Taking a Song for a Little Walk in the Woods

Summary

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More than 30 years after the Grateful Dead first commented about "what a long, strange trip it's been" in the song "Truckin'," the group's rhythm guitarist, Bob Weir, is still out there and on the bus, riding the endless highway of one-night stands straight past his 58th birthday on Oct. 16. The identities of Weir's fellow travelers, however, have changed over the years.

Technically speaking, the Grateful Dead is no more. It had successfully weathered earlier deaths, beginning with the original keyboardist, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, who died in 1973. It was the death in 1995 of Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead's lead guitarist, main vocalist, songwriter, and spiritual leader, that seems to have driven the final nail in the coffin. The band briefly reformed recently, adding young Warren Haynes to fill Garcia's lead guitar void and simply calling itself the Dead (no longer, it would appear, grateful about it). But that incarnation, too, has passed.

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Extract

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Taking a Song for a Little Walk in the Woods

These days, when Weir gears up for a show, it's at the head of the six-man band he calls Ratdog. The band visits Santa Fe on Saturday, Dec. 3, for a concert at the Lensic Performing Arts Center. When we c...

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