Tucson musicians to bring ‘The Last Waltz’ to life

The Band itself was underrated, says longtime Tucson concert promoter and musician David Slutes.

But their friends? That was another story entirely.

Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Muddy Waters, Dr. John, Ringo Starr, Paul Butterfield, Ronnie Hawkins, The Staple Singers, Ron Wood, Bobby Charles and Emmylou Harris were all big-name stars who all had some connection with The Band or its members.

All of them joined The Band for what was dubbed “The Last Waltz,” a five-hour concert on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 25) 1976, that some say can never be replicated.

That doesn’t mean that Slutes won’t try.

Again.

Slutes was one of the organizers of "The Last Waltz — Tucson Style” at Fox Tucson Theatre on Nov. 26, 2016, to commemorate the landmark concert’s 40th anniversary.

On Sunday, Aug. 23, Slutes and La Rosa will host “The Last Waltz Live: 50th Anniversary Celebration,” featuring some two dozen Tucson musicians.

“This is stuff I love to do,” said Slutes, La Rosa’s director and co-owner who was part of the Sidewinders, a Tucson desert rock band that was signed by a national label in the late 1980s. “I'm a Tucson guy, and we have all this incredible Tucson music. It’s just one of my vocations and pleasures to have the opportunity to bring them to the stage.”

The 2016 event, which Slutes coordinated with former Fox Tucson Theatre Executive Director Craig Sumberg and the late George Howard, featured a cast of mostly established Tucson musicians including Howard, Duncan Stitt, Howe Gelb, Brian Lopez, Gabriel Sullivan, Bruce Halper and Katie Haverly recreating The Band’s farewell concert song by song.

The concert “was almost a sellout, and it was just a collection of a core band of seasoned players and then a bunch of guest singers,” said Stitt, a fixture in the Tucson music scene since the late 1970s who played piano at the 2016 event and was the music director. “We were trying to let local talent have a spot, you know.”

“This time we have every kind of artist from different demographics, different age groups. They bring different things to the table,” Slutes said. “All of them really talented. I mean, we were able to identify a lot of great people for this one, and I think we did last time, too. But this might be even a little more fine-tuned.”

Sunday’s concert, like the 2016 event, will replicate the way The Band performed “The Last Walz” that Thanksgiving night 50 years ago.

The Band’s last waltz

In some ways, it made no sense that The Band would “retire” in 1976, eight years after releasing its debut album “Music From the Big Pink.”

But it also made perfect sense. They had been touring since 1958, five years with Toronto rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins and then with Bob Dylan on his first electric tour in 1966 after famously plugging in at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

In 1968, Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson, Levon Helm and Rick Danko went out on their own as The Band after releasing their debut album “Music from Big Pink.” Their music was multi-genre; they played what they liked, from narrative-driven folk songs to R&B and blues that followed intricate 12-bar grooves. Their version of country music sometimes included extended rock guitar solos, which played a role in the evolution of 1970s country-rock.

In 1976, with six albums under their belt and another in the wings, and some 16 years of touring, The Band announced that it was performing its farewell concert. The show on Thanksgiving Day would be a full-circle moment for The Band; it was at the 5,400-seat venue in 1968 that they played their first concert with the rock impresario Bill Graham producing.

Graham was back to put on the finale, complete with a two-hour Thanksgiving buffet and two more hours of ballroom dancing with a student orchestra from Berkeley before the concert started at 9 p.m.

The Band hinted at special guests, but as Tucsonan Terry Pollock recalls, there was “no promotion whatsoever about the lineup.”

“There were rumors swirling that this concert was going to be really cool, and that Dylan might show up,” said Pollock, who was a senior at nearby Stanford University at the time and had lucked into a ticket from a housemate. “I mean, they never really marketed the concert as being full of this all-star guest lineup."

When the band took the stage at 9, “all hell broke loose,” he remembers.

“I mean, it was the most remarkable concert I've ever seen,” said Pollock, who spent 10 years as a singer-songwriter in Tucson from the mid-1980s to mid-’90s. “The band comes on. They play an opening set of, I think, 10 or 11 songs that were their biggest hits: ‘The Weight,’ ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,’ ‘Stage Fright,’ ‘Rag Mama Rag.’ I mean, just every song that you would think you would want to hear.”

