The lights went down and by the time Bob Weir started noodling his first note on electric guitar on Tuesday night, the Fillmore Minneapolis smelled like the Grateful Dead.

In the next 3½ hours, the month-old music club with the revered San Francisco moniker got officially Deadified by what seemed like a reborn Weir, the longtime Dead guitarist/vocalist.

Last March at the Palace Theater in St. Paul, Bob Weir and the Wolf Bros. offered a surrogate good ol' Grateful Dead experience, but this time the modest two-year-old trio delivered a more satisfying Dead fix.

Vocally, Weir, 72, has never sounded better in the Twin Cities. Suggesting Johnny Cash only about an octave higher, he sang with deep-voiced passion, nuanced phrasing, occasional force, consistent assertiveness and even a taste of falsetto.

Weir's reading of Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried" would have made old Hag proud. Paul McCartney would have admired how Weir elongated "ey-i-i-eye" and "sky-i-i-i" in "Dear Prudence."

With all the contemplative space in his deft phrasing, Weir's treatment of "Me and Bobby McGee" could have almost rivaled Janis Joplin's classic version. Weir skillfully navigated Cash's "Big River," a selection he performed last year at the Palace because it mentions St. Paul, Minn.

Don Was, Jay Lane and Bob Weir at the Fillmore Minneapolis

The only other repeaters from the Palace were the Dead's "He's Gone" and the old Temptations tune "Shakey Ground," Tuesday's only loser because it got stuck in a repetitious groove.

While the St. Paul set featured three numbers by Minnesota's own Bob Dylan, Tuesday's playlist was Dylan-free and heavy on Dead nuggets. "Passenger," "West L.A. Fadeaway," "Throwing Stones," Jerry Garcia's "Sugaree," the traditional "Deep Ellum Blues" and an epic eight-minute encore of "Touch of Grey," with Weir repeating "we will survive, we will get by" over and over as if it were a mantra for both him and the current world health crisis.

During the two long sets, Weir did not give solo opportunities to either drummer Jay Lane, who has played with Weir's Ratdog and Primus, and upright bassist Don Was, the Grammy-winning producer of Bonnie Raitt, the Rolling Stones and many others.

But Weir took many journeys on electric and acoustic guitar. A band leader in need of more sidemen (like a keyboardist or lead guitarist), he still seems to be a rhythm guitarist who prefers strumming and chording instead of playing well articulated lines. But he occasionally pulled off a run of notes that suggested he's been listening to his Dead & Company bandmate John Mayer, the guitar star who has gone to school on the Garcia jazz/bluegrass/rock mélange and wed it with his own blues/rock instincts.

Still, Weir's guitar work did not consistently elevate the songs, but his singing certainly did.