The world lost Bob Weir, founding member and guitarist of the Grateful Dead, this past weekend. NPR’s Felix Contreras reports on Weir’s life in an interview with recent collaborator, bassist Don Was. Contreras writes:

Over the weekend, Grateful Dead fans the world over mourned the loss of an icon: Bob Weir, guitarist and founding member, had died at 78, leaving listeners and collaborators caught off-guard. Since the 1995 death of lead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia, Weir had been dedicated to carrying on the band’s legacy by way of various projects, presenting Dead songs in new configurations to audiences big and small.

One of Weir’s most recent experiments had been a guitar, bass and drums trio assembled in 2018, which he dubbed Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros. He chose his former Rat Dog bandmate Jay Lane to play drums. For bass, following the same instinct that had brought John Mayer into the touring mega-group Dead & Company a few years earlier, he stretched beyond the band’s established universe of musicians and turned to a renaissance man.

Don Was is one of those music industry figures where you can’t choose a single defining credit. He has produced for the likes of Bonnie Raitt, The Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson, Wayne Shorter and Elton John, served as the music director for numerous all-star group performances, composed for films and, since 2011, led the storied jazz label Blue Note Records as president. Was admits he had only a casual relationship with the Dead’s music when he got the invitation to join Weir’s new trio, but quickly fell in love with the philosophy that had guided the group and its spinoff projects for decades.

“I would say they approached life very much the way they approached songs, which was largely improvisational — stay in the present and feel your way through it,” Was says fondly. “Trust your instincts and proceed without fear.”

With Was on bass, Wolf Bros quickly became an audience favorite, functioning as a more intimate alternative to the festival-sized scale of Dead & Company concerts. In their limited but yearly tours, the ensemble eventually grew to include keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, Greg Leisz on steel guitar and, occasionally, a horn section called The Wolfpack.

Was has long been known for what musicians call “big ears” — an exceptional knack for listening to many kinds of music with a deep appreciation. In an interview conducted just a day after the announcement of Weir’s death, he shares a few stories of his experience from the bandstand.

Felix Contreras: What’s the biggest lesson you learned from Bob Weir in your time playing together?

Don Was: What I learned was to approach both music and life without fear. I’m not saying that I mastered it, but he set me on a course of obliterating self-consciousness and regret and fear about the future when you’re playing music. Just be in the present and trust your instincts, and don’t be afraid to do something that’s going to be perceived as being a mistake. The audience doesn’t mind if you make a mistake, because they know you’re trying to give them something new and original. And that was the point — to do something fresh every single night, to approach these songs like they were brand-new experiences. So every night was an adventure.

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