Poughkeepsie Journal from Poughkeepsie, New York • Page 12

12 COVER STORY FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2003 POUGHKEEPSIE JOURNAL RatDog: Weir performs at Bardavon if you go CONTINUED FROM 3 man was replaced earlier this year by new member Robin Sylvester. Tonight and Saturday, Weir RatDog will play the Beacon Theater in Manhattan. You will on Sunday almost certainly hear new originals, traditional standards and Grateful Dead songs, including a rather jazzy twist on one song that is fairly obscure to the general public but revered as holy scrip ture by Deadheads. Performed live, "Estimated Prophet" captured all of Weir's onstage ego but also gave Garcia a set of chord progressions against which he could deliver the goods as the signature soloist he was. The genesis of this song can be traced back to one of the thousands of anonymous hotels where the Dead have stayed while on the road over decades.

"When we were traveling, we'd go through the Bible," Weir recalled. "You would pull out the Gideon Bible. During dull moments you break out the Bible and read that." One night after the show and post show parties had ended, after everyone had gone to bed. Weir got a phone call in his hotel room. "It's Jerry," Weir said, laughing.

"He said, 'Hey man, read this. Tell me what you think of Garcia had stumbled across the books of Daniel and Ezekiel in the Old Testament and was apparently so jazzed by what he had read that he felt compelled to share them with Weir. Both were dazzled by the passages, narratives that Weir believed were relaying, in part, the journeyr of alien beings to Earth during BUv lical times. "You get into some pretty hairy stuff four floating heads, wings, surrounded by a wing of fire," Weir said of the Bible. Inspired, Weir shared the passages with his lyricist, John Perry Barlow, and the result became a staple of live performances for nearly two decades, in addition to the opening track on the Dead's 1977 album, "Terrapin Station." "Standing on the beachThe sea will part before me, (Fire wheel burnin' in the air)," go the lyrics.

"You will follow meAnd we will ride to glory, (Way up, in the middle of the air.) And I'll call down thunder and speak the sameAs my words fill the sky with flameMight and Glory's gonna be my name.They gonna light my way." The beauty of the moment "I took up music to begin with because it does something that words by themselves can't do," Weir said. "It takes you to a place that words by themselves can't take you to. That said, for most folks, if experiencing the moment and when they leave that moment, they just know if there and they know they can go back there in another concert Or maybe it will come their way in another experience. But there are some folks who aren't prepared to leave that moment and try to take that with them and these are the folks that are walking a very, very perilous path, because if you can't let go of that moment those people are the acid burnouts who are trying to live in that moment or keep it always and they miss the appreciation, the beauty of the moment that it is fleeting. And they think they can live there that's something you can't have, it's elusive.

If you spend your time trying to reconnect with it rather than being open to visiting it every now and again, you're basically chasing your tail. If there is a message in 'Estimated that's it." Weir knows plenty about seizing the moment away 'from his five bandmates in the Grateful Dead and the thousands of fans who followed the band endlessly around the country. There was the Dead show on April 7, 1987, when Weir was the only member of the band who didn't deliver his part on one of his own songs, "Hell in a Bucket" and he was the one who should have been singing as the first verse began. After a train wreck false start in front of 20,000 fans at the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey, the entire band, including Weir, performed flawlessly. Another memorable moment occurred on Sept.

24, 1994, during a concert at the Berkeley Community Theater in California by a pared down, acoustic version of the CONCERT 1 6 East Main St Wappingers Falls, NY 845 297 9222 Cheap Chic wSsL $1695 Your choice ot soup, salad or antlpasto traditional. cnace ot entree, any of our pastas, tlsh, chicken and veal, and dessert. i Advance Tickets US i 1 BH Must ht Zl to Drini. CUP this Ad for $5 savings. ml or visa Accepted.

vOy meets ltr RefreshmentsDaticmg LSVVI 1 I samraay Nov. 29, 8pm Tire Polish Carter North Bridge Street Poughkeepsie, NY 845 569 8205 Presented try 1HY Productions, lucR Hyde Park Gallery els' imP' 4068 Albany Post Road I Hyde Park, NY 229 8903 What Bob Weir RatDog. When Sunday, 7 p.m. Where Bardavon 1 869 Opera House, 35 Market Poughkeepsie. Tickets $42.50 for Bardavon members.

Information Call the Bar davon Box Office at 845 473 2072 or visit www.bardavoru org. Tickets are also available from Ticketmaster, 845 454 3388 or www.ticketmaster. com. Grateful Dead. Weir purposefully pulled a cord out of his guitar, sending a very loud, horrific crackle through the theater's public address system, eliciting moans and groans from the audience.

"I left home on the Prankster bus," Weir said of the infamous bus on which Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters rode around the country during the 1960s, including through Millbrook. "I was 17, maybe 18. One thing that I've learned for sure is that over the years on the road you keep it entertaining as a major accomplishment. You want to keep it entertaining." Borden said Weir's "entertaining side" is part of his draw. "Bobby is like the class clown," he said.

"You never know what he's going to do." Along with moments considered amusing by some and irritating by others came the magic nights, when Weir, Garcia and bass player Phil Lesh would seemingly come together by some unspoken cue in a solitary musical moment forged out of complete dissonant chaos, causing a hockey arena full of fans to erupt. These days, those moments must be found outside of the Grateful Dead, with RatDog or perhaps in The Dead, the revamped lineup created early this year with each surviving band member from the Grateful Dead and some new additions. But the thread linking all for Weir is performing live. "For me, if yoga," he said. That's when I' merging with the divine.

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