Bobby Weir’s much anticipated Ace: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition is out now. Listen/purchase HERE. Watch/share “Greatest Story Ever Told” visualizer HERE.
Last year, Weir and his band—Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros featuring The Wolfpack and Barry Sless on pedal steel—performed two nights at Radio City Music Hall in celebration of his beloved debut solo album, Ace. The band played the entire album live and welcomed a number of special guests, including Tyler Childers and Brittney Spencer.
The new album is available as a double CD as well as on digital and streaming services, and includes one of the special Radio City performances in full as well as a remastered new mix of Ace. The newly remastered album is also available on custom “high roller” pearl white vinyl exclusively from Dead.net, with a black vinyl version to follow on February 3.
When Weir started working on Ace at Wally Heider’s Studio in San Francisco in early 1972, he wasn’t planning for the Grateful Dead to be his backing band. It just happened. “I pretty much knew in the back of my mind what would happen,” Weir told Crawdaddy a few months after the sessions. “I go and get the time booked and start putting the material together. Everybody gets wind of the fact I got the time booked and I may be going into the studio. So, one by one, they start coming around…”
It made sense: the band was already familiar with most of the music, having road-tested six of the album’s eight songs including “Greatest Story Ever Told,” “Mexicali Blues” and “Playing In The Band,” destined to become one of Weir’s signature tunes. Ace also marked the beginning of Weir’s long-running collaboration with lyricist John Perry Barlow and includes early standouts “Cassidy” and “Looks Like Rain.”
The liner notes that accompany the new anniversary edition were written by Jesse Jarnow, co-host of The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast and author of Heads: A Biography Of Psychedelic America. He writes about Weir realizing his 50-year dream of touring with strings and horns in 2021 when the Wolfpack joined him and the Wolf Bros on the road.
Jarnow writes, “By the time they played a pair of nights at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in April 2022 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ace, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros featuring The Wolfpack had found their flow at the thrilling, porous border of improvisation and arrangement. In the eternal present-tense of the Grateful Dead’s music, none of the songs had stopped evolving in the previous 50 years… At Radio City, everything was heard in its newest (and perhaps already outdated) incarnations, the evolutions acting as a progress report on the ensuing half-century of Weir’s life, musical and otherwise.”
Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros are hitting the road this winter, kicking off their tour February 2 in North Charleston, SC and concluding with two nights, March 11 and 12, at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. The tour also includes four nights at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY, as well as three nights alongside the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. More info/tickets HERE.
ACE: 50TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION
CD TRACK LISTING
Disc One: Original Album (2023 Remaster)
1. Greatest Story Ever Told
2. Black-Throated Wind
3. Walk In The Sunshine
4. Playing In The Band
5. Looks Like Rain
6. Mexicali Blues
7. One More Saturday Night
8. Cassidy
Disc Two: Live at Radio City Music Hall, New York NY (4/3/22)
1. Greatest Story Ever Told (featuring Tyler Childers)
2. Black-Throated Wind
3. Walk In The Sunshine (featuring Brittney Spencer)
4. Playing In The Band
5. Looks Like Rain (featuring Brittney Spencer)
6. Mexicali Blues – Intro
7. Mexicali Blues
8. One More Saturday Night
9. Cassidy