The Band took a short break, and when they returned, they played a couple more songs before bringing on their first guest, Ronnie Hawkins, who joined The Band for a cover of the blues rocker “Who Do You Love.”

“Then this whole train of superstars — Muddy Waters and Dr. John and Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Paul Butterfield and Eric Clapton, Van Morrison,” Pollock, 71, recalled early this week. “Bob Dylan came out and he sang ‘Baby, Let Me Follow You Down’ and then he sang ‘Forever Young,’ and he was supposed to be the last guest (before) all of the superstars got on stage and they all sang ‘I Shall Be Released.’ That was going to be the ultimate send off, but the crowd wouldn't leave.”

Pollock said the audience applauded and cried out for encores, so The Band obliged and returned with a couple of guests for a four-song encore and left the stage again.

“It's now 1:30, quarter to 2 in the morning, and the event has been going on since 5 and the crowd still won't leave after they finish this encore,” Pollock said. “People are screaming and stomping their feet and lighting lighters, and just won't leave.”

The Band returns to the stage with Ringo Starr. They push a second drum kit out, and The Band’s drummer Helm and Starr play duo drums while the rest of the band, joined by Neil Young and Eric Clapton on guitar, spend 45 minutes jamming.

“I guess they ran out of songs, or they didn't know what else to do,” Pollock said. “But the crowd wasn't leaving, and so they came out and they did an extended jam session, which was fabulous. I loved every second of it because I was a true fanboy back then.”

The musicians took another final bow, and the house lights came up. End of the night, right?

“Except nobody would leave,” Pollock said. “The crowd is just screaming, ‘No! Don't go! Don't go! Please, one more! And they're saying, ‘We're done. We can't play anymore. We've had it.’ So this goes on and on and on until it's like at quarter to 4 in the morning.”

That’s when Robertson came back on stage: "Are you still here?”

“Yeah,” the audience responded.

“OK, we’ll sing one more song.”

That song was “Don’t Do It,'“ which struck Pollock as alternately poetic and ironic. The song talks about saying goodbye while begging not to leave.

“It may have been strictly a coincidence, and it was the only song left in their in their bag that they hadn't sung yet, I don't know. But what I heard was what was happening that night at 3 'clock or 4 o'clock in the morning," he said, as the band tried to leave and the crowd begged them to stay.

“They weren't a top band, but what they pulled together was these incredible artists sort of elevated the whole thing, and people had to take a look at The Band,” Slutes said. “That basically turned the world onto them. … It was a stunning way to leave, you know. It's a great mic drop.”

Recreating ‘The Last Waltz’

The lineup for Sunday’s concert draws from near household names in Tucson’s music scene — guys like singer-songwriter John Coinman, pianist Brad Nichols of Southbound Pilot fame, Grams & Krieger’s Steve Grams and Danny Krieger, singer-songwriter and drummer Bruce Halper and roots rock guitarist Kevin Pakulis — and a handful of rising stars including Sonoran soul singer-songwriter Carlos Arzate, multi-genre singer-guitarist Grant Bloom and keyboardist Chris Peña, a regular with Connie Brannock’s Little House of Funk.

The core band members — Grams on bass, Halper and Fred Hayes alternating on drums, Peña on organ, Eric Mellen on guitar and Brad Nichols on keyboards — will each perform a song from The Band before the guests join them. The concert will follow “The Last Waltz” soundtrack with guest artists covering songs from The Band before singing songs from the artist they are representing.

Stitt, who is reprising his role as music director, said for the artists on stage, “it’s literally a dream gig.”

“We get to play with the best musicians in town, backing up the best singers in town, playing some of the most memorable music from the 20th century,” he said. “If musicians had résumés, this show would be one of the top bullet points.”

For the audience, it’s a chance to “see 18 different lead singers, any of whom could be fronting their own band doing their own original material, and they get to witness the passing of the torch from Tucson's veteran musicians to the next generation of Tucson's top talent,” Stitt said. “There are going to be some big smiles up on stage — and in the audience — on Sunday night.”

Some of the highlights could be Birds and Arrows singer Andrea Connