MUSIC

50 years on, Bob Weir's 'Ace' is an essential part of the Grateful Dead family canon

5 minute read

Alex Biese
Asbury Park Press

There are very few straight lines in the land of the Grateful Dead.

Instead, this is an artistic realm that can be charted nearly exclusively in scenic routes. No two shows were ever the same — heck, no two performances of any song were ever the same. This band demands exploration, rewards patience and thrives on unpredictability.

But even then, there’s 1972’s “Ace.”

Billed as the debut solo album from singer and guitarist Bob Weir, “Ace” featured backing accompaniment from guitarist Jerry Garcia, drummer Bill Kreutzmann, bassist Phil Lesh, pianist Keith Godchaux and singer Donna Jean Godchaux, also known as the then-current lineup of the Dead, save for harmonica player Ron “Pigpen” McKernan.

Bob Weir and Wolf Bros. featuring the Wolfpack, pictured performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in April 2022. Weir is celebrating the 50th anniversary of his album "Ace" with a deluxe edition available Friday, Jan. 13, via Rhino.

The album has lyrics by the Dead’s official wordsmiths, Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow, and it was an “Ace” single, “One More Saturday Night,” that the Dead were touring in support of in their legendary trek across western Europe in the spring of 1972.

Seven of the eight songs on “Ace” became live fixtures for the Dead. “Walk in the Sunshine,” though, was never played live by the band, and it’s only been performed in concert by Weir twice in the last 50 years.

So yeah, “Ace” has always been an odd bird in the Dead’s discography — and the fact that its 50th anniversary is being celebrated 51 years after its release won’t do anything to change that perception.

But as a new deluxe edition being released via Rhino on Friday indicates, it’s an essential component of the Dead canon, rich with material that continues to demand close listening from fans and reinterpretation from musicians after half a century.

“Ace” arrived amid the three-year flurry of activity that included the Dead’s “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty” LPs in 1970; the self-titled live album colloquially known as “Skull and Roses” in 1971; and then the “Europe ’72” live album, released the same year as drummer Mickey Hart’s “Rolling Thunder” and Jerry Garcia’s “Garcia” solo LP.

Bob Weir and Wolf Bros. featuring the Wolfpack, pictured performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in April 2022.

But unlike so much of the sonically expansive work of the Dead family, “Ace” — akin to the Dead-adjacent self-titled debut album by the New Riders of the Purple Sage from the year before — is remarkable for how straightforward it is. It plainly makes the case for Weir as one of America’s great frontmen, with his Dead comrades enthusiastically giving their all to the campaign.

From the “Devil with a Blue Dress”-style rave-up of the album opener “Greatest Story Ever Told” coupled with its Old Testament lyrics, Weir boldly takes a holy rock ’n’ roller stand, arguing that the populist music that serves as our cultural bedrock deserves its own prominent place in humanity’s history.

There’s the Marty Robbins pastiche “Mexicali Blues,” the timeless weekend anthem “One More Saturday Night” (there’s always one more of those just a few days away), the lonesome hitchhiker ode “Black-Throated Wind,” all building to the wild blue yonder psychedelic wisdom in the “Cassidy” closer.

Weir takes the sounds and stories of America and plays them back to us, presented with his own idiosyncratic cowboy of the wild psychic range lilt.

It’s a wonderful body of work, and the new deluxe edition mixed by Derek Featherstone and mastered by David Glasser gives the songs the proper grandiose scope. But the original album only tells half the story.

It turns out a direct line does in fact run from the album’s recording in early 1972 at Wally Heider’s Studio in San Francisco to the here and now.

Bob Weir and Wolf Bros. featuring the Wolfpack, pictured performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in April 2022.

Weir, in addition to celebrating the Dead’s legacy with Dead and Company for its final run of arenas and amphitheaters across the country this summer, is also on the road with a configuration known as Bobby Weir and Wolf Bros. featuring the Wolfpack — a robust ensemble that combines elements of roots, rock, classical and jazz music in fulfillment of a sonic promise made by “Ace.”

The new mix of “Ace” is sure to emphasize the album’s use of horns, strings and Garcia’s striking work on the pedal steel guitar. Not coincidentally, these are all prominent factors in the Wolf Bros.’ current sound. Notably, the deluxe edition of “Ace” is paired with a live recording of Weir, Wolf Bros. and the Wolfpack performing the album in its entirety at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on April 3, 2022.

The Radio City show, featuring guest appearances from Tyler Childers and Brittney Spencer, is a celebration of these songs, brilliantly illustrating how every musical move Weir has made over the last 50 years has led him to where he is now, making the music he’s always been meant to make.

Take the centerpiece of “Ace,” “Playing in the Band.” It’s one of the most well-worn songs in the Dead repertoire, but its performance here is revelatory. The lush horn section, coupled with the studious piano of Jeff Chimenti, turns the song majestic, then sublime. It’s played with a jazz band’s confident looseness and a certain shaggy precision, sounding like the northern California cousin of Steely Dan’s “Aja” in its brass-tinted haze. It’s a landscape painting in sound waves of grain.

Bob Weir and Wolf Bros. featuring the Wolfpack and Brittney Spencer, pictured performing at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in April 2022.

Then things get even better, as “Playing in the Band” segues into a seldom-lovelier “Looks Like Rain.” Arguably Weir and Barlow’s finest composition, “Looks Like Rain” represented a turning point toward maturity for Weir as an artist when it was new. It’s an incredibly adult look at loss, rich with pathos and nuance.

With the Wolfpack, as previously heard on last year’s “Live in Colorado Vol. 2,” “Looks Like Rain” sounds just about perfect in its weathered beauty, the pedal steel guitar of Barry Sless evoking parts last played live by Garcia during the 1972 European trek. The Radio City performance is also bolstered by vocals from Spencer, turning the song from one man’s ruminations into a lovers’ parting duet.

Both the live and studio versions of “Ace” wrap up with “Cassidy,” a song with Barlow lyrics that must have felt prophetic 51 years ago and hit remarkably close to the bone today: “Fare thee well now, let your life proceed by its own design. Nothing to tell now, let the words be yours, I'm done with mine.”

“Ace” arrived as a testament to Weir’s overall power as a performer. And it thrives through the generations because of the songs. The words, the music, all of it — they started as his. Now they’re all of ours, and they’ve never sounded better.

Info: "Ace: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition," available as a double-CD set and on digital streaming services via Rhino on Friday, Jan. 13. A newly-remastered version of the original album will be released on "high roller" pearl white vinyl the same day exclusively through Dead.net, with a black vinyl version to follow on Friday, Feb. 3.

Go: Weir returns to the road with Wolf Bros. and the Wolf Pack for a tour starting Thursday, Feb. 2, at the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, S.C. Area performances take place Feb. 7, 8, 10 and 11 at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, N.Y. Visit bobweir.net for a full itinerary, tickets and more information.

Alex Biese has been writing about art, entertainment, culture and news on a local and national level for more than 15 years. Alex can be reached at abiese@gannett.com and on Twitter at@ABieseAPP.