Anastasio Details Fare Thee Well Practices With Weir

Ever since it was announced that Phish frontman Trey Anastasio would team with Bruce Hornsby, Jeff Chimenti and the “core four” of the Grateful Dead (Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann) Anastasio has discussed his plan was to first rehearse Dead material with Weir before the full band met up. Both Anastasio and Weir went into detail about their rehearsals with The New Yorker.

[Photo by Rob Chapman]

Weir explained that their fourth set of rehearsals took place recently in midtown Manhattan after the pair first assembled at Bobby’s cottage in Stinson Beach where they were “holed up for three days in early March.” Trey detailed that the first sessions was “me and Bob and two archtop guitars.” Bob went on to mention Anastasio “then came out to the coast for a day to work with Phil and me.” Weir talked extensively about the rehearsal with Lesh and Anastasio at Terrapin Crossroads in a Rolling Stone feature. Bobby and Trey then “put in another three days” of practice for the upcoming shows in Santa Clara and Chicago.

Bob Weir also revealed that Anastasio has enlisted musician Jeff Tanski, whom Weir described as “a kind of wunderkind of the Broadway world, a keyboard player, who’s written charts to seventy of our songs. He’s really bearing down on this.” Trey corrected the seventy number Weir put forth. “Ninety! And by the time we’re done I bet it’s a hundred,” Anastasio said. “I’m doing this because I don’t want to be the problem. Bob and I joked that the first song I sing ought to be ‘Dire Wolf,’ which has the chorus ‘Don’t murder me.’”

Read The New Yorker’s feature on Fare Thee Well for more of Weir’s thoughts on performing with Anastasio and what to expect at the upcoming shows.

Watch a YouTube playlist of our Grateful Dead 50 tribute, the Songs Of Their Own video series: