It’s taken me a minute to gather my thoughts about Bob Weir’s passing. The Grateful Dead’s music is embedded in my DNA and Bobby was central to that. Before I’d ever heard of Robert Johnson or Willie Dixon I was hearing Bobby sing their tunes. Before I ever even knew what comping was, much less who McCoy Tyner was, I observed Bobby playing rhythm guitar differently than I had ever heard. Before I imagined that I’d someday eschew setlists and just spontaneously move into a tune from another, I saw him and his brethren model this. My sister Alison took me to my first Dead show (out of a dozen, not counting the members’ side projects) when I was in 7th grade and it was transformative. Bobby’s singing, playing, and writing left a mark and as “the young guy” in the band I guess I just took for granted that he’d stick around.

There are so many great Dead tunes associated with him (I particularly struggled to exclude “Jack Straw,” “The Music Never Stopped,” “I Need a Miracle,”“Picasso Moon,” “Feel Like a Stranger,” and others that are at least obliquely mentioned below) that the narrowing-down process here was challenging. But here we go with some favorites, presented in chronological order.

1 ) “Beat It On Down the Line” from The Grateful Dead by the Grateful Dead (1967)

The Grateful Dead were unusual for a big rock band in that while there was always a surplus of compelling original music, covers of songs representing both their roots and their peers remained an essential part of their repertoire through the end. There are so many examples of these that specifically featured Bobby: “Good Lovin’,” “Johnny B Goode,” “Walkin’ Blues,” “Mama Tried,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” “Samson and Delilah,” and so on. The rest of this list comes from his pen but I had to include one such cover, and I chose this infectious performance of a Jesse Fuller folk blues tune by a still-teenaged Bobby.

2 ) “Sugar Magnolia” from American Beauty by the Grateful Dead (1970)

For me, this song is where you can hear Bobby reaching a new level of authority as an artist. It is also debatably the apotheosis of the Dead’s early 70s amalgam of psychedelia and California folk rock, with highly refined vocal harmonies, Robert Hunter’s highly evocative lyrics, and the band’s tight-yet-loose playing all coalescing wonderfully.

3 ) “Greatest Story Ever Told” from Ace by Bob Weird (1972)

This whole album sits alongside Jerry’s “Garcia” record as my co-favorite Dead-adjacent solo record. I could have easily chosen “One More Saturday Night” to demonstrate his affinity for energized Chuck Berry inspired rockers (even with pianist Keith Godchaux doing his best Johnnie Johnson) but at least today this song (which appears as “the Pump Song” in an also great but very different and more psychedelic rendition on a Mickey Hart record) gets the nod.

4 ) “Weather Report Suite” from Wake of the Flood by the Grateful Dead (1973)

There are a few noteworthy examples of extended works in the Dead’s “book,” whether suites like “Terrapin Station” and “Help on the Way —> Slipknot —> Franklin’s Tower” or more informal medleys that became linked in performance like “Scarlet Begonias” morphing into “Fire on the Mountain.” This suite is a great example, as well as demonstrating Bobby’s increasing musical sophistication. And the closing portion, “Let It Grow,” just rocks.

5 ) “Estimated Prophet” from Terrapin Station by the Grateful Dead (1977)

Is this the greatest ever rock/reggae song in 7/4 time ever to be covered by Burning Spear? In all seriousness, and with apologies to “Money,” “Living in the Past,” and others, this is my favorite “odd time signature” rock tune ever and my fondness for both the writing and Bobby’s singing on this original version has never waned.

6 ) “Cassidy” from Reckoning by the Grateful Dead (1981)

The original version of this tune from Bobby’s Ace album is lovely enough, but there’s something about the texture of this intimate, live, acoustic rendition that really gets me – indeed I dare say it’s my favorite track on a uniformly inspiring record.

7 ) “Throwing Stones” from In the Dark by the Grateful Dead (1987)

My initiation (such as it were) as a Deadhead-in-training came a bit before the release of the In the Dark album so I was especially thrilled to see them start to get mainstream attention (heck, even my peers started to know their name). I knew I loved this song, I knew I thought it was gorgeous and catchy and edgy, and I knew it was (what I would now call) a scathing political critique. It was years before I realized how important it was to me as a demonstration of how these things (badass rock tune with an MTV video + social consciousness) could coexist.

8 ) “Victim Or the Crime” from Fall 1989: The Long Island Sound by Jerry Garcia Band (also represented on other parts of the six album set)and Bob Weir and Rob Wasserman (1989, released 2013)

I vividly remember Bobby and virtuoso bassist Rob Wasserman performing this song (which comes from the Dead’s final studio record, Built to Last) live at a couple concerts I attended as well as on the great TV show “Night Music.” It is my favorite among the many examples of him cooking up a serious vibe on a stripped down version of a Dead tune, and this duo’s rapport was special.

9 ) “Shoulda Had Been Me” from Dark Star (the Music of the Grateful Dead) by David Murray (1996)

When Jerry Garcia died, effectively marking the end of the Dead as we know it, I started coming up with jazz instrumental versions of their tunes … and then this album of David Murray’s arrangements came out the following year. I rushed out to buy it and while I didn’t love it as a whole at the time (hearing arrangements of songs you love is a tricky thing) I was knocked out by this closing track, a saxophone guitar instrumental duet with Bobby on a tune Bobby had co-written for a never-produced project paying tribute to baseball giant Satchel Paige.

10 ) “My Brother Esau” from Live in Colorado by Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros (2022)

This tune was originally a “bonus track” (remember those?) on certain formats of the In the Dark record and would be worthy of inclusion on that front if it weren’t my third favorite tune of Bobby’s on there (here’s an opportunity to shout out “Hell In a Bucket” as well). But here we are with a moody late-career rendition that also features his slide guitar work – I’ve heard that aspect of his playing maligned but it’s something I’ve always enjoyed, both on its own terms and for the sake of hearing him in the forefront of the instrumental texture.