Well I’ll be damned. I didn’t think Bob Weir, the eternal boy howdy of the Grateful Dead, had it in him. After decades of coasting—his last great solo offering, 1972’s Ace, was released a shocking 44 years ago—here comes Weir, looking as weather worn as Grizzly Adams in his white beard, or like the great D.B. Cooper finally emerging from the Washington state wilderness, with an album that is not just good, but downright excellent. It just goes to show you—never count a fellow out until he’s six feet underground, and for at least three days at that.
2016’s Blue Mountain is an album of “cowboy songs,” according to Weir’s collaborator Josh Ritter, and was inspired, according to Weir, by his days as a 15-year-old ranch hand in Wyoming. But this is not a collection of other people’s music; Weir had a hand in writing the music for every song, while Ritter both contributed to the music and penned the better part of the lyrics. And so far as the descriptions of it as “campfire music” go I disagree; many of these songs are far too lush and musically sophisticated to cook weenies on a stick to. But two things they are for sure: beautiful and thoughtful. They demonstrate that the eternal Peter Pan of the Dead has finally grown up and gotten wise, and has honed his songwriting skills in the process. Compared to his previous solo outing, 1978’s Heaven Help the Fool, which utilized lots of studio hacks and frankly sucked like an industrial vacuum cleaner, Blue Mountain is a cool breath of fresh Wyoming air.
Blue Mountain is the work of a man who has finally come face to face with his own mortality, as Weir demonstrates on the elegiac and lovely album closer “One More River to Cross,” in which he acknowledges he’s tired but nearing that final home in the bye-and-bye. And the very rhythmic “Lay My Lily Down” is an unreconstructed death ballad complete with rattling chains, and has Weir singing, “Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow/Dig a hole in the cold, cold ground/Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow/To lay my Lily down.” Weir, whose vocals during the Grateful Dead years generally left me cold because, well, he never managed to make the words he was singing sound convincing, sounds like the real thing here, just as he does on the great “Only a River,” a somber but utterly sublime paean to the Shenandoah River. “Only a river gonna make things right,” he sings, longing to see that lovely river once more.
“Cottonwood Lullaby” is indeed a cowboy song, albeit a very spiritual and beautiful one. The backing vocalists are great as Weir sings, “Goodnight all you cowboys” in a voice that conveys, hallelujah, some real emotion at long last. He says goodbye to Wyoming, says Jackson Hole “is not that far,” and invokes the angels in a song that almost brings me to tears. “Gonesville” is a catchy shuffle—Weir himself has described it as “a take on a rockabilly tune”—with a railroad whistle of a harmonica and some very cool and resonant guitar, and it has everything you could possibly want in it—thunder and rain, a mystery train, and Gonesville of course, which could be Heaven or one helluva night on the town. The chorus is killer too. “Ki-Yi Bossie” is a song about a night in a church basement, where a 12-step meeting is being held “under harsh fluorescent light.” Ramblin’ Jack Elliott & The Ramblin’ Jackernacle Choir add some yodeling and coyote howls, but otherwise it’s just Weir and an acoustic guitar, singing a bona fide campfire song he says was inspired by an ailing John Perry Barlow, the former Grateful Dead lyricist.
The title of “Gallop on the Run” is totally misleading, as it’s a slow dancer with an almost orchestral background featuring both a shruti box and a bowed guitar (thanks to Nate Martinez and Aaron Dessner, respectively). But it’s definitely moving, as is “Whatever Happened to Rose,” which boasts a big organ sound and a lush alt-country background over which Weir ponders the disappearance of a woman who, or so he swears, would never have left him without saying goodbye. The drumming is martial, the melody is lovely, and Weir’s humming is as good as his singing. And this is yet another tune that has Weir contemplating his mortality, as he lies down beside a “poor unmarked grave” to say goodbye to Rose. “Ghost Towns” is another atmospheric number; the backing vocalists sound a cowboy lament, Weir sings, “I know what the ghost towns know/Love comes and goes,” and again that resonant guitar echoes in the background. “Cemeteries choked with weeds,” he sings, and we’re back to the subject of mortality on this very death-obsessed record.
Despite its title, “Darkest Hour” sounds more chipper than most of the songs on the LP. The chorus is great, the instrumental break is otherworldly, and the tune demonstrates that Weir’s employment of every manner of stringed instrument known to man on the LP was an investment worth making. “Blue Mountain” is a simple song, just Weir and an acoustic guitar, and Weir’s lament—“Blue Mountain with a horse head on your side/You’ve stolen my love to keep”—is as strange as the melody is lovely. He was born in a manger in Texas, he sings, and there he stayed until his “welcome wore thin down in Texas/For reasons you probably know,” after which he took to rambling, drinking at the Blue Goose Saloon, and dancing with Mormon girls. As for “Storm Country,” it’s a richly textured tune in which Weir’s vocals have either been rendered to make them unidentifiable or somebody else is doing the singing. (I’m assuming it’s the former, until told otherwise.)
Blue Mountain is indeed a cause for celebration. I, for one, suspected that the best Weir had left in him was another hack studio job like Heaven Help the Fool. I never would have expected a blue mountain with a horse head on its side. No, my compadres, I’d written him off the way I’ve written off Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and God, who doesn’t seem to have any more miracles left in him than Dylan or the Stones do. Like I said at the beginning, it just goes to show you. Never count a man out until the referee has counted to 10, the crowd has gone home, and the lights in the arena have been turned off.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
