50 Fun Facts About Bob Weir

Which undiagnosed condition helped get Bob Weir expelled from nearly every school he attended?

Dyslexia made classrooms a struggle for Bob Weir, yet one of the schools that threw him out, Fountain Valley in Colorado, is where he met his future lyricist.

Which instrument, heard outside a music store on New Year's Eve 1963, led Bob Weir to Jerry Garcia?

Banjo music drew the 16-year-old to Dana Morgan's Music Store, where Garcia, oblivious to the date, was waiting for his students. The two played all night and decided to form a band.

Which pop and blues guitarist joined Bob Weir and two Grateful Dead drummers to form Dead & Company?

John Mayer fell for the Dead after Pandora played him their song Althea in 2011. Four years later he invited Weir onto The Late Late Show while guest hosting, and a bond formed.

Bob Weir and Dead & Company played long residencies at Sphere, a giant domed arena in which city?

Las Vegas hosted 30 Sphere shows in 2024 and 18 more in 2025, all of them after the band had wrapped up what it billed as its final tour.

Bob Weir beat 147 other celebrities in 2004 by best predicting the final score of which event?

The Super Bowl pick won him the Scripps Howard Super Sage Award: he called New England over Carolina 33–24, and the game finished 32–29.

Which song co-written by Bob Weir recalls the Grateful Dead's 1970 drug bust in a New Orleans hotel?

Truckin' was the Dead's highest-charting single until Touch of Grey sixteen years later. Weir sings its rapid-fire verses about life on the road.

Bob Weir was arrested in a 1967 marijuana raid on the Grateful Dead's house in which San Francisco district?

Haight-Ashbury was the hippie heartland, and the narcotics agents who came to 710 Ashbury Street brought about a dozen reporters and television crews along to watch.

Which sport did Bob Weir take up in its early years, often heading out with pioneer Gary Fisher?

Mountain biking was so new that MountainBikes, the first company devoted to the machines, was only founded by Gary Fisher and a partner in 1979. Weir lived among hillside trails and rode them with him.

Which British group did Bob Weir credit with turning his early jug band into a rock and roll band?

The Beatles made playing rock look irresistible, Weir recalled, so Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions put down the jugs and plugged in.

What did Bob Weir create with his sister Wendy in 1991 to raise money for reforestation in Africa?

A children's book called Panther Dream follows a boy into the rainforest to find food for his family. Wendy painted the pictures, and the publisher donated the proceeds.

With which Grateful Dead bandmate did Bob Weir co-found Furthur in 2009 and tour as a duo in 2018?

Phil Lesh and Weir billed their 2018 duo tour simply as Bobby and Phil, more than fifty years after they first shared a stage.

Which Chicago stadium hosted both Jerry Garcia's last Grateful Dead show and Bob Weir's 2015 reunion concerts?

Soldier Field welcomed the surviving members back 20 years almost to the day after that 1995 finale, and the first night's crowd of 70,764 set an attendance record for the stadium.

Bob Weir and former Grateful Dead bandmates played two 2008 benefit concerts for which presidential candidate?

Barack Obama brought the surviving members back together under the banner Deadheads for Obama, and a full tour as the Dead followed in 2009.

Which Washington arts award did Bob Weir and his surviving Grateful Dead bandmates receive in December 2024?

Kennedy Center Honors recognised the band thirty years after it entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Weir was at the ceremony in person.

Bob Weir's 2016 album of cowboy songs, Blue Mountain, drew on his teenage job as a ranch hand in which state?

Wyoming is where a 15-year-old Weir worked the ranch, and some fifty years later the memory gave him the highest-charting album of his solo career.

Under which name did Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia's electric band play in 1965 before becoming the Grateful Dead?

The Warlocks played their first show at a Menlo Park pizza parlor, then dropped the name on learning that another band had already put out a record under it.

Which role did Bob Weir fill in the Grateful Dead for three decades, playing around Jerry Garcia's solos?

