Joe Russo’s Almost Dead made a pilgrimage to the Mecca for Deadheads, the San Francisco Bay Area, on Friday, celebrating the Grateful Dead‘s legacy 60 years after they first came together in San Francisco. Across the Bay in Oakland, where the Dead played over 125 shows, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead performed at the Fox Theatre, at one point taking the bridge over to amble around the “Mission in the Rain”.
Titular drummer Joe Russo fittingly started the show with a steady and simple snare beat, a guiding force through the evening of musical twists and turns. A concise and serene opening jam floated on Marco Benevento‘s B3 organ and into Bob Dylan‘s “Queen Jane Approximately”. Released in 1965 on Highway 61 Revisited, the song dropped the same year the Dead formed (as The Warlocks) and would enter the band’s live repertoire while touring stadiums with Dylan in 1987. On Friday, guitarist Scott Metzger‘s reading threaded the onstage confidence of Bob Weir with the revered nasally whine of the song’s original author.
Co-lead guitarist Tom Hamilton got his time to shine as the energy in the room exploded with Jerry Garcia chestnut, “Rubin and Cherise”. From there, JRAD was off and running, slinking into a sleek and danceable “After Midnight” jam. Out of the double-dose of Hamilton hysteria, Metzger regained control of the mic, packed up his traveling sack, and hit the road for a breezy “Black Throated Wind”, the gentle instrumentation occasionally broken up by Metzger’s spitting vocals. The Hamilton-Metzger back-and-forth volleys came to a satisfying climax with “Jack Straw”, before Hamilton’s raw, distorted, scorched-earth “Althea” soloing left no other choice but to take a set break and allow everyone to scoop up the shattered pieces of their consciousnesses.
Forgoing the typical ethereal set-opening jam, JRAD got right to business with “Beat It On Down The Line”. The upbeat opener was still no match for the pressure release valve of audience exhilaration that followed a hard drop into “Shakedown Street”. Hamilton’s aggressive playing kept the intensity high, before the band deconstructed the jam to take it into “Greatest Story Ever Told”.
It was after GSET, though, that JRAD reached the outer limits of weird. This wild, experimental jam at points abandoned any unifying concept of time or tone, its only tether to reality the steady snare beat Russo used to start the show. Out of that foreboding chaos of “Echoes”-like banshee screams from Hamilton’s guitar, came the gentle strum of “Mission in the Rain”. A merciful comedown from some truly frightening experimentalism, Hamilton eeked out a whisper like a plea, “I turn and walk away, then I come ’round again / It looks as though tomorrow I’ll do pretty much the same.”
There was a sense of homecoming as Hamilton brought the line, “Ten years ago, I walked this street / My dreams were riding tall,” back to where it was written. That sense of communion would not falter through the rest of the show, rolling on with a joyfully triumphant “Deal” and coming to a climactic, 18-minute “Let it Grow” to close the set. Returning once more to the stage on the Dead-annointed soil, JRAD closed the show with its second-ever take on “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?” by Derek and the Dominos.
Check out full-show video and audio from Joe Russo’s Almost Dead in Oakland, plus photos from Ryan Myers. Up next for JRAD is a performance at Suwannee Hulaween this weekend, followed by a year-ending trio of shows in Jim Thorpe, PA (11/13); Philadelphia (11/14); and Washington, D.C. (11/15). Find tickets and tour dates here.
Joe Russo’s Almost Dead — Fox Theatre — Oakland, CA — 10/24/25 — Set One
[Video: Ted Silverman AKA TedToob]
Joe Russo’s Almost Dead — Fox Theatre — Oakland, CA — 10/24/25 — Set Two
[Video: Ted Silverman AKA TedToob]
Joe Russo’s Almost Dead — Fox Theatre — Oakland, CA — 10/24/25 — Full Audio
[Audio: Travitz12]
Setlist: Joe Russo’s Almost Dead | Fox Theatre | Oakland, CA | 10/24/25
Set One: Jam [1] -> Queen Jane Approximately (Bob Dylan), Rubin & Cherise -> After Midnight (J.J. Cale), Black Throated Wind -> Jack Straw, Althea
Set Two: Beat It On Down the Line (Jesse Fuller) -> Shakedown Street -> Greatest Story Ever Told -> Space, Mission in the Rain -> Deal, Let It Grow
Encore: Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad? (Derek and the Dominos)
[1] “Loose Lucy” tease
