Lately, I've been doing a lot of searching for concerts that have taken place in the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, due to the leak of dozens of concerts from there a couple of weeks ago. The sound quality of these concerts is excellent, but most of them need work being split into individual song files and such, so I've been checking to see if other people are doing that. These searches have turned up a few things that don't actually come from that big leak, and this is one of them. This is from a webcast instead. So, while the sourcing is different, the sound quality is equally excellent.
Welch and Rawlings have become stars of roots music, blending country, bluegrass, and folk. But while they've released many albums mostly consisting of songs they've written, it turns out they've also been Deadheads all along. In fact, while gathering information for this album, I came across an article talking about how Welch followed the Dead for some concerts in the late 1980s, as Deadheads did. So, apparently just for fun, they decided to perform an entire tour of the U.S. consisting of nothing but covers of Dead songs, as well as cover songs closely associated with the Dead. The tour started in April 2026 with this concert, and will continue through August. So if you're reading this, you might want to go see them live. I checked their setlists at setlist.fm. It turns out they've been varying up their set lists a lot on the tour. They played 24 songs here. But they've done over 40 different ones on the tour so far, and all the songs are those that were performed by the Dead.
The tour was inspired by the Dead's "Reckoning" album, which was semi-acoustic. It's hard to call it fully acoustic, since the band had two drummers. But Welch and Rawlings went even more stripped down, being accompanied by just a bassist (as you can see on the cover image). A majority of the songs performed did appear on "Reckoning," but it's a loose tribute. They skipped some songs from that album, and played quite a few others. I was especially impressed by "St. Stephen," as I didn't know it could sound good with such minimal instrumentation.
This album is two hours and 52 minutes long.
01 talk (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
02 Bertha (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
03 Jack Straw (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
04 Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
05 Dire Wolf (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
06 Dark Hollow (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
07 talk (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
08 It Must Have Been the Roses (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
09 Loser (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
10 Friend of the Devil (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
11 Cassidy (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
12 talk (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
13 Cumberland Blues (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
14 Brown-Eyed Women (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
15 I've Been All Around This World (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
16 Deep Elm Blues (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
17 Brokedown Palace (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
18 talk (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
19 He's Gone (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
20 Cold Rain and Snow (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
21 Bird Song (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
22 Ripple (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
23 talk (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
24 Althea (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
25 To Lay Me Down (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
26 St. Stephen (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
27 Not Fade Away - St. Stephen [Reprise] (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
28 Morning Dew (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
29 talk (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/eZTJVaSo
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/o5bi397bmPxuc35/file
The cover image, from right to left: David Rawlings, Gillian Welch and Paul Kowert. This image was taken at the Fox Theater, in Oakland, California, on April 17th, 2026, less than a week after the concert presented here. The text at the top and the bottom come from a promotional image associated with the webcast. I just resized the words and moved them around.
