See Video of Bob Weir & Wolf Bros. Playing "Truckin'" in Simpsonville SC, 2023

By Casey Nicholson

Bob Weir at CCNB Ampthitheatre in Simpsonville, SC in 2023.

The world lost a legend on Saturday, when founding Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist and co-lead vocalist Bob Weir passed away. Known amongst fans of The Dead as “The Other One”, Weir was the more reserved of the band’s two front men. The late Jerry Garcia was prone to take the spotlight, both as the band’s primary lead guitarist and lead vocalist, as well as being the face of the band in promotional interviews. Video of Garcia and Weir on The Late Show with David Letterman reveals Weir’s more introverted personality, the reserved yin to Garcia’s more outspoken yang.

And yet, it is Weir’s voice that rings out on the verse of what may be the Grateful Dead’s best-known song, “Truckin’” from the group’s 1970 breakthrough album American Beauty. The song starts off with Garcia on the chorus, before Weir enters with the story arc that proceeds throughout the tune: “Arrows of neon and flashing marquees down on Main Street; Chicago, New York, Detroit, and it’s all the same street.” Aside from the later hit “Touch of Grey”, which saw heavy airplay on MTV in 1987, “Truckin’” is widely considered the Grateful Dead’s most known song, alongside other perennial favorites like “Casey Jones”, “Ripple”, and “Friend of the Devil”. Garcia took the lead on each of the latter songs, but Weir was not without significant contributions as lead vocalist in the band, offering up songs like “Sugar Magnolia”, “Playing in the Band”, and “One More Saturday Night”.

In the 30 years after Jerry Garcia’s death, Weir carried the torch of the band’s music through a variety of offshoots of the Grateful Dead, including The Dead and Ratdog. In more recent years, Weir teamed up with other surviving members of the group alongside Dead super-fan John Mayer and bass virtuoso Oteil Burbridge for what would become the most popular of the Weir-led iterations of the post-Garcia era, Dead & Company. In between the latter group’s tours, Weir formed his own solo project, Bob Weir & Wolf Bros., which saw several stops in Asheville, Knoxville, and other Appalachian cities in recent years.

In 2023 Bob Weir & Wolf Bros. played in Simpsonville, South Carolina, for a stop on Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival. That performance just outside of Greenville, SC, near the termination of the southeastern Appalachians, would be one of Weir's last performances in the Appalachian region, with the group playing in Saratoga, New York and Shelburne, Vermont within days of the Simpsonville appearance.

Hear Bob Weir & Wolf Brothers Play “Truckin’” from that Simpsonville show here, in what would be one of Weir’s last performances in the Appalachian Mountains:

Photo and Video by Casey Nicholson.