Joe Russo’s Almost Dead took the road for three gigs late last week. The band appeared at Holliday Park in Indianapolis, IN on Thursday, followed by gigs at Evans Amphitheater in Cleveland Heights, OH on Friday and Riverfront Park in Harrisburg, PA on Saturday.
The Friday show featured the band’s first-ever take on the Allman Brothers Band classic “Midnight Rider.” Tom Hamiton sang lead on the tune which originally appeared on Idlewild South. The song appeared as the encore on a night that also included rare takes on the Grateful Dead’s “Till the Morning Comes” and “Easy Wind.”
JRAD has performed a few ABB songs over the years, including “Whipping Post” which the group offered up the next evening in Harrisburg during an epic sequence in which the tune was preceded by “The Eleven” and followed by “Dark Star.” The group has performed “Whipping Post” only a few times over the years, most recently in Atlanta on 2/14/26. The Friday show also included a cover of Neil Young’s “Vampire Blues,” which the quintet last played on 1/13/24, along with two Bob Dylan tunes that also show up infrequently: “Gotta Serve Somebody” and “My Back Pages.”…