Bob Weir’s Post-Dead Life Goes to Ratdog : Pop music: With his new quartet and a new sound, former Jerry Garcia colleague says the show must go on.

The fate of the Grateful Dead, with its founding guitarist and main figurehead gone and its fall tour canceled, hangs in the air.

One thing that’s sure: Its surviving members, musicians by trade, will doubtless continue to explore new paths, undeterred by the possibility of never touring again as the Dead.

Indeed, that had already been proved when the news came Aug. 9 that Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia had died at 53. As fans gathered spontaneously around the United States to mourn and mark the passing, longtime bandmate Bob Weir--the man, after all, who wrote “Playing in the Band”--went ahead with his scheduled show that night in Hampton Beach, N.H.

“Our departed friend, if he proved anything to us, proved that music makes sad times better,” Weir told the Hampton Beach Casino crowd as he took to the stage with longtime sideman Rob Wasserman.

“We also have to remember that his life was far more a blessing for all of us,” Weir, 47, said in a brief news conference before the show. “I think perhaps if we’re going to dwell on anything, we should dwell on that.”

Weir’s time with Garcia dated to Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, which Garcia formed in 1964 to play country blues and the jug-band music of the 1920s. That band evolved the next year into the electric blues of the Warlocks, which became the Grateful Dead at the end of 1965.

Three Dead songs were included in the show at Hampton Beach, where the crowd outside was larger than the sold-out throng of 1,800 inside. Among the songs were “Throwing Stones,” which had fans joining in on its fitting “ashes to ashes” chorus.

Weir has long been touring with Wasserman, a renowned bassist who has recorded a trio of albums on his own; this tour introduces their new band, Ratdog.

It features on harmonica Matthew Kelly, a longtime San Francisco Bay Area musician who co-founded the group Kingfish in 1973 and has recorded with an earlier Weir side group, Bobby & the Midnites, as well as with the Grateful Dead, New Riders of the Purple Sage, John Lee Hooker and T-Bone Walker.

On drums is Jay Lane, an original member of Primus, who played on Les Claypool’s side project, Sausage.

“Around a year ago, I introduced Bobby to Jay Lane, who I met through my friend Les Claypool. We did a track together and did a gig as 3 Guys Named Schmo,” said Wasserman in an interview from New York before Garcia died.

“He’s a great drummer, and I suggested him to Bobby for a project he was producing. He thought it’d be fun to add him to our duo on a song we were recording,” he said. “Matthew Kelly goes way back to Kingfish days. His role is rhythm harmonica player. So we have a real rhythm-oriented sound.

“It’s a hard thing to describe, but it’s a new sound--with harmonica, upright electric bass and a lead electric part.”

What began strictly as an acoustic pairing of Weir and Wasserman has been expanded to a full electric band. “We’ve been expanding slowly,” Wasserman said. “So we’re adding some new tunes.”

“One big difference is that all of us are doing vocal harmonies,” the bassist said. “Two years ago, if you told me I’d be doing that, I’d have laughed.

“This is a whole new fun thing for both of us,” Wasserman said of the band. “We still do our duo in the show, and I do my solo bass segment; it breaks down to all kinds of things.

“What makes it fun is that it changes so much,” he said. “For me, it’s a new challenge. I’m getting into more electronic effects for the first time. Up to now, I’ve always relied on technique. But the last time I tried effects, I almost blew up the place. I pressed the wrong button.”

Weir and Wasserman still use their last names to identify their act. But it was Weir who wanted to get a band name for the new quartet, Wasserman said. “He also came up with the slogan: ‘If you can’t run with the Ratdogs, get off the couch.’ Whatever that means. He’s the word person.”

Wasserman, in his acclaimed “Duos” and “Trios” albums, is used to working with a lot of top musicians, including Bruce Hornsby, Brian Wilson, Willie Dixon, Neil Young and Elvis Costello. He was also prominent on Lou Reed’s “New York” and “Magic and Loss” albums.

It was during the “Trios” album that Weir and Wasserman wrote “Eternity” with famed bluesman Dixon before his death. That and “Easy Answers” had been performed frequently by the Dead on its last tours and were being recorded for the studio album the band had in the works.