Bob Weir Tickets : He Is Known For His Unique Style Of Complex Voiceleading

Bob Weir is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist, most recognized as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the Grateful Dead disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with The Other Ones, later known as The Dead, together with other former members of the Grateful Dead.

Weir also founded and played in several other bands during and after his career with the Grateful Dead, including Kingfish, the Bob Weir Band, Bobby and the Midnites, RatDog, and his newest band Furthur, co-led by former Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh.[1During his career with the Grateful Dead, Weir played mostly rhythm guitar and sang most of the band's rock-n-roll tunes . He is known for his unique style of complex voiceleading, bringing unusual depth and a new approach to the role of rhythm guitar expression.

Weir was born in San Francisco, California and raised by his adoptive parents in the suburb of Atherton. He began playing guitar at age thirteen after less successful experimentation with the piano and the trumpet. He had trouble in school because of undiagnosed dyslexia and he was expelled from nearly every school he attended, including Menlo Atherton High School in Atherton[2] and Fountain Valley School in Colorado. At Fountain Valley he met John Perry Barlow, who later wrote the lyrics to a number of Grateful Dead songs.

On New Year's Eve, 1963, 16-year-old Weir and another underage friend were wandering the back alleys of Palo Alto, looking for a club that would admit them, when they heard banjo music. They followed the music to its source, Dana Morgan's Music Store. Here, a young Jerry Garcia, oblivious to the date, was waiting for his students to arrive.

Weir and Garcia spent the night playing music together and then decided to form a band. The Beatles significantly influenced their musical direction. "The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock 'n' roll band," said Bob Weir. "What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn't think of anything else more worth doing." Originally called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, the band was later renamed The Warlocks and eventually the Grateful Dead.

Early pictures of The Warlocks in concert show him playing a Gretsch Duo-Jet,and after the Warlocks became the Grateful Dead, Weir briefly played a Rickenbacker 365, a Guild Starfire IV acoustic-electric as well as a Fender Telecaster before settling on for the following decade, the Gibson ES-335.Weir usually played a cherry red 1965 ES-335 until the band's hiatus in 1974, although he did occasionally use a Gibson ES-345. Weir played a black Gibson Les Paul in 1971. Weir can also be seen playing a sunburst ES-335 in The Grateful Dead Movie, filmed in October 1974. During the early 1970s, Weir also used a 1961 or 1962 Gibson SG.

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 1976 until the mid-1980s.

Weir began using a Modulus Blackknife at that point, and continued to play the Blackknife, along with a hybrid 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.Of late, photos on Rat-Dog.com show Weir playing most often a Modulus G3FH custom and his returned to use Gibson ES-335. He has seemingly retired a 1956 Fender Telecaster previously owned by his late half-brother, James Parber.