Lynyrd Skynyrd performs Friday at Youngstown's Covelli Centre. (Submitted photo / Doltyn Snedden)

Lynyrd Skynyrd founding member Gary Rossington is sidelined but, as the current tour is dubbed, the “Big Wheels Keep on Turnin’.”

The southern rockers and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted band will perform Friday at the Covelli Centre.

“He’s doing well,” Rickey Medlocke said of Rossington during a telephone interview last week from a tour stop in Hammond, Ind. “He’s still recovering from heart complications and a procedure from last year. He is able to come out and play a couple shows here and there, play ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Freebird’ with us. In Atlantic City, it was great to have him out there … We miss him incredibly. It’s like a brotherhood, like a family.”

There’s no timetable yet for his full return.

“He would love to, but he’s following his doctor’s suggestions and orders and doesn’t want to stray from that, and we don’t want him to,” Medlocke said. “We would love to have him full-time, but at the same time we don’t want to play Russian roulette with his life.”

Taking Rossington’s place on the current tour is Damon Johnson, who played in Thin Lizzy and Alice Cooper’s band and is a founding member of the southern rock act Brother Cane and hard rock band Black Star Riders (which opened for Judas Priest at the Covelli Centre in 2018).

He joins a lineup that includes Johnny Van Zant, lead vocals; Medlocke, guitar and backing vocals; Mark “Sparky” Matejka, guitar and backing vocals; Michael Cartellone, drums; Peter Keys, keyboard; Keith Christopher, bass; and Dale Krantz Rossington and Carol Chase, backing vocals.

“He is a seasoned vet and he has really come in and is really paying honor to the legacy and Gary’s playing and just doing a phenomenal job for us,” Medlocke said of Johnson.

Medlocke knows what Johnson is experiencing. Medlocke played drums for Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1971 and ’72, before the band signed with MCA Records and released its debut album in 1973. During Skynyrd’s ’70s heyday, Medlocke was fronting his own southern rock act, Blackfoot, best remembered for its platinum-selling album “Strikes” and the radio hits “Highway Song” and “Train, Train.”

He rejoined Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1996 as lead guitar player, now responsible for recreating the parts originally played by Allen Collins.

“When I came into this band, eyes were on me, too. Gary wanted to bring in someone who was Allen Collins-like, and Allen’s and my style were very similar. As it happened we played the very same style of guitar … I was around Allen in the original band in the early ’70s, so when I came back into the band, I prefaced (to Gary) that it would be true to form and that’s what I’ve done.”

The band was two years into a Last of the Street Survivors Farewell Tour when the COVID-19 pandemic started with 65 dates still to play. After a year and a half off the road, the band — with Rossington’s blessing — decided to resume the tour and continue its musical tradition

“When you come into a situation like this, people are used to hearing those songs true to form, so they want to see a band that comes out and recreates the stuff, so they remember when they heard it the first time or the situation that they were in. It brings back memories for them, and for younger audiences it creates stuff they never knew about, it creates memories for them as well — ‘Hey, I got to see Lynyrd Skynyrd.’ It’s a real historic band. We carry on the legacy. That’s the biggest part for us. We didn’t want to go out of 2020 and say, ‘OK, guys, that’s it.”

He is looking forward to Friday’s show in Youngstown because it will give him a chance to see his daughter, who lives in Akron.

Medlocke has written his share of songs over the years, including some for Lynyrd Skynyrd since joining the band. When asked if there was a song in the band’s catalog that he wished he’d written, he said, “Everyone would like to have written ‘(Sweet Home) Alabama’ or ‘Freebird,’ but he picked a different one, more because of the memory attached to playing it for the first time after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“We decided to stay on the road for five more shows because we felt it was important to stay out there for the people to help heal by bringing music instead of tragedy,” he said. “That night in Raleigh, supposedly there wasn’t one, not one, American flag left in town. We walked out at the Walnut Grove Amphitheater that night in front of 25,000 people, and it was unbelievable. Unbeknownst to us even thinking about it, we go into ‘Tuesday’s Gone,’ and the audience came unglued. Then we realized 9/11 happened on a Tuesday. That’s one song I wish I’d been a part of. … Everybody always asks, ‘What’s you’re favorite Skynyrd song to play?’ and I always go, ‘All of ’em.'”