Bob Weir Tickets

Details of Bob Weir and the Ticket Luck value

Robert Hall Weir a.k.a Bob Weir was born October 16, 1947, is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist.

The pioneer of the Grateful Dead, Bob Weir's musical inheritance will be of an utterly strange rhythm guitar player and songwriter who grew up in one of the most lasting outside bands of the 1960s.

He was adopted by a rich California engineer. Weir's extreme, undiagnosed dyslexia gave him trouble at school. He was shifted to a boarding school for being a troublemaker. There, he met future songwriting partner John Perry Barlow. After being kicked out of the school, Weir returned to the Bay Area, where he came into contact with musicians like Jerry Garcia, New Riders on the Purple Sage founder David Nelson, and Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. A series of jug bands eventually morphed into the electrified Warlocks who, in turn, became the Grateful Dead following a series of gigs at Ken Kesey's Acid Tests.

Weir came up with his own unique style, with Jerry Garcia's guitaring and the futuristic bass style of Phil Lesh, who joined the Dead as a newcomer to his instrument after studying trumpet and serial music with composer Luciano Berio at Mills College in the early '60s. The Dead's sound emerged as a mind-blowing fusion of genres. Weir, as a rhythm player gave a better sound to the music.

Soon, Weir started producing songs in his own distinct style, with an amalgam of American style and the odd voices he was an expert in. As the health of Dead frontman Ron Pigpen McKernan declined, Weir replaced him, with a newer stage personality to match it. His first solo album, Ace, released in 1972, featured Weir and the rest og the groupees

Through the late '70s, and especially during 1975, Weir toured and recorded with a number of groups, including Kingfish and Bobby and the Midnites. Kingfish was by far the most successful of these efforts. Listened to in retrospect, Bobby and the Midnites sounds grounded in the period. More importantly, though, Weir's guitar style was developed in specific response to the situation of the Grateful Dead and rarely works successfully without his counterparts in Garcia and Lesh.

Weir remained with the DEAD through the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, touring continuously and finally earned success with the 1987 album In the Dark. With Garcia's addition problems worsening, Weir found himself increasingly in the position of de facto bandleader. When Garcia died in 1995, Weir had recently formed the Ratdog Revue (soon shortened to Ratdog), with bassist Rob Wasserman and former Primus drummer Jay Lane.

In 2000, Ratdog released their first album, Evening Moods. In the summers of 1998 and 2000, Weir teamed up with several former Dead bandmates to tour as the Other Ones, releasing a live album in 1999.

Throughout his career, Weir ? a versatile musician, has used a wide variety of instruments and equipment. Early pictures of The Warlocks in concert show him playing a Gretsch Duo-Jet, and after the Warlocks changed to the Grateful Dead, Weir briefly played a Rickenbacker 330 as well as a Fender Telecaster before settling on his primary guitar for the following decade, the Gibson ES-335. Weir typically played a cherry red 1965 ES-335 until the band's break in 1974, although he did occasionally use a Gibson ES-345. On certain occasions, Weir played a black Gibson Les Paul in 1971. During the early 70s, Weir also used a 1961 or '62 Gibson Les Paul. This guitar has the body style recognized today as the Gibson SG, and featured the infamous sideways vibrato.

In 1974, Weir began working with Jeff Hasselberger at Ibanez to develop a custom instrument. Weir began playing the Ibanez 2681 during the recording of Blues for Allah; this was a testbed instrument with sliding pickups that Hasselberger used to develop several additional 2681s for use onstage, as well as Weir's custom Cowboy Fancy guitar, which he played from 1979 until the mid-80s. Weir began using a Modulus Blackknife later, and continued to play the Blackknife, along with a crossbreed Modulus/Casio guitar for the Space segment of Grateful Dead concerts for the rest of that band's history. Weir's acoustic guitars include several Martins, a Guild, an Ovation, and a line of Alvarez-Yairi signature models.