Joe Russo's Almost Dead August 13-15 on the farm!

JamBase: JRAD will headline a mini-festival at the home of the LOCKN' Festival in Arrington, Virginia August 13 – 15. How did that come together?



Joe Russo: Basically, it was presented to me as: LOCKN’ the festival is not happening but LOCKN Farm the venue is, would you like to come play? Absolutely. So we booked our three nights as just JRAD. I definitely didn’t want it to be a festival. I didn’t want to curate a festival. We’ve turned down opportunities to host our own festival dozens of times. It’s just something I’m not interested in. But we did have the opportunity to bring some friends along. And that was exciting to me: well, who do you want to get? I want to get The Slip! I want to get this amazing band who are such great friends and such inspired musicians. Let’s see if they’ll do it. And then it’d be fun to do something after — what should we do? Let’s get John Medeski and Billy Martin to host a jam session in the fucking forest.



Stuff like that excites me and it’s all rooted in a pretty deep history between those nine humans between the guys and JRAD, The Slip guys and John and Billy, the Venn Diagram is so robust. When I was thinking about adding anything to these nights, it was like, let’s not have it be this smattering of artists to cover every feeling of music. It was more like let’s have improvisation and collaboration be the centerpiece of this weekend and how we can establish that through three different entities who will be playing three wildly different types of music. While also having a built-in platform for all of us to collaborate. That, that made me really excited. As a drummer, being with Andrew [Barr] and Billy



JamBase: Those three drummers, I mean, that’s insane.



Joe Russo: I mean, both of them are absolute heroes of mine. Then you spread it out a tiny bit and all of a sudden, Marc [Friedman] and Brad [Barr] and John and the possibilities of collaboration are really exciting. And that just felt like the initial spirit to the LOCKN’ Festival when it was that, it was this kind of inter interwoven collaborative spirit. So I wanted to do that on kind of a micro-level with people that we know, and we love.



JamBase: Will the late-night sets in the forest be completely improvised?



Joe Russo: Oh, you betcha. I just had a great talk with Billy and Andrew and, just discussing that all these different things throughout our history and all these things, all these nights of playing music built from zero. It’s really great to get to do that in any space, but to get to do that there, in the forest and outside and in the trees and at midnight is its own special accompaniment.



I think the whole site is so gorgeous. Even when we were going to go last year — we were going to film on-site at LOCKN’, JRAD, and then weather and all sorts of crazy shit started happening in there — I was so excited to go play for no one at that place, on that land. We were like, “how good is it gonna feel to stare at that, that backdrop and, and be with your friends and make music?” So this is just the ultimate version of that.



I’m realizing as we’re talking about it, (it was) kind of just something that finally came to fruition in a really special family-based way with the people that are involved, and I couldn’t be more excited.



JamBase: Another really exciting element of the mini-festival at LOCKN is a pair of “Other Shit” sets of non-Grateful Dead material. Have you given much thought yet to what those setlists will look like?



Joe Russo: What said “shit” will be? Yeah we have some ideas, we have some concepts and again, just wanting to take the opportunity — if we’re going to be in a place together for three days and we kind of get to do whatever the hell we want, let’s do whatever the hell we want to build in some extra excitement for us and hopefully everyone else that’s there.



And then we’re also going to do an acoustic set in the forest during the day on Sunday. Because you know what’s going to feel good is an acoustic set in the forest on Sunday. As this thing kept approaching and ideas had to come to fruition, it was just like, well, let’s do this, let’s try this.



JamBase: Can fans expect “Other Shit” beyond the non-Grateful Dead material that has been played by JRAD in the past?



Joe Russo: We will not be playing anything we’ve ever played in front of people.



JamBase: That is huge. That is great news and I’m sure fans will be very excited for that.



Joe Russo: I’m excited for it. Yeah. Totally.