Joe Russo’s Almost Dead continued their west coast concert run with a return to Oakland’s Fox Theater for “One More Saturday Night” of music for fans around the Bay Area last night. The popular Grateful Dead cover band has developed their own tradition of playing the Oakland concert venue around the same dates in October over the past few years. Some fans may remember their 2016 Fox Theater run that included a memorable sit-in from Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir. There were no special guests joining in this time around, but they did fill their Saturday night performance with plenty of Dead favorites for their second to last show of 2018.
Expectations were high for JRAD’s first of two Oakland performances, as their show at Los Angeles’s Wiltern Theatre the night prior featured a lengthy guest appearance from Dead & Company guitarist John Mayer, who joined in on the fun for the entire second set and encore. The sold-out show on Saturday began with a cover of the Jerry Garcia Band‘s “Rubin and Cherise” before going into “Eyes of the World” > “New Minglewood Blues”. The first set would continue with a full rendition of “Althea” before Weir’s “Lost Sailor” from the Dead’s 1980’s Go To Heaven album found its way back into the set for the first time since last March before going closing out with “Saint Of Circumstance”.
Joe Russo and company dialed back the clocks for the second set, which included a number of fan-favorites from the earlier days of the Dead catalogue—primal Dead if you will. The set began with a solo courtesy of pianist Marco Benevento before the five-piece went into “Truckin’”, which wrapped with a “Born Cross-Eyed”-themed jam that moved right into “Jack Straw”. The second half of set two saw the group finding a continuous groove via dance-friendly hits including “Brown Eyed Woman” > “Dancing In The Streets”, with the latter including a mix of teases of Stevie Wonder‘s “Living For The City”, Herbie Hancock‘s “Hang Up Your Hang Ups”, and the Dead’s own “Slipknot!” and “King Solomon’s Marbles”.
The wild second set continued with Weir’s uptempo “The Music Never Stopped”, which included a jam based around The Beatles‘ “Norwegian Wood”, though sadly it appears no sitar made its way onto the stage to give it that extra touch of George Harrison psychedelia. The set came to a close with the rural-rock anthem “Tennessee Jed”, followed by a one-song “Bertha” encore to bring the show to an end. Just another Saturday night in Deadheadland…
Joe Russo’s Almost Dead will close out what’s been a thrilling year with one more show tonight in Oakland. The Sunday performance will be their last until early next year when they return to The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York for three nights on January 18th, 19th and 20th.
Check out a selection of fan-shot video clips from the show below:
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@joerussosalmostdead teasing a little Stevie Wonder in Oakland.
: @pokey_au
leading the band into Truckin’ to start Set 2 @foxoakland @joerussosalmostdead 
@joeyjoeyrusso @davedreiwitz @trhjunior @scottymetz 
#jrad #falltour2018 #california 
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