You have to understand that Jeff Chimenti is one of the nicest, most mild-mannered guys around – a sweetheart who doesn’t go around telling folks what to do, ever.  But in one of the pivotal moments in the evolution of RatDog - Johnnie Johnson had been the keyboard man, but the travel was getting to him (after all, he was 73), and Mookie Siegel was from Baltimore, which made rehearsals a little tough – Jeff stepped up and told Bob, “I need this gig, and you need me on this gig.”
    Boy, was he ever right.  He’s been the solid keyboard rock of RatDog ever since.
    He’s been a piano man since before he could remember.  His mom took a picture of him sitting at the piano at 18 months, looking really happy.  She said that from the beginning he never banged on it, but always made nice sounds.  By the age of four, he was coming home from church and copying the organist by ear, and by the age of seven he was taking classical piano lessons.  He’s the baby of his family, and his older brother turned him on to rock and his sister even got him to play pop like  Elton John, so from the beginning he played all kinds of music.
    There never was a question about what he was going to do.  He played his first “casual,” a musician term for a job, usually a wedding or a party or something like that, at the age of 13, and early in his high school career he began playing in the Monday Night Big Band at College of San Mateo (CSM) – where Phil Lesh had played trumpet a few years before!
    Dropping out of CSM to take a gig in Amsterdam, he returned to the Bay Area and became a rising player in the SF jazz scene, playing with people like John Handy, Art Farmer, Frank Morgan, Victor Lewis, Charnette Moffett, Bobby Hutcherson, Pharoah Sanders, and in former Ahmad Jamal associate Calvin Keys’s band, which included Gaylord Birch (who played with Jerry Garcia from time to time).  It’s not all that small a world, but the circles do connect!
    One day, a friend told him he was going to audition the following afternoon, and on arriving at the studio with 14 or so other keyboard players, he discovered the band was four beautiful girls who called themselves En Vogue.  It was their first tour, opening for M.C. Hammer (remember him?), and he spent almost four months on it, playing mostly sampled sounds 30 to 40 minutes a night, six nights a week, the same notes every night.  It was an education in being a backing musician.
    Early in the 1990s, he began subbing for Dred Scott in a Bay Area band called Alphabet Soup, where he met Jay Lane, and shortly after became part of Dave Ellis’s band; Dave was then part of the Charlie Hunter trio, which also featured. Jay.  Circles within circles…
    Jeff also backed vocalists, including Madeleine Eastman, Rebecca Parris, Marlena Shaw, and Denise Perrier, who took him to Japan for six months, where he played in the 52nd floor bar that is central to the movie Lost in Translation – and where he met his lovely wife, Moe (pronounced Moy).  
    Back in the Bay Area, Dave Ellis had joined RatDog, and Jeff casually said he’d love to jam – and two days later, he got invited up to Bob Weir’s house.  After a while, he had his conversation with Bob, and not long after that, was out on the road with the Dog for Further 1997.
    Boy, has the band evolved since then – this was a year before Mark Karan popped up and solved the lead guitar question.  And what’s changed?  “The band’s gotten so telepathic over time,” he said recently.  “You have to be able to trust each other, and that takes a while.  And if you step on yourself and screw something up, it’s still OK.”
    “The audience has evolved too, you can really feel the energy growing.  It’s gotten bigger, and younger.  I get so many people telling me that ‘Wow, that was my first RatDog show, and now it’s my favorite band’ – it feels more and more that we’re standing on our own feet.”
    And when he’s not playing piano?  If you’re ever at a RatDog hotel and see a guy with a short beard and glasses come out in proper golf attire, long hair tied back and tucked under a hat, it’ll be Jeff (or his two tour golfing partners – more about them in future installments).  And his partners swear he’s by far the best of them.  The Chimenti golden touch…

Hey now, Bay Area Bobheads; Bob's playing a benefit to stop insecticide spraying on Sunday, June 8th, 1-6 pm (probably toward the end of the day), at  2330 Marinship Way, Sausalito.  (also Maria Muldaur, Norton Buffalo, Elvin Bishop).    $20.  Find out more/buy tix by going to http://www.stopthespraymarin.org.  

