Q & A with BOB WEIR : Dead Ahead, Though It May Take Some Time

It’s been more than three months since the death of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia threw the future of the rock institution into uncertainty. But Garcia’s longtime band-mate Bob Weir betrays little anxiety about the Dead’s ability to continue when the time comes.

Meantime, the guitarist is keeping busy on several fronts. He’s leading a band called Ratdog, which includes bassist Rob Wasserman and Dead keyboardist Vince Welnick (the group plays the Wiltern Theatre Dec. 8-9).

A major sports fan, the 48-year-old Weir plays touch football in a league near his Mill Valley home and has sung the national anthem at Raiders, Warriors and Giants games. He’s also writing songs for a musical called “Satchel,” based on the life of the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige. He is a story consultant on the project, which will be premiered by the American Music Theatre in Philadelphia next fall. Weir spoke about the project--and the Dead--recently by phone from his woodsy home.

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Question: How are you handling the loss of Jerry Garcia?

Answer: Well, I tell you what, I’ve been too busy to find the time to mope and grieve and do all the things that one normally associates with the loss of a friend. And I think that’s probably exactly as Jerry would have had it. The stuff I’m doing, it’s fun and meaningful and, like I say, keeping me way too busy to focus on that. So I’m doing just fine.

Q: Is there a future for the Grateful Dead?

A: Yeah. Exactly what, exactly how, I don’t know. We’re going to take a little while and reinvent ourselves.

Q: There are a million rumors about how you might reconfigure the band.

A: Yeah. I should probably get on the WELL [Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, a Deadhead website] or the Internet and find out some of those suggestions as to how we should do it, because there are bound to be a few good ones out there. But for the time being, we’re just going to adopt the left-foot, right-foot approach.

Q: How did “Satchel” come about?

A: It started off as a song. I was working with a guy named Michael Nash on “The Ballad of Satchel Paige.” And it became clear to us that there was just a whole lot more than a song here. [Paige] lived an amazingly colorful life. All this was occurring to me while I was taking a vacation down in Mexico. I met a screenwriter and I started to wax prolific, I guess, on the life and times of Satchel Paige. At one point, I said it would make a great musical. He said, “Well, you should do that.” I just kept on in full rave. And he stopped me two or three more times, saying, “You should do that.” I finally took it to heart. . . .

Q: I understand that you and Nash traveled around the country interviewing Paige’s old colleagues from the Negro League.

A: Yes--many of whom are no longer with us. The greatest thing about it was the way these old guys lit up when somebody came along that wanted to hear their story. They all had a story to tell, and they had great lives. They were not feeling altogether that slighted, or whatever, particularly, by Judge Landis’ refusal to let blacks play in the major leagues.

They had rich and full lives and all the fun they could handle, and they got to do what they loved doing for a living. It was apparent to most of them that history was going to pass them by. So typically when we would go see one of these guys, they would just open up. We would make arrangements to do a 20-minute interview, and it would take four hours.

Q: How difficult is it, writing for a musical, as opposed to the Grateful Dead?

A: The roughest part for me when I’m writing a song is staring at a blank page. Where am I going from here? If you’re a songwriter, you have to do that every time you start a song. This medium gives me a little bit of a head start. In a given scene, we have a pretty fair idea of what the song is going to need to be about.

Q: What’s the music like in “Satchel”?

A: If you trace Paige’s life and times, you’re also tracing--almost from the inception--the development of the blues and jazz idioms in America. You’ll find yourself in the same places at the same time.

Q: So the musical is a history of Paige and American blues and jazz?

A: We’re trying to trace the development of these idioms--roots music, let’s call it--without being pedantic about it. There are a number of styles we’re using. One, of course, is modern contemporary [rock] music. Basically the development of blues and jazz is the soundtrack to Paige’s career--the hope being that the gentle listener will come away from the show with a much clearer understanding of where blues and jazz came from.

Q: Speaking of roots music, what was your involvement with Shanachie Records’ new “The Music Never Stopped: Roots of the Grateful Dead” CD [a critically endorsed collection of original versions of songs long performed by the Grateful Dead]?

A: Almost none, except to promote it. I think it’s real important that people understand where the music comes from. If you can see where the music comes from, you can also see the future. It gives you a trajectory.

Q: I understand many of the songs on the CD came from your private collection.

A: We’re amateur musicologists and always have been. I developed a passion for that, I guess, when I was 15. I was visiting a friend and we discovered in their attic their granddad’s record collection. All these old Bluebird Records--race records, they called them back them. I just went through them all, and we played them all. And I just went and learned them. A couple of months later, I was playing these songs with Garcia in a jug band.

* Ratdog performs Dec. 8-9 at the Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., 8 p.m. $26. (213) 380-5005.