“By the time they played a pair of nights at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in April 2022 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ACE, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros featuring The Wolfpack had found their flow at the thrilling, porous border of improvisation and arrangement. In the eternal present-tense of the Grateful Dead’s music, none of the songs had stopped evolving in the previous 50 years… At Radio City, everything was heard in its newest (and perhaps already outdated) incarnations, the evolutions acting as a progress report on the ensuing half-century of Weir’s life, musical and otherwise.” – Jesse Jarnow, ACE 50 Liners
Bobby Weir celebrated the 50th anniversary of his solo debut “Ace,” on stage in April with two special shows at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall. On both nights, he performed the entire album live with his group Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros featuring The Wolfpack, a string and brass quintet, pedal steel player Barry Sless, and special guests Tyler Childers and Brittney Spencer. One of those performances will be released early next year in a special edition of ACE that also includes a remastered new mix of the original album.
Due January 13th, “Ace (50th Anniversary Deluxe Editiomn)” will be released as a double-CD and available from digital and streaming services. On the same day, the newly remastered original album will be released on custom “high roller” pearl white vinyl exclusively at Dead.net, limited to 5,000, with a black vinyl version following on February 3rd.
When Weir started working on “Ace” at Wally Heider’s Studio in San Francisco in early 1972, he wasn’t planning for the Grateful Dead to be his backing band. It just happened. “I pretty much knew in the back of my mind what would happen,” Weir told Crawdaddy a few months after the sessions. “I go and get the time booked and start putting the material together. Everybody gets wind of the fact I got the time booked and I may be going into the studio. So, one by one, they start coming around…“
It made sense, the band was already familiar with most of the music, having road-tested six of the album’s eight songs, including “Greatest Story Ever Told,” “Mexicali Blues,” and “Playing In The Band,” destined to become one of Weir’s signature tunes. “Ace” also marked the beginning of Weir’s long-running collaboration with lyricist John Perry Barlow and includes early standouts “Cassidy” and “Looks Like Rain.“
All “Ace” 50th editions have been remixed by Derek Featherstone, mastered by GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer David Glasser, and produced for release by Bobby and Derek Featherstone.
Pre-order tha album in various formats here: https://store.dead.net/