What the fuck, Bobby and/or (probably or) Bobby’s social media intern? Is this all it takes to get enblurbinated? The great David Browne, whose wonderful So Many Roads is available as a trade paperback and makes a great Christmas present, quoted me. I have been mentioned in The New Yorker, though not lately. (Not that I pay attention to things like that.) I’m hurt, Bob.

Is this what you wanted? Some purple prairie-prose about a sky as grey as Zane, and rivers both bravo and grande? I can do that. I can do that in my sleep.

“Bob Weir’s new album Blue Mountain sounds like an ash tree in winter, with a Choctaw nailed to it.”

“And as the fieldhands fumbled with their coats, hot and scared breaths mingling and vaporating in the Wyoming dawn, their nipples pinged from not the cold but from forbidden lust, and also the cold. Bob Weir’s new album, Blue Mountain, played in the background.”

“See the Bob.  He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged snake t-shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. Josh Kaufman crouches by the fire and watches him.”

“Blue Mountain, Bob Weir’s first new album in ten years, evokes the sound of stinky balls slapping on saddles, crinoline bustles with faded blood stains, and Joseph Glidden sucking chili out of his beard. The songs are Texastophelean in their scope, and submarinic in their periscope; during the title track, my horse starved to death.”

“You have died of dysentery.”

SEE? I am blurb-worthy. Put my shit on Instagram, yo.

Review: Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir delivers earthy solo effort

By Scott Bauer | AP September 28

Bob Weir, “Blue Mountain” (Columbia/Legacy and ROAR)

The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, showing more than a little touch of grey at age 68, delivers a heartfelt and earthy solo record with “Blue Mountain.”

It’s Weir’s first solo effort in a decade and the first of entirely original material in 30 years.

Weir, who sang with the Dead that he may be going to hell in a bucket but at least he’s enjoying the ride, strikes a more reflective pose on “Blue Mountain.” It’s a deeply personal collection of cowboy songs drawn on his memories working as a teenager on a Wyoming farm.

Say “cowboy songs” to many Grateful Dead fans and they will go running for the skip button. And, to be sure, songs like “Ki-Yi Bossie” on “Blue Mountain” aren’t likely to convert those who can do without tales from the dust-covered trails.

 Still, Weir’s collaboration here with Josh Ritter and The National’s Bryce and Aaron Dessner results in a moody, dense record unlike anything he’s done before. The production, and subject matter, fits his road-weary vocals.

The closer, “One More River to Cross,” feels as heartfelt as anything Weir has ever written and should resonate with fans who have been along for any part of the long, strange trip of his unparalleled career.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Here’s the game: is “Scott Bauer” a real person or the Grateful Dead Reviewbot 2000?

• The dustiness of the verse.
• The high, lonesome chorus.
• Larry McMurtry wrote the bridge.
• Bobby recorded the vocal atop a horse. (Not a real horse: Bobby slapped a saddle on Precarious.)
• Heyday of Only A River brought to a close by the invention of barbed wire, and the Range Wars.
• Hasn’t been in the Super Bowl since 1995.
• I said so.
• The song is on what Bobby has been referring to as his “Cowboy Album” for a decade now; ipso facto: cowboy song.
• Hat.

Here it is. It’s a cowboy song, which there are not enough of in this world, regardless of what Billy may think. The song is called Only A River, and it is about a river. Bobby is a Grateful Dead, you see, and they are legally required to sing songs about rivers. Also, trains.

Go listen to Bobby’s song.