Joe Russo’s Almost Dead: A Serendipitous Decade

Here Joe Russo looks back on the last decade of music with JRAD through a series of images. To learn more with Joe about the group’s development, check out our archive cover story.

As soon as we realized that 10 years was coming up, which is still strange for all of us, we went back to [New York’s] Brooklyn Bowl was immediately something we all thought we should do, regardless of anything else we did to celebrate. The rest of the guys and I are very grateful that the first serendipitous and accidental concert at the Bowl happened. [Joe Russo’s Almost Dead first came together for the NYC-Freaks’ Freaks Ball event at Brooklyn Bowl in January of 2013]. At the same time, it’s interesting because if you look at the 10-year mile mark of a normal band, they’d say, “We play X number of shows every year for X number of years.” But we’ve only played seven shows in the first two years we’ve been around and then the pandemic hit, so it’s really only been about six and a half years of touring. And JRAD is a kind of 40 shows a year band.

But it remains wild, the passage of time is always a journey. And nothing really puts a point in time moving as fast as watching your children grow up. So it’s crazy to go back and say, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t have any kids when this started, and now I have two daughters. Wait what?” I was still in Furthur when this started. None of this was intentional or scripted, but it’s amazing that this is still happening 10 years later.

What makes it feel normal is that it’s still the same cast of characters I’ve played since some of us were in our late teens and early twenties, or longer if you go back to Marco. [Benevento] and me playing together in seventh grade. And that is the luxury of this group. It’s five friends who have been in each other’s lives for as long as we can remember, and it’s amazing that we can share this in a pressure-free situation. It’s a wonderful state: the day of the show, playing on stage and everything that goes with it is a very pleasant process. Whereas, when Marco and I were in The Duo, it was like had to make The Duo happen, and all the desperation and stuff that comes with being in so many different bands. [With JRAD], we all have our satellite groups and our own projects and all these other things that can wear down that stress. But when you put this together, it’s just the five luckiest guys in the world playing music together, and it’s amazing that we’re all still doing it 10 years later.