JRAD : ‘The Show Must Go On!’

Joe Russo’s Almost Dead kept on truckin’, playing their 200th concert at the Lake Champlain Maritime Festival in Burlington, VT on July 28th, 2019. But before stepping on stage, the Brooklyn-based Grateful Dead cover band had to overcome unexpected challenges and one very welcome surprise.

John Morgan Kimock / © by Mandy Pichler

First to threaten the cancellation of this much-anticipated show was the unplanned absence of drummer and band namesake Joe Russo. “So it turns out, sometimes babies come 3 [sic] weeks early!!??” Russo asked via social media two days earlier. “Last night my incredible wife gave birth to our second daughter.” Russo bowed out of the weekend’s band commitments to welcome his newest Brooklynite into the world, but not before stating ‘the show must go on!” He named Evan Roque and John Morgan Kimock as his replacements in Vermont – two drummers to replace one Joe Russo.

Forty-eight hours and a concert at Peach Music Festival in Pennsylvania later, only one hurdle remained: a severe weather system moving across Lake Champlain. After a wet, hour-plus delay, the show finally did go on.

Dave Dreiwitz /© photo by Mandy Pichler

Band members Scott Metzger (guitar), Tom Hamilton (guitar), Dave Dreiwitz (bass), and Marco Benevento (keys), supported by Roque and Kimock, opened the night with a very solid “Feels Like A Stranger”. From there, the band segued into the often paired “Scarlet Begonias” and “Fire On The Mountain”.

Roque and Kimock proved themselves to be powerful, dexterous keepers of the beat. And the setlist exhibited little doubt about the talent of these two men, including several Grateful Dead songs conspicuously percussion-dependent, such as “Sampson and Delilah” and “Aiko, Aiko”. Both from music families , the drummers played with confidence, allowing guitarists Metzger and Hamilton to do what they do best. Trading leads and throwing down licks, they led fans into an array of familiar songs with sounds uniquely their own.

Benevento, meanwhile and as usual, deftly played the keys, shining especially bright during “China Cat Sunflower” during the second set. Bassist Dreiwitz, in tandem with the visiting musicians, established JRAD’s hallmark Grateful-Dead-rhythm-on-amphetamines tempo from the first note forward until the last and the conclusion of encore “Going Down The Road Feelin’ Bad”.

Marco Benevento / © by Mandy Pichler

The music of the Grateful Dead is considered by many to be hallowed ground, forever imitated and never duplicated. What makes JRAD more than a cover band is that it never pretends to try to imitate or duplicate. They treat the music the care and regard it warrants, but they don’t handle it with kid gloves either. Instead, JRAD shakes and breaks and rattles and rolls the venerated songs until they shatter into sounds both familiar and original. No small achievement but one that Joe Russo’s Almost Dead certainly achieves.