Full Show Audio & Videos: Bob Weir Welcomes Aaron Dessner & Leslie Mendelson In Brooklyn
By Scott Bernstein Oct 15, 2016 • 7:36 am PDT
When Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir announced his band for the Campfire Tour one of the members was Aaron Dessner, The National guitarist who helped put together this year’s fantastic Day Of The Dead tribute set and was a key contributor to Bobby’s Blue Mountain LP. Sadly Dessner pulled out of the tour just a week before it started due to a family emergency. So we can only imagine how excited he was to finally get to take the stage with Weir last night at the Kings Theatre.
Dessner performed with Weir and the Campfire Band for most of Friday’s show. At times there were five guitarists on stage though most of the evening featured the four guitar attack of Weir, Dessner, Josh Kaufman and Steve Kimock. The band was rounded out by Aaron’s The National band mates Scott Devendorf and Bryan Devendorf as well as Jon Shaw.
Bobby stuck to the same format as previous shows on the tour with a solo acoustic start followed by the band coming out for the rest of a Blue Mountain focused first set, while the second set pulled songs from the Grateful Dead live repertoire. Weir’s solo acoustic segment included the tour debut cover of Little Feat’s “Easy To Slip,” along with Grateful Dead classic “Loose Lucy” and the title track from Blue Mountain. The guitarist fought sound issues throughout but persevered. Bob brought out the band to work through a series of Blue Mountain gems for the remainder of the first set and closed it out with Johnny Cash’s “Big River.”
Weir’s second set started with three tour debuts. Up first was the traditional “On The Road Again” which was followed by a take on “Rosa Lee McFall.” Vocalist Leslie Mendelson, a member of Steve Kimock’s K I M O C K project who has performed with Weir a few times in the past, emerged for the tour’s first “Brown-Eyed Women.” Mendelson stuck around for “Cassidy” before Bobby and his band ended the second set with “Standing On The Moon” and “Going Down The Road Feelin’ Bad.”
The guitarist started the encore by his lonesome for Blue Mountain’s “Ki-Yi Bossie,” a song that has opened each and every encore this tour. Weir then brought out the band for a show-closing rendition of “Friend Of The Devil” featuring Leslie Mendelson. Tonight Bob Weir continues the Campfire Tour with a second show at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre.
Full Show Audio (Taped by Scott Medeiros)
Videos
Setlist
- Easy to Slip
- Loose Lucy
- Blue Mountain
- Lay My Lily Down
- Darkest Hour
- Only a River
- Ghost Towns
- Gonesville
- Big River
- On the Road Again
- Rosa Lee McFall
- Brown-Eyed Women
- Cassidy
- Standing on the Moon
- Going Down the Road Feeling Bad
- Ki-Yi Bossie
- Friend of the Devil
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