On October 26, The Grateful Ball featuring The Travelin’ McCourys and Jeff Austin Band made its way to The Hamilton Live in Washington, DC. This was the closing night of the tour, in which both the Travelin’ McCourys and the Jeff Austin Band each performed before collaborating on a concluding set of Grateful Dead tunes.

Today we share the video of “Loser” from that evening in the national’s capitol. Ronnie McCoury reflects, “Because of my Bluegrass roots and my discovery of David Grisman, I started digging and found the Grateful Dead as a young man and knew that David had recorded on the the American Beauty album. From that I eventually went to a bunch of shows and I met Jerry Garcia and sold him some banjos because his love of Bluegrass. However, when we started The Travelin’ McCourys, there was never any thought about covering any Dead tunes. As we started experimenting with some cover songs for our live show, we pulled out Loser for DelFest a couple of years ago and the reaction was overwhelming. The fans were telling us how much they loved our version of the song, and there was no denying there was something in the sound that has since informed our overall band sound more so than you’d expect from one song.”

The Traveling McCourys upcoming tour dates through the year’s end appear below the video.

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The Travelin’ McCourys Tour Dates