As we’ve said elsewhere, RatDog’s been blessed with a number of terrific photographers, and periodically we’re going to set up a special one-shooter gallery for you to enjoy.  Our second single-photog gallery will feature the work of Butch Worrell, who tells us about himself thusly:

In 1965 I was a teenaged kid living in Atherton, CA when I fell under the spell of the Grateful Dead and the entire San Francisco music scene, spell from which I have never recovered.  It was Friday night at the Avalon and Saturday night at the Filmore for me and my friends for years.  However, a family move took me to Nashville, TN,  where I continue to reside today - although whenever I visit the Bay Area I feel like I’m coming home.
 
In the past few years my love of photography has merged with my love of the Music.  I cannot say enough about how Bob Weir and RatDog have not only kept the Music alive but taken it to new and awesome places.  I want to capture the moment at as many shows as possible and strive to give those that were not there a real feel for what is was like.  Perhaps my best reward was after the St Paul show when my shot of Bob and Mark was posted.  I got an email from Mark's mother who told me she loved my shot and how it moved her. 
 
My photos may be seen here
 

The Fox Warfield Theatre in San Francisco holds a special place in the musical history of the city, the promoter – Bill Graham Presents – and the greater Grateful Dead.  Uncle Bill Graham took over the lease in 1979, and this week Phil Lesh & Friends – joined on two nights by Senor Weir – have been celebrating the end of BGP’s long and very rich run there.

Bill’s first show, in the fall of 1979, was Bob Dylan’s first Christian show – folks walked out.  The next year was marked by another long Dylan run and 15 nights with the Grateful Dead – the longest residency in the band’s history.

And in the 1990s, the Jerry Garcia Band made it home, playing somewhere around 90 shows there over the next five years, making it the place to be during the rainy San Francisco winter days of January through March, all the way to the last JGB show, April 23rd 1995.

The only constant is change.  

JAH MON! Come to Jamaica with the Dog and FEEL (even better than) ALLRIGHT! It is with great pleasure that we announce... RatDog DAZE January 28 - February 1, 2009 on the sandy shores of Negril Jamaica at the Grand Lido Resort [click here for all the details]

Lots of you will know about one of the Dog’s cooler outings last year, when they visited Lowell, birthplace of Jack Kerouac, and paid homage to the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s On the Road.  Nice night.

Last night (May 7th), Jay Lane was part of the group backing Beat poet Michael McClure at Yoshi’s San Francisco (very hip jazz joint) as he read his poetry.  McClure was one of the six poets who changed American poetry at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955, the night Allen Ginsberg read “Howl” in public for the first time.  He was the youngest of the group that night, and now he’s one of the elder statesmen.  

The band included former Doors member Ray Manzarek on keys, Rob Wasserman on bass, and reedman George Brooks.  A very swinging night indeed.

