Bruce & Bobby

From Hartford Courant:

Ratdog, Hornsby Pair Up
August 29, 2005
By THOMAS KINTNER, Special to the Courant

Intensely loyal Grateful Dead aficionados looking for booster shots of the fabled jam band's material between reunions of the group's surviving members can't hope for much better than the no-nonsense exploratory style of Bob Weir and his band Ratdog. Weir headlined a double bill Saturday night at the Chevrolet Theatre in Wallingford that also featured Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers and delighted a crowd of enthusiastic fans with his expeditions into favorite regions of Dead territory.The house was surprisingly empty when Hornsby took the stage to start the evening, but he showed no ill effects for coming out to the same treatment afforded the average no-name opening act. He led off with a feisty roll through "Take Out the Trash," limbering up on the piano and leading a five-piece band that took its cue from the rat-a-tat drumming of Sonny Emory. Hornsby's ivory tickling was melodically decorative, yet at the same time focused and smart, as he propelled the jaunty "Go Back to Your Woods."

Hornsby punctuated his vocals by matching the grabby pulse of "See the Same Way," and his crisp delivery added starch to the soft sway of "This Too Shall Pass." That the evening's audience did not come to hear his old radio hits was clear when the warmest reception of his set greeted the shifty jam number "Rainbow's Cadillac," familiar to many from its use in a Dead offshoot band of which Hornsby was a member, The Other Ones. "Gonna Be Some Changes Made" brought more life to a roomful of swaying listeners than it ever will to the home improvement store commercials on which it is currently splashed, and Hornsby's peppering of the signature riff of Prince's "When Doves Cry" had a nice hook atop J.V. Collier's bass line. Hornsby was joined by Weir for an encore of "The Way It Is" in which Weir's tasteful electric guitar insertions complemented Hornsby's rippling piano without overwhelming it.Weir opened his set on acoustic guitar, leading his own five-man troupe through a cover of "Blackbird" that sported a homespun, countrified pulse. Not one to chat up the crowd between songs, he then segued smoothly from tune to tune for nearly two hours, working out material such as the hearty "Lazy River Road" and the mellow dance jam "Cassidy." His vigorous singing of "Estimated Prophet" was a crowd pleaser, and his electric guitar playing drizzled finely crafted texture onto the hypnotic, rumbling rock of "That's It for the Other One."