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First Posted: 7/31/2014 WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Legendary lyricist Robert Hunter enthralled a small crowd Wednesday at the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts with his guitar, harmonica and the classic songs he co-wrote for the Grateful Dead.
From the moment he strode on stage and began to sing &#8220;Bertha,&#8221; written with Jerry Garcia and first featured on the 1971 live double album called &#8220;Grateful Dead,&#8221; he set the evening&#8217;s mood perfectly. For the next two hours, it would be one timeless tune after another as the remnants of the fabled Deadheads smiled from ear to ear as they danced and sang along.
For his second tune, he weaved the Garcia/Hunter song &#8220;Dire Wolf&#8221; with the Scottish folk song &#8220;Peggy-O&#8221; into a delightful stew, then did &#8220;Deal&#8221; from Garcia&#8217;s first solo album.
&#8220;It is such a pleasure getting on stage and singing melodies written by my best friend,&#8221; Hunter said following &#8220;Deal.&#8221; Then he told the story of how his next number, &#8220;Friend of the Devil,&#8221; came about.
&#8220;I wrote the lyrics on a tiny piece of paper and left it on the table,&#8221; he said. &#8220;When I woke up the next day, he (Garcia) had taken it and written a bridge. John Dawson (of New Riders of the Purple Sage) came up with the title.&#8221;
The live version performed on Wednesday night included some playful alternate lyrics: &#8220;You can borrow from the devil, you can borrow from a friend, the devil will give you 20, friend will only give you 10.&#8221;
Hunter, now 73, has rarely played live shows over the years, but is on his second swing of the East Coast since a 2013 health scare. Besides Wednesday&#8217;s show at the Kirby Center, the &#8220;Beyond the Blue Horizon&#8221; tour has taken him to New York&#8217;s City Winery for three shows earlier in the month, the Newport Folk Festival last Friday and the Suffolk Theatre in Riverhead, N.Y., on Sunday. The tour will wrap up with one more show at City Winery on Saturday.
The first set on Wednesday concluded with &#8220;Jack Straw&#8221; (written with Bob Weir) and &#8220;West L.A. Fadeaway&#8221; from the Grateful Dead&#8217;s only Top 10 album, 1987&#8217;s &#8220;In The Dark.&#8221;
After a brief intermission, Hunter returned to the stage with &#8220;Box of Rain,&#8221; the song he wrote with bassist Phil Lesh for the band&#8217;s 1971 masterpiece &#8220;American Beauty.&#8221; He then tried to explain the meaning behind &#8220;Aoxomoxoa,&#8221; which was the name coined for the group&#8217;s 1969 album by artist Rick Griffin, as an introduction to that album&#8217;s &#8220;Mountains of the Moon.&#8221;
Hunter&#8217;s second set continued with the classic &#8220;Sugaree&#8221; (also from the &#8220;Garcia&#8221; solo album), the Jerry Garcia Band nugget &#8220;Rubin and Cherise,&#8221; and his solo song &#8220;Promontory Rider.&#8221;
He then finished up the main set with two Grateful Dead standards &#8211; &#8220;Touch of Grey&#8221; (the band&#8217;s only Top 40 hit, reaching No. 9 unexpectedly in 1987) and &#8220;Scarlet Begonias,&#8221; which first appeared on 1974&#8217;s &#8220;From the Mars Hotel.&#8221;
For his encore, Hunter led the crowd through the Dead staple &#8220;Ripple&#8221; and then did an a cappella version of &#8220;Boys in the Barroom.&#8221;
No one would ever accuse Hunter of having a great voice or being a virtuoso on the guitar, but he proved Wednesday night what an integral part of the Grateful Dead he was. When the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, Hunter was included &#8211; the only non-performer to be inducted as a band member to date.
&#8220;Let there be songs to fill the air,&#8221; he sang on &#8220;Ripple,&#8221; and the songs he wrote with Garcia, Weir and Lesh will continue to linger. At the Kirby Center on Wednesday, we saw those songs come to life one more time.

Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter enthralls Kirby crowd