For the Other One: ACE Benefit to Celebrate Bob Weir’s Life and Legacy

Bobby Weir’s legacy is a big one. There are stone-cold classic Dead songs, decades of shows, a penchant for tiny shorts. But the most profound impact that remains in the wake of the Grateful Dead co-founder’s death in January is the multifaceted culture around the band. Spanning generations and continents, the community of musicians and fans that the Dead cultivated became a model for modern live touring, anchored entire genres and inspired countless artists to follow their own paths. 

That community comes together Oct. 9 at The Basement East for ACE: A Celebration of the Life and Music of Bob Weir. It’s a benefit for Porter’s Call, a Middle Tennessee-based nonprofit supporting touring musicians and their loved ones. Like so many happenings in and around the Dead universe, the show is an unofficial, grassroots labor of love, with no connection to Weir, his family or any of the various enterprises related to the band. It was spearheaded by Weir’s longtime friend and associate Jonathan Levine, and is organized and executed by a crew of Music City heads including musicians Allen Thompson and Jack Silverman (the latter of whom is also a contributing editor at the Scene) along with The Basement and The Basement East co-owner Mike Grimes. 

Levine worked with Weir and his fellow late Dead co-founder Phil Lesh since the mid-1990s days of Furthur Fest and Weir’s post-Dead band RatDog. It becomes very clear over the course of my conversation with Levine that this show is an act of love and friendship. It’s an opportunity for friends and fans alike to come together and celebrate the fellowship that Weir fostered.  

“I started out like a lot of people, as a fan of the Grateful Dead, going back to my early teen years,” says Levine. “And it became one of those things where [they were] my musical North Stars in life. I was probably 12 or 13 when I first discovered them. And the first time I saw them — I believe I was 15 and it was at the Uptown Theater in Chicago, oh, wow. And then that just started me down the rabbit hole, and I saw them countless times over the next decades.” 

If you’ve ever heard those Uptown Theater shows from the late 1970s, it’s easy to see how they could inspire a life in music. It’s the band at their best — simultaneously tight as hell and miraculously loose, with all-killer-no-filler set lists, a testament to their craftsmanship and creativity. And interestingly enough, those nights included particularly ripping takes on Weir’s signature song “The Other One,” by that time a catalog classic and something to play for someone who’s Dead-curious. “The Other One” thoroughly exemplifies the band’s group sound and ethos, in which individual personalities recede and the collective takes over — the support system that allows each player to do their best work and the community to carry on. 

“On January 1st of this year, I have my New Year’s text from Bobby Weir,” recalls Levine. “And on January 6th of this year, I have texts between Bobby and I. And on January 10th, he was gone. And on January 19th, I was sitting in City Hall Plaza in San Francisco with my wife, crying and mourning his passing. I mean, life is going to life every time — and every situation and how you can go about celebrating somebody’s music and life and impact on a community is different.” 

The fact that the ACE show is focused on raising money for a charity that supports the financial and mental health of touring musicians is no coincidence. The move was inspired by Weir’s impromptu decision to donate the money from his March 2020 show at the Ryman — the last live show Levine saw before COVID lockdown — to help victims of that week’s destructive tornadoes, and by the Dead’s long legacy of performing for the benefit of others.  

Porter’s Call and its mission to help touring musicians work through the unique challenges of life on and off the road feel like a natural fit for a community coming together for mutual support. The for-heads-by-heads approach to this gig brings a powerful energy that’s missing from your average cash-on-the-barrelhead cover show. 

“I love working with Jonathan, and I love playing music with him,” says aforementioned co-organizer Allen Thompson, a singer-songwriter-guitarist who will be playing in the band alongside Levine (on drums), Silverman and Jeff Malinowski on guitar, Luke Sands on bass, Matt Martin on drums and Matty Walberg on keys. Thompson has been organizing The Basement East’s annual Last Waltz charity tribute shows for years. “To be in it that long at the level he has, and to still have that childlike excitement about throwing the show, and about playing the tunes and all of that stuff. It’s a real testament to Weir especially, and how he was a dude that really took having as much fun with this as possible very seriously.” 

While the lineup of guests hasn’t been announced as of this writing and we’ve been sworn to secrecy, we can say with confidence that the talent pool is deep and the set list will be fire (on or off the mountain, as it were). Weir’s greatest legacy might be his unflappable enthusiasm for this art form and the way he shared that joy with others. And for Levine and company, that is worth cherishing and sharing with friends and strangers alike.

“Because I know if Bobby was on this phone call with us, he’d be saying two words,” says Levine. “‘Fuckin’ A.’ That’s Bobby. That’s what he’d be saying, ‘fuckin’ A.’”