and as intently as I can. I just love the stuff so much. I wish I could settle in on a particular vein of American music heritage, be it country, blues, R&B, but I just love it all and I try to play it all. I guess in years to come when people listen to me they’ll make note of the fact that he tried to play it all. We’ll see how successful people think I got.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bob Weir keeps moving beyond the Grateful Dead with Mayer, Wolf Bros