 When Jay Lane helped begin RatDog as its first drummer, he knew plenty about playing jazz, R & B, and funk, but he’d only briefly listened to the Grateful Dead, at 16 in his friend Tom Pope’s room (“while smoking w---“).  Lane knew very little about the other sources for GD music.  “I couldn’t tell you the difference between bluegrass and zydeco,” he said recently, but he was hungry to go to the school of Americana, and Professor Weir was open for lessons. 
    How he got to the Dog was an interesting evolution.  When Jay was around nine, his mom took him around to various music classes.  The last one was a drum teacher, and that seemed to click; although he didn’t practice very much, he took lessons for 2 years.  
    Around the age of 16, Mom got him involved in a music camp in Cazadero, in the woods north of their home in San Francisco, and he began to work there during the summer, getting much more serious about music.  The camp was run by the city of Berkeley, and he began to meet young Berkeley players, including Dave Shul of Spearhead, and a very young and multi-talented kid named Dave Ellis, who also played the drums at the time.
    Ellis had formed a band at Berkeley High called the Uptones, which included a fine young sax player named Kenny Brooks. When Kenny went off to college, Ellis moved over to saxophone from drums, and they brought in a new drummer…Jay Lane.
    In the years to come, Jay moved on first to the Freaky Executives, then to Primus, eventually to Alphabet Soup, Sausage and the Charlie Hunter Trio (with Dave Ellis). Primus’ bassist Les Claypool introduced him to another bass player a few years later, Rob Wasserman, who suggested him for a session with a friend of his named Bob Weir.
    As Jay put it, the jazz gigs didn’t really satisfy him, because “I’m not into the audience sitting down and watching; If I can, I’d rather see people dancing any day.” Playing to those dancing Dead Heads in the first days of RatDog was fun but intimidating, because sometimes it felt like the fans “knew the songs better than I did.”  “No matter what we did, it wasn’t it. Bob hired me because I didn’t know the material. He wanted my take on it, but it wasn’t until I listened to the Grateful Dead a lot that I could put any take on it! So after a while I kind of became a ‘born-again Dead Head’.  After 15 years, I feel like I’m just starting to really connect with Bob. As I’ve learned so much from Bob, whether it’s about yoga, nutrition, politics or music, It’s time I gave something back.” 
    Jay’s always into new stuff.   Recently, he took up 3-D computer graphics – any (Macintosh using) Dog Heads out there versed in 3D modeling for Unity (a Mac-only game engine), Vue 6, Cinema 4D, ZBrush and Poser 7 are invited to apply for tutoring positions!  He’s also a family guy. His wife Aida is the afternoon director of a preschool program, and he has two daughters, Xenia (10) and Erika (14).  He swears he doesn’t allow Erika to date drummers – smart man – but he noticed that when he took her an SF club recently, she headed straight for backstage!
    Finally, he’s got a current project that you’ll all be hearing lots more about in the near future, a hip hop album of Grateful Dead tunes – “DeadBeatz,” with his new hip hop/reggae band, The Band of Brotherz, which Lane co-founded with original Alphabet Soup vocalists Zachariah Mose and Chris “CB” Burger. One of his best days recently was when Robert Hunter gave their project his blessing.
    A very interesting way to become a Dead Head!

Our fearless leader Senor Weir was invited by Mickey Hart to take part in yesterday's (Sunday, April 20)  Earth Day celebration, the Green Apple Festival in Golden Gate Park.  After detailed planning and massive rehearsals - well, maybe not so much - they dazzled a giant crowd with a set that led off with Bob, solo, on "Blackbird."  Joined by Mickey, Ben Kaufmann from Yonder Mountain String Band, and Michael Kang from String Cheese, he sang "Peggy-O" and "Friend of the Devil," then went into a "Not Fade Away" that he turned over to about 40 drummers, the Mickey Hart "Mass Drum" project, which included, improbably, Tommie Lee from Motley Crue.  (see pictures if you don't believe me!)Returning to the stage after much boom-boom, Bob, the aforementioned, and Joan Baez, returned to the "Not Fade Away" and brought a beautiful day in the park to a really lovely close.  A splendid time was had by all.

The 'Dog /ABB Tour of last August has been nominated for a Jammy as Tour of the Year.  Good thinking, we say.  So go to and you know what to do - early and often!

We’ve gotten to New York City – ‘just like I pictured it’ – and things are getting seriously New Yorked.  In our two shows so far, we’ve had approximately a thousand guests, both backstage and onstage, and a ton of fun.  Little sleep, maximum fun.

On Thursday, “Bird Song” began in the first set with Jimmy Herring joining the band (Jimmy also played on “Iko Iko”), and ended in the second set with Warren Haynes (also on “Sugaree”).  NY drummer Tom Pope joined Jay Lane in a furious duet during “Stuff,” and Steve Molitz and a newcomer to most, a fine vocalist with Janis-like powerful pipes named Dana Fuchs, jumped in for an incendiary closing “Lovelight.”

On Friday, Dana came back for “The Weight,” “Eyes” went wild with the great sax players George Garzone and Doug Yates joining Kenny Brooks, and then Alphabet Soup2 – the basic Soup played at the Highline Ballroom later in the night – took over the Beacon stage on “The River Song” – just about everybody already mentioned, plus Dred Scott on keys, Chris Burger and Zacariah Mose on mics, and your editor probably missed a few too.

A very New York kind of insanity.  We hear the Soup gig later on was equally thunderous.  Sleep is for babies.