After the Grateful Dead played their farewell shows at San Francisco’s Winterland in October 1974, its members broke off into side projects, reverting from stadium tours to club shows up and down the California coast. Jerry Garcia gigged with pianist Nicky Hopkins and bassist John Kahn. Phil Lesh explored electronic psychedelia with the album Seastones. Bob Weir joined the Dead offshoot band Kingfish.
With Kingfish, Weir played Los Gatos’ Chateau Liberté; Sophie’s in Palo Alto; the Odyssey Room in Sunnyvale; the Bodega in Campbell; and in Santa Cruz, Margarita’s and the Crown College Dining Commons at UC Santa Cruz. 1975 was a busy year, and somehow the Dead also recorded the amazingly ethereal Blues for Allah at their San Rafael practice hall.
Weir was handsome and focused and, even as the Dead resumed touring, pulled together a solo album, Heaven Help the Fool, with L.A. session musicians Waddy Wachtel and Tom Scott. Supermodel fashion photographer Richard Avedon shot the cover. It charted respectably, though critics derided it as “California mellow.”…