Overview

As a lifelong musician, borderline-obsessive lover of guitars, and fan of the Grateful Dead’s music, I sought to create a visual guitar history for Bobby Weir, founding rhythm guitarist and vocalist of the Dead. Both Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh have multiple sites dedicated to documenting their various changes of instrument over the band’s 30-year career, but no such thing existed for Bobby.

I decided to combine my passions for music and design, and create my own.

Goals

Provide as accurate a timeline as I can, drawing upon hundreds of photos and videos for reference
Design a visually appealing, mobile-friendly experience that feels modern and smooth
Make the site engaging for non-Deadheads, non-musicians, and anyone curious about Bobby and the band

Project Details

Background

Music has always been one of my deepest passions. I first learned how to play bass and guitar by playing along with my dad’s Beatles records. Since then I’ve grown to love, and play, many different types of music: rock, jazz, folk, country, progressive, alternative, the list goes on.

In high school, while playing bass in a band called Mel’s Collectibles, our guitar player introduced me to the Grateful Dead. We played a few of their tunes in our set, and I enjoyed the music, but I didn’t really pursue it. I maintained a peripheral awareness and appreciation for the songs I heard on the radio, like “Casey Jones” or “Truckin’,” but I remained ignorant of anything deeper.

Three young men playing drums, guitar, and bass at a house party

Mel’s Collectibles playing my girlfriend’s Christmas party. I’m on the right, playing bass in the red shirt.

As I grew older, I would still come back to the Dead’s music every now and then, and even though I had some favourites that perked my ears and my musical interest, they were still pushed into the back of my mind by other bands and interests.

Then in 2017 the documentary “Long Strange Trip” came out, and I decided to give it a watch.

It turned out to be the moment I fell into the rabbit hole.

As I started delving into the Grateful Dead’s catalogue, I was amazed at how much music was recorded, and that virtually all of it is available to the public. In the 30 years they played together, they recorded over 2,000 live shows. To listen to them is to listen to humanity itself; you hear them at their absolute best, and you also hear some shows where they just can’t seem to get it together.

I found myself drawn to the style of Bobby Weir, who is considered the “rhythm guitar” player (meaning he would usually strum the chords, over which the lead guitar and other instruments layer themselves) and one of the lead vocalists. His particular style of playing evolved considerably over the band’s career.

But as I looked through photos of the band, I noticed that Bobby also changed guitars a lot. As I scoured the internet looking for more information on some of these guitars, I realized there wasn’t any kind of comprehensive list of information about them.

Both Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh (the legendary guitarist and bass player, respectively) had a couple of sites each that were dedicated resources full of images, dates, and other information, and as outdated as the designs are today, they are still considered authoritative to Deadheads. But nothing like them existed for Bobby, who changed guitars just as frequently as he explored the sonic dynamics of tone and feel.

Research

I set out on the daunting task of compiling a library of images and dates so that I could try to assemble a chronological storyboard. The task proved challenging due to the lack of information about Bobby’s guitars. In many cases people shared assumptions and cursory findings on various Grateful Dead forums, message boards, and user groups.

As a researcher, I drew on my own extensive knowledge of guitars and guitar design, seeking cross-references from vintage guitar shops around North America and guitar-centric websites like Reverb.com. I scoured various articles looking for Bobby’s own words regarding his instrument choices.

I also joined Reddit subs like r/GratefulGuitar, the Grateful Nerds Facebook group, and other social communities to crowdsource information.

As I collected photos and notes, I organized them in folders by year and labeled each image with a naming convention that would make it easy to sort and search.

Documentation

All of my notes went into a Google Doc, where I started assembling the narrative. I used the built-in features of Docs to create a content hierarchy, which made it easy for me to jump back and forth between different sections as I found new things to add.

I also started writing the narrative, trying to find a balance between sounding like an authoritative reference but still maintaining a human voice.

I chose to write the content dynamically, with the intention of appealing to gear nerds who cared about small details, as well as casual fans, non-musician Deadheads, non-Deadhead musicians, and anyone else who might be interested in learning how to listen (members of the band have always talked about the importance of listening with intention and mindfulness).

Visual Style and Functionality

Because most of the existing guitar histories for Jerry and Phil were created in the early 2000s, the visual design and functionality leave a lot to be desired. They’re not mobile-friendly, and the design is rudimentary at best (although it was probably more impressive when they first were published)

Educating Users

I didn’t want the page to be merely a cool visual reference for people to look at. I also wanted to help interested users practice active listening and understand how to pick out individual guitar parts. Because Bobby’s playing style evolved considerably over the 30 years he spent playing in the band, and because his guitars played a big part in that evolution, I wanted to especially call it out.

My first priority, then, in building the page was to make it a modern, mobile-friendly experience that looked elegant and clean.

I drew a lot of inspiration from Andy Babiuk’s excellent and authoritative book “Beatles Gear,” which looks at every instrument the individual members of the Beatles played, from their very first cheap acoustic guitars to the high-end custom instruments and gear they were given towards the end of their time as a band. The book blends historical narrative, white space, band images, and big, detailed pictures of guitars. It was precisely this look and feel that I wanted to capture with my design.

I added a section to each year titled, “What did Bobby sound like in 19XX?” Each section features a complete show from that year with notes of things to listen for, as well as links to those concerts on YouTube and Spotify.

Site Build

Since my portfolio site is hosted on Squarespace and I was already accustomed to its workflow, I decided to add this project as an unlisted page. This would allow me to send the link to small audiences for user testing and to obtain feedback.

As I started working on writing the story of Bobby and these instruments, I became increasingly aware of the magnitude of this undertaking. Putting the page on a cloud-based, no-code site like Squarespace would also enable me to grant access to collaborators, and the idea of making it a group effort appealed to me (and also felt very appropriate for a website about the Grateful Dead).

As I started to build the functionality and transpose my content from the Google Doc to the page, I constantly switched between desktop and mobile view to ensure that both experiences were being crafted at the same time.

Unfortunately website builder tools like these still tend to treat the mobile experience as secondary, so building a truly responsive solution requires a great deal of mindfulness and intention.

Response

The response to the page so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Several users have pointed out the modern design and mobile experience.

Because the page, at the time of this writing, only goes up to 1974, I still have another 20 years to document (not counting the additional 30+ years that Bobby has been playing with his other post-Dead bands like Ratdog, Wolf Brothers, and Dead & Co).

But since publishing the page I’ve been contacted by guitar experts and other Grateful Dead historians, including an individual who currently owns one of these historic guitars, offering to contribute pictures and other documentation for me to include. I’ve also been invited to speak about the project on Official Tapes, a radio show catering to Deadheads around the world.

The Marginally-Accurate Bobby Weir Guitar History