Bob Weir and RatDog | RatDog.Org

Tuesday evening's RatDog show at the 9:30 club was a "Sixth Sense" experience; it left you, like poor Haley Joel Osment, saying, "I see Dead people." Grateful Dead people, that is, drawn -- like those zombies in "Dawn of the Dead" to the mall they frequented while living -- by the presence of former Dead guitarist Bob Weir, who has made RatDog his primary musical outlet since the 1995 death of Jerry Garcia.

The tie-dyed-in-the-wool Deadheads were there, of course, to hear Dead songs, and RatDog didn't disappoint. They dusted off such crowd-pleasers as "Uncle John's Band," "Candy Man," "Playing in the Band" and "Truckin'," and even gave a nod to the Beatles, playing an acoustic "Blackbird" and an appropriately trippy "Tomorrow Never Knows." They also threw in a few RatDog originals, such as the Talking Heads-influenced "Lucky Enough." And speaking of the Talking Heads, RatDog delivered a surprisingly funky version of Al Green's "Take Me to the River," which the Heads famously covered.

Weir's voice has always been too slick to sing the blues, and the classic "Big Boss Man" suffered accordingly. But he laid into "Wharf Rat," which he sang as if he meant every word. Guitarist Mark Karan is no Jerry Garcia, but he's no slouch either, and Jeff Chimenti's keyboards filled out the band's sound wonderfully.

Compared with the Dead in their final, moribund days, Weir and company sounded downright sprightly. Far from dishonoring the Dead tradition -- as the new Lynyrd Skynyrd does the old -- RatDog successfully breathes new life into some very Dead material.