Rhythm guitar was the job of the band's youngest founder, who also sang lead on many of its rock and country-styled songs.

Which American Beauty song by Bob Weir and Robert Hunter often ended live with a coda called Sunshine Daydream?

Sugar Magnolia was the Dead's second most-played song, and the band sometimes held the coda back for a whole set, or even for several concerts.

Farm Sanctuary, an animal charity Bob Weir championed, was first funded by selling what at Grateful Dead concerts?

Vegetarian hot dogs bankrolled the animal charity's start in 1986. Its first rescue was Hilda, a sheep found alive behind a stockyard.

Bob Weir sat on the board of HeadCount, a nonprofit that sets up tables at concerts to do what?

Register voters: that is the whole mission of HeadCount, co-founded in 2004 by the bass player of the Disco Biscuits, and it has signed up well over a million people.

Which school friend of Bob Weir became his lyricist and later co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation?

John Perry Barlow, a cattle rancher, took over as Weir's wordsmith in 1971 after an exasperated Robert Hunter handed the guitarist over to him following a backstage row.

Which jam-band guitarist filled Jerry Garcia's old role beside Bob Weir at the 2015 Fare Thee Well stadium concerts?

Trey Anastasio, the frontman of Phish, shared the singing too, and the pay-per-view of the shows drew over 400,000 subscriptions, then a record for a music event.

Furthur, a band Bob Weir co-founded in 2009, took its name from the psychedelic bus of which novelist?

Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters crossed America in the painted 1939 bus in 1964, and Furthur was the word on its destination sign.

Which Grammy-winning producer of the Rolling Stones played upright bass in Bob Weir's trio Wolf Bros?

Don Was, once of the band Was (Not Was), joined Weir and drummer Jay Lane in 2018 and stayed with the group until Weir's death.

Which Bob Weir solo debut was really a Grateful Dead record in disguise, with his bandmates backing him?

Ace even credits its production to everybody involved, and all but one of its songs went on to become staples of the Dead's concerts.

Which Bay Area band did Bob Weir join in the mid-1970s while the Grateful Dead took a break from touring?

Kingfish landed its first record contract once Weir signed on beside his old friend Matthew Kelly, and he left when the Dead went back on the road in 1976.

Which band did Bob Weir form with bassist Rob Wasserman in 1995, shortly before Jerry Garcia's death?

RatDog grew out of a duo Weir and Wasserman had toured for seven years, and it played its first show under that name the day before Garcia died.

Bob Weir sang the prison ballad Mama Tried at hundreds of Grateful Dead shows; which country star wrote it?

Merle Haggard drew on his own stretch in San Quentin for the song, which the Dead played more than 300 times, including at Woodstock.

Which cowboy song by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, sung by Bob Weir, was the Grateful Dead's most-played?

Me and My Uncle turned up in 616 Dead shows, more than any other song. Its tale of a poker game, gunplay and gold suited Weir's love of cowboy ballads.

Which Russian composer did Bob Weir name among the influences on his guitar playing?

Igor Stravinsky, composer of The Rite of Spring, sat on a list of Weir's heroes that also ran from the saxophonist John Coltrane to the gospel bluesman Rev. Gary Davis.

Which jazz pianist from John Coltrane's classic quartet strongly shaped Bob Weir's guitar style?

McCoy Tyner played with ten fingers, yet a bandmate marvelled that Weir could find with four the chord voicings normally heard from a keyboard.

Which jazz fusion drummer of the Mahavishnu Orchestra anchored Bob Weir's 1980s side band Bobby and the Midnites?

Billy Cobham, who had also drummed for Miles Davis, gave the group a jazz-rock edge, and it became better known for its concerts than for its two albums.

Which keyboardist played in the Bob Weir Band in 1978 before joining the Grateful Dead the following year?

Brent Mydland reached Weir through a contact in the duo Batdorf & Rodney, and his tenor soon locked into three-part harmonies with Weir and Jerry Garcia.

