It was just such a beautiful release in getting back to this feeling that we forgot.” Like we hadn’t played a show since February of 2020,” Russo said.
“Thinking back to that first show especially, the catharsis that was going on. The Westville residency will conclude with a ninth and final show on Sept. READ MORE: The ultimate guide to Connecticut's concerts and music venues The shows are part of the group’s ongoing “residency” at the venue which sees JRAD playing its seventh and eighth shows on July 30 and 31. In May, JRAD played its first shows since the start of the pandemic at New Haven’s newly-opened Westville Music Bowl. “Sometimes you just want to play a Radiohead tune,” Russo added. “In the simplest terms, we get to speak out our voice in the Grateful Dead songbook but then if you zoom out a little bit, over the course of a concert, we can also add macro-influence.”
“I think it carries on the spirit of us and the idea that we can speak our own voice into this world,” Russo said regarding playing non-traditional cover songs. In the past eight years that the band has operated, the quintet has played hundreds of live shows and introduced new fans to the music of the Grateful Dead. “I think that perfect timing allowed me to understand and fall in love with the Grateful Dead,” Russo added.įour years after joining Furthur, Russo brought his Bustle In Your Hedgerow bandmates Scott Metzger Dave Dreiwitz and Marco Benevento, and American Babies’ Tom Hamilton, to form JRAD. Hearing Billy occupy that space blew my mind.” “Just that turn-on-dime precision of reading a moment and engaging with it is something that speaks to me. “When I went to audition with those, which at the time I didn’t know was an audition, I was hearing stuff like ‘Estimated Prophet’ and ‘King Solomon’s Marbles,’ and these very intricate musical compositions,” Russo said. The accomplished drummer said he was familiar with main cuts when growing up but the music clicked for him when he began to explore the intricacies of the deeper cuts in the Dead’s songbook. “The thing that really happened was getting the call to play with Bob Weir and Phil Lesh as they were putting together a new incarnation of the Dead, which eventually became Furthur,” Russo added. I was wearing my black t-shirt and listening to ‘Ride the Lightning,’ and was like ‘wait, what’s going on?’” “In high school, all my friends were into it wearing tie-dye. “My entrance into the Grateful Dead is fairly nontraditional as well,” Russo said. Joe Russo of Joe Russo's Almost Dead performing at the Westville Music Bowl in New Haven. However, the connection to the music of the Dead was not made immediately.
Russo has been ingrained in the Grateful Dead mythos for over a decade, having served as the drummer for Grateful Dead-offshoot Furthur, which was fronted by Phil Lesh and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. You take the DNA and information that is offered to you, and then you manipulate it, deconstruct it and rebuild it. “We’re not bound to the way that someone else did it. “It was a Grateful Dead cover band that was formed by accident,” Joe Russo, drummer and bandleader for JRAD, joked.
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