Rob Wasserman Dusting Off the Bass by Michael Parrish Bassist Rob Wasserman has had a lengthy career in which he has managed to play with an impressive array of rock, jazz, and acoustic musicians. Starting out in David Grisman's quintet, Wasserman later became a free agent and went on to record three unique solo recordings (sequentially titled Solo, Duets, and Trios). In the course of the latter two, he collaborated with the likes of Lou Reed, Edie Brickell, Brian Wilson, Neil Young, Bruce Hornsby, Bradford Marsalis, Jerry Garcia, and Willie Dixon. Wasserman has also toured with heavies like Reed, Bruce Cockburn, and Rickie Lee Jones. In recent years, his main gig, and one of the highest profile ones, has been as a collaborator with Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, first as an acoustic duo, and now as co-leader of rock-blues-jazz ensemble Ratdog, which also includes guitarist/harmonica player Matthew Kelly, drummer Jay Lane, sax player Dave Ellis, and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti. Although they have played mostly in Ratdog for three years, the duo just recently released their first CD, Weir/Wasserman Live, which goes back to some of their first work together. "I had received a lot of comments over the years, 'Gee, it's too bad you don't have a record.' When we were playing as Weir/Wasserman we didn't really have time to make a record, and we never really planned to make a live album until finally, three years into Ratdog, we were sitting around, and I had found some DATs we had made from our shows. We had forgotten how different it sounded when we were playing as a duo. We still do duets in concert, but we used to do two hours in a night. It's a whole different atmosphere than what we have going with the big band. We were both blown away. I listened to all the tapes and chose what I liked. I ended up, ironically, choosing everything from the first concerts we ever did together. We didn't record our first show because it was at a small club, but the very first concerts were in San Francisco. I called John Cutler up and asked him if he had anything from the days we first played together, when we were opening for Jerry Garcia's band. He came up with these shows, which we ended up putting on the record. They were just so much more pure, plus we were playing in a nice room, about 2000 seats, as opposed to the later stuff when we were playing sheds, which don't sound that good. The quality is nice, the acoustic tones of the instruments and the tone come through. It was so fresh, and spontaneous, and fun. Also, I wasn't using an electric upright back then, just an acoustic bass, and it had a sound we both really liked." The record surprised a lot of listeners, also. "It was unique, and something we did for fun. It's been three and a half years, and a lot of people didn't even know we did it, even though we had been playing as a duo for six years." This is an excerpt from Dirty Linen #77 To read the entire article, Subscribe! © 1998 Dirty Linen, Ltd., Baltimore MD No reproduction in any form is permitted without written permission from the editors.