moe. and Daniel Donato Continue Team-Ups in Final Week of Co-Headline Tour, with Bust-outs of “Up on Cripple Creek,” “Dead Flowers” and More
Photo Credit: Bill Kelly
On Sunday, July 21, and moe. and Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country brought their acclaimed co-headline tour to a close with a final performance at Bell’s Eccentric Cafe in Kalamazoo, Mich. This closing engagement arrived as the culmination of a thrilling 12-date run that showed the jam figureheads and rising stars teaming up for unforgettable treatments of covers and originals, cementing each’s status as enduring voices in the scene. The groups gained momentum in the final week of the series, with the last four shows giving some serious highlights worth cataloging.
On Thursday, July 18, moe. and Donato blew through Evans Amphitheater in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. For its first stop in the Midwest sprint that would wrap its run, moe. marked the occasion with treatments of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive” and Traffic’s “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys,” then invited the full Cosmic Country band to the stage for an encore of The Band’s “Ophelia,” playing directly into Donato’s bluesy, country-inflected jam wheelhouse. Collaborations continued on July 19, when Donato joined moe. for a set-closing “Moth” and an encore of Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way,” which was the jam band’s sixth cover of the classic.
The bands turned up the heat for the final weekend of the tour, which began with sets at Rock the Ruins 2024 in Indianapolis’ Holiday Park. Here, moe. welcomed Donato for its first collaborative bust-out of the run, tapping the ace axeman for a soul-stirring approach to The Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers.” This was the band’s 13th cover of the Stones centerpiece since its 1999 debut and the first in five years, after a July 2019 staging at Asbury Park, N.J.’s Stone Pony. The band had planned an encore cover of “Up on Cripple Creek,” but was forced to forego it due to the venue’s curfew.
Fortunately for the fans, this wouldn’t stop moe. For the tour’s final stop at Bell’s Eccentric Cafe, moe. opened with the sheer force of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” From this impressive entry, the group kept the energy high through classics like “Billy Goat” and “The Road” before calling Donato to the stage once more for the closing movement. Donato supported the band for a treatment of the original “Opium,” then summoned the rest of Cosmic Country to finally deliver that rendition of The Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek,” which arrived as moe.’s first cover of the song since July 2021. After this thrilling full-group celebration, moe. closed out the tour with an encore of “Okayalright.”
moe. returns to the road tonight to kick off its long-awaited “An Evening with moe.” series, which begins at Livingston, Mont.’s Pine Creek Lodge. For tickets and more information on the band’s broader live schedule, visit moe.org/tour.