Which reggae-tinged Bob Weir song opening Terrapin Station pokes fun at the Grateful Dead's most fanatical followers?

Estimated Prophet lopes along in an odd meter usually counted in seven, and its narrator is a would-be guru modelled on the zealots who sometimes menaced the band.

Which Bob Weir song from his solo debut was named after the baby daughter of a Grateful Dead crew member?

Cassidy honours Cassidy Law, born in 1970, and it also nods to the Beat figure Neal Cassady, whose surname sounds the same.

Which fellow California rock star did Bob Weir credit with inventing the main riff of Playing in the Band?

David Crosby came up with the lick at Mickey Hart's barn and then left. Hart told Weir to make a song out of it, and by the next day he had.

Which animal in a leather collar keeps Bob Weir company in the Grateful Dead's video for Hell in a Bucket?

A duck sits with Weir, who wears a lavender blazer, in a bar full of bikers, and a wooden chair is broken over the singer's head once a fight starts.

Mike Fleiss, who directed the Bob Weir documentary The Other One, created which long-running TV dating show?

The Bachelor made Fleiss a reality TV mogul, yet his film about Weir premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and won an audience award in San Francisco.

Which guitar maker worked with Bob Weir from 1974 on his custom-built model nicknamed Cowboy Fancy?

Ibanez first handed Weir a test guitar with sliding pickups during the Blues for Allah sessions, then built the model he played from 1976 into the mid-1980s.

At which music festival did Bob Weir receive the first-ever Les Paul Spirit Award in June 2016?

Bonnaroo hosted the presentation, where the Les Paul Foundation's director said that Les, were he alive, would surely be experimenting alongside Weir.

Where did Bob Weir play his last concerts, three Dead & Company shows marking the Grateful Dead's 60th anniversary?

Golden Gate Park hosted the three nights in August 2025, soon after Weir was diagnosed with cancer. He died the following January, aged 78.

Bob Weir and Wolf Bros joined which country legend's touring Outlaw Music Festival for seven shows in 2023?

Willie Nelson's travelling festival put Weir's group on the bill that September, complete with the horn and string players it called the Wolfpack.

El Paso, a gunfighter ballad Bob Weir often sang with the Grateful Dead, was first recorded by which country singer?

Marty Robbins won a Grammy for his 1959 original, and Weir once introduced the song from the stage as the Dead's most requested number.

Which Grateful Dead bandmate was nearly fired alongside Bob Weir in 1968 for supposedly holding back the group's jams?

Ron "Pigpen" McKernan took the news hard, while Weir promised to improve. The band even played some shows without the pair before taking both back.

Oteil Burbridge, the bassist beside Bob Weir in Dead & Company, made his name with which Southern rock group?

The Allman Brothers Band had Burbridge on bass from 1997 until it retired in 2014, and a year later he became a founding member of Dead & Company.

TRI Studios, which Bob Weir opened in San Rafael in 2011, was designed mainly to do what?

The studio was built to stream concerts online in high definition, making it a virtual music venue. Furthur played an early pay-per-view show there.

At which London venue did Bob Weir and Wolf Bros play their final symphony concert in June 2025?

The Royal Albert Hall paired the group with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, closing a series that began in 2022 with four sold-out nights in Washington.

Members of which indie rock band curated the tribute album Day of the Dead and backed Bob Weir on tour in 2016?

The National's Dessner brothers produced the charity set, and band members then joined Weir on the Campfire Tour for his album Blue Mountain.

Members of which soft-rock band, David Paich and Mike Porcaro, played on Bob Weir's album Heaven Help the Fool?

Toto's players were among the well-known session musicians hired for the 1978 record, made while a road accident kept the Dead's drummer Mickey Hart off the stage.

Which single from Heaven Help the Fool was Bob Weir's only solo song to reach the Billboard Hot 100?

Bombs Away peaked at number 70, and its parent album stalled one place short of where Weir's first solo record had charted six years earlier.