Bob Weir and RatDog | RatDog.Org

Anyone who leaves the Ratdog concert Tuesday night at Big Easy can do so with a fresh, triple-CD recording of the show.

And you can get it straight from the source, as Ratdog's crew will be selling copies for $25 as soon as the show ends.

Ratdog's Bob Weir said the idea for selling live recordings of shows is something he has wanted to do since he was running with the Grateful Dead.

"Any artists of our ilk would love to be able to do this. Now that we have the technology at reasonable prices, instead of being prohibitively expensive like it was two years ago, I think you'll see more of this in the future," Weir said by telephone.

"People are still welcome to record shows, but we think what we will have will sound better to most ears, and it's likely to be cheaper that what bootleggers are selling on E-bay -- but that wasn't the intent."

Also at the show there will be a table encouraging concertgoers to register to vote, an issue of urgent conce
rn to Weir.

"Democracy is imperiled by the possibility that corporations can buy government. We're trying to thwart that," he said. "This country has a history of being run by people. It may be run by money if people don't exercise their right to vote."

Seeing Ratdog live recalls much from the Grateful Dead. The instrumentation is basically the same; trade one of the Dead's two drummers for a saxophone player and the organic, genre-spanning sound is similar, as is the repertoire.

Of the 100 songs or so at Ratdog's disposal, half are originals or from Weir's catalog as a soloist and in side projects like Kingfish and Bobby and the Midnites. The rest are tunes by Grateful Dead and The Dead, a jam band of Grateful Dead alumni.

"The personnel is different, but the approach is the same. The M.O. is the same," Weir said.

In Ratdog, Weir is still comfortable surfing various genres. "I'm most at home in the moment," he said.

Weir formed Ratdog in 1995 after playing in a duet with noted bassist Rob Wasserman, who is no longer with the group. Ratdog's only studio album is "Evening Moods," released on Arista Records in 2000.

At the end of the month Hybrid Records releases "Weir Here," a double CD of containing one disc of studio songs by the Grateful Dead along with Weir's solo and side projects, and a second disc of live, mostly unreleased songs.

Weir said he had a hand in choosing the songs but had to compromise with marketing staff to place less popular songs on "Weir Here."

" `Shade Of Grey' from my `Heaven Help the Fool' album didn't get much attention when it first came out, but it's a song I'm really proud of," Weir said. "I had to fight to get it on the record."

While there are plans for The Dead to hit the road this summer, Weir is also working on a musical theater production with blues singer Taj Mahal and jazz saxer David Murray. Titled "The Life And Times of Satchel Paige," it chronicles the life of the legendary baseball pitcher.