Joe Russo’s Almost Dead: Same Songs, Different Universe
JRAD - Andrew Sherman
ARTISTS - Joe Russo’s Almost Dead
VENUE - House of Blues
CITY - Dallas, TX 4/30/2026
PHOTOS - Andrew Sherman
Article - Amy Sherman
There's a moment in every great Grateful Dead show, or in this case, a Joe Russo's Almost Dead show, when the music stops being sound and starts being something else entirely. A collective exhale. A held breath released. The instant a familiar melody surfaces from the fog of improvisation and washes over the room like a wave finally breaking on shore. At House of Blues Dallas, that moment happened again and again. And the crowd, spanning generations, was there for every single one of them.
Joe Russo's Almost Dead, known to the faithful simply as JRAD, delivered a performance that was lively, energetic, and at times genuinely transcendent. Five supremely gifted musicians locked into the sprawling, polyrhythmic DNA of the Grateful Dead's catalog and took it somewhere thrilling. They jammed to the fringes of space and sound, walking the knife's edge between tension and release, between the abstract and the beautifully familiar. When recognition finally came, a riff rising, a chorus clicking into place, the room erupted. Big smiles. Whooping. Applause. Dancing. The crowd ebbed and flowed to their tide.
From the first notes, it was clear this would be no reverent, museum-piece recreation. JRAD plays Dead music the way the Dead themselves played it, as a living, breathing, ever-evolving conversation between musicians and audience. The polyrhythms pushed to the brink of comfortable tension before snapping back into resolution, each release greeted with the kind of communal joy that only live music can conjure. The House of Blues was the right setting for this kind of reverent chaos, intimate enough that you could feel the sound physically, large enough that the collective energy of the crowd had real weight.
What makes JRAD special is not just their technical mastery, though that is considerable, but their willingness to commit fully to the unknown. They venture deep into uncharted sonic territory on every song, trusting both themselves and their audience to make the journey. It's an act of mutual faith, and on this night in Dallas, it paid off spectacularly.
Look around any JRAD show and you'll see something remarkable: the audience spans decades. There were those who caught the real thing, gray-haired veterans with the knowing smiles of people who remember what it was like to follow the Dead from city to city. Beside them stood younger fans who found their way through other incarnations, through recordings, through older siblings or parents who passed down the flame. And others still, perhaps newer to this music, discovering it fresh and falling headlong into the tradition. That is the enduring miracle of the Grateful Dead's legacy: it keeps finding new ears, new hearts, new bodies to move.
Joe Russo's Almost Dead was founded by drummer Joe Russo, one of the most respected percussionists in the American jam scene. A veteran of the Benevento/Russo Duo and a former member of Furthur, the post-Dead project featuring Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, Russo conceived JRAD in 2013 and the band quickly outgrew its one-night origins to become one of the most sought-after live acts in the country. Joining him are keyboardist Marco Benevento, Russo's longtime creative partner whose playing draws on the full lineage of the Dead's keyboard tradition while remaining distinctly his own; bassist Dave Dreiwitz, best known from his years with Ween, whose deep groove and rhythmic intensity anchor the band's most adventurous explorations; and guitarists Scott Metzger and Tom Hamilton, who form one of the most dynamic twin-guitar partnerships in the jam scene. Metzger's liquid melodic sensibility and Hamilton's biting, raw-edged leads push and complement each other beautifully, and both contribute vocals that add yet another dimension to the band's sound. Together, these five accomplished musicians are not a tribute act in the conventional sense, they are artists who bring their full creative identities to music they clearly love deeply.
The Grateful Dead ended their run in 1995 with the passing of Jerry Garcia, but their music has never stopped moving. Through countless incarnations the songs have continued to find their audience, and Joe Russo's Almost Dead stands among the finest of their successors. On this night at House of Blues Dallas, they played tight and vicious and adventurous and free. They pushed the music to its edges and brought it home. They reminded everyone in the room why this music has always mattered, and why it always will.
