Theodore Orenstein

Bob Weir, a founding member of The Grateful Dead has passed away at the age of 78. He told stories of myth, spirituality and belonging

As a teenage kid wandering around Palo Alto, California, on New Year’s Eve, 1963. He heard banjo music drifting from somewhere nearby — familiar yet mysterious, close enough to follow. Something in that sound felt like truth to him. He followed the music down an alley and met a fellow traveler: a young man named Jerry Garcia. Instruments come out and a jam began. In that unplanned encounter, something new was born.

For the next three decades, Weir and Garcia — alongside Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and a widening circle of collaborators — led not just a band but a community on a shared quest. Dead shows were less performances than gatherings: temporary villages where strangers became companions through sound, attention and improvisation. That era came to a shuddering halt in 1995, when Garcia died just weeks after the band’s final concert at Soldier Field in Chicago. For many, it felt as though the music itself had stopped, but Weir kept following the thread.
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