The recent death of Grateful Dead guitarist/singer Bob Weir has elicited an outpouring of heartfelt memories and tributes from fans and fellow musicians alike. One local musician who knew him personally is Fredericksburg native Keller Williams, himself a headlining act in the jam band world.
Williams can directly trace his professional success to Weir and the Grateful Dead.
Keller Williams on his Grateful Gospel tour November 1, 2025. Photo by Jeff Kearney.
A fan for years, Williams got his start jamming with an acoustic guitar in the parking lot of Dead shows. He learned a lot of songs and began performing in bars with a style that was largely influenced by the acoustic side of the band, particularly the 1981 live album “Reckoning”.
Fans who taped the Dead shows often included Williams’s music on the concert tapes (also known as bootlegs). Taping and trading cassettes was a big part of the Deadhead subculture.
“When you have a cassette tape of a Grateful Dead show, you have a tape with one (full) side then a little bit on the next side and that’s one set,” Williams said. “So there’s a bunch of filler tape at the end and some tapers would sometimes put my songs on there. The taping community started putting my sounds out there. I started opening for String Cheese Incident and had a bigger crowd of West Coast type of folks into that same vibe. I started opening for other folks and that led from one thing to another.”
Williams first met Weir in 2001 on the So Many Roads touring festival where Williams was a solo act among several others including Weir’s band RatDog.
“Bobby would walk by but I would never introduce myself,” Williams said. “Finally I did and I said, ‘Man, I would love to play with you sometime on this tour.’ He said, ‘Not the next show, but the shows after next. Let’s do it then.’”
It was a dream come true for Williams — a superfan who got to play with one of his idols. Weir joined Williams on stage at the end of his sets at the famed Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado.
“Leading up to that point I had seen close to 100 Dead shows, Jerry (Garcia) shows, and Bob Weir shows.” Williams said. “This was 2001 and all of a sudden I’m in this production office, just him and I and two guitars singing and playing, rehearsing for this sit-in that he was going to do. That in itself was really a surreal moment, me harmonizing with him as I was singing Jerry’s parts. And then when it came to showtime it came off without a hitch.
“At Red Rocks we ended with a 10-minute ‘Birdsong’ but leading up to that was ‘Dark Hollow’ and then there was another one, maybe ‘Monkey And The Engineer’, and then ‘Birdsong’. That was like a 15- to 20-minute sit-in. I think I was doing like 30-minute sets so it was a real special thing.”
Bob Weir at Red Rocks in 2010. Photo by Jeff Kearney.
It went so well that for the rest of the tour Weir’s crew would set a place for him on Williams’s stage each night. Their chemistry translated into subsequent tours involving Williams and RatDog. Weir even made special appearances with Williams’ Grateful Gospel on occasion.
Their most notable collaboration is the song “Cadillac,” a duet on Williams’ 2007 album “Dream”.
“I got to go to his house in Mill Valley (California) and record in his studio,” Williams said. “He lived up in the hills and the siding on his house is all redwood. It was built in ‘72 I think, right around when they outlawed the use of redwood. It is an amazing space where I think he lived for forty-some years. I think they recorded ‘Blues For Allah’ in that studio.
“By the time I had gotten there it had been redone. This was the time of Clear Channel. I remember in his backyard, there were these huge boulders and he had this tiny little amphitheater made and he called it Weir Channel. I got to sit among his guitars in his living room which was his studio. I played all my parts and then I played the parts that he could possibly do. I was probably there for four hours.”
Williams has performed with several other members of the Grateful Dead, including bassist Phil Lesh’s band Phil And Friends and with drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart’s group The Rhythm Devils.
The last time Williams spoke to Bob Weir was at the 2019 Lockn’ Festival in Arrington.
“Just like everybody, he was a human but at the same time the amount of joy that he brought to so many people, myself included, it was very surreal to be around him,” Keller said.
