When the Signal Carried the Dead

The news hit me this evening like a bad needle drop that Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir left us for that big stage in the sky. For a few quiet minutes, the music stopped me cold, and I was right back in Southern Humboldt, sitting in a little radio station that smelled like hot electronics, coffee that had been on too long, and redwood damp.

I met Bob back in the day at KERG, a small commercial FM station tucked near Redway and Garberville. The Urge, we called it. K Eel River G.

I was young, broke, and absurdly proud of my job. Three shifts a week, Tuesday through Thursday, from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Twelve-hour days for six bucks an hour. That was good money for radio back then, especially in the Emerald Triangle, where “time” and “schedule” were more like friendly suggestions.

KERG was a strange and wonderful beast. Fifty thousand watts of community voice blasting out into the redwoods, aimed squarely at the back-to-the-land crowd, growers, dreamers, and folks who had decided society worked better if you leaned back a little.

The station was part of the Grateful Dead in a way that felt both casual and cosmic.

It was commercial, technically, but “commercial” mostly meant one ad for poly-tubing, sold by the foot, essential for anyone trying to move water uphill or keep a quiet garden alive. We’d fire it off while flipping the LP, then slip right back into the groove like nothing had happened.

Dan Healy, the Dead’s legendary sound man, was the brain and backbone behind it. Jerry Garcia’s presence hovered around the place like weather.

Some people swore they worked for Jerry. Others said Jerry ran the station.

The truth lives somewhere in between, which feels exactly right for that scene. And then there was Bob Weir.

No big entrance or announcement. Bob just appeared.

One minute you’re cueing up another side of Europe ’72, the next minute there’s Bob on the studio platform like he might ask you where the bathroom is. He was friendly, low-key, and wholly curious.

No rock star nonsense. Just a guy in the room, listening, talking music, soaking up the vibe of this little outpost in the woods that somehow carried the Dead’s heartbeat.

Most shifts on-air were simple, with long stretches of Grateful Dead music, hours at a time, interrupted only by flipping a record. You learned how long an album side really was, learned patience, and that if you played the Dead long enough, someone out there was always listening, probably trimming plants or driving a pickup too fast on a narrow road.

KERG didn’t last. By 1987, it faded out, as so many things do. In its place came KMUD, a community radio that carried the torch forward and kept the voice local, weird, and alive.

But KERG mattered. It was a bridge, between eras, between music and place, between the Dead’s sprawling universe and a small community tucked into the redwoods.

So when I heard that Bob Weir was gone, for a moment, all of it came rushing back. The long shifts, endless records, and the feeling that music wasn’t just something you listened to, it was something you lived inside.