Remembering Grateful Dead Founding Member Bob Weir

Fresh Air

NPR

Society & Culture, Books, Tv & Film, Arts

4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2026

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We remember Bob Weir, founding member of the Grateful Dead, who died last week at 78. The guitarist spoke with Fresh Air Executive Producer Sam Briger in 2016 about working on a ranch, learning to ride, and getting to know cowboys. Also, we remember jazz singer Rebecca Kilgore, who was known for her interpretations of the Great American Songbook. She died at age 76. Kilgore often performed and recorded with pianist Dave Frishberg. We listen to excerpts of their in-studio concerts with Terry Gross.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies.
0:03.5	Trucking, got my chips cash in. Keep trucking. Like the dude of man together.
0:12.7	Oh, less in line. Just keep chucking. Oh, ho.
0:19.1	Bob Weir, the guitarist, singer, songwriter, and founding member of The Grateful Dead died recently at the age of 78.
0:27.2	The Dead were a unique phenomenon of rock and roll.
0:30.2	Spawned by a chance meeting between Weir and Jerry Garcia on New Year's Eve in 1963, the band did plenty of recording, but was probably best known for
0:39.5	its long improvisational concerts, attended by dedicated followers who traveled on the band's
0:45.4	tour route and camped out at multiple shows. While Jerry Garcia was the band's lead guitarist
0:51.3	and singer, Weir became known for his inventive rhythm guitar.
0:55.6	Bob Porellas of the New York Times wrote that Weir strummed his rhythm chords lightly,
1:00.4	nimbly, and malleably, charting and shaping the ever-shifting undercurrents of the dead's
1:05.5	songs and jams. While the band officially ended with Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, surviving members continued playing their songs in new groups, including Dead and Company.
1:16.6	Weir and the other members of the Grateful Dead were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, given a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2007 and named Kennedy Center
1:28.3	Honoris in 2004.
1:31.5	Bob Weir continued to play his own music and was on our show in 2016 when he'd released his
1:37.1	first album of original songs in 30 years, titled Blue Mountain.
1:41.8	Many of the songs were co-written with Josh Ritter.
1:44.9	Weir said the album was inspired by the time when, as a teen, he ran away to work on a cattle ranch in Wyoming.
1:51.2	The ranch was owned by the parents of John Perry Barlow, who later became Weir's songwriting partner.
1:57.4	Weir spoke with fresh air Sam Brigger, and they started with the opening track from the album called Only a River.
2:03.6	I was born up in the mountains,
2:24.3	raised up in a desert town,
	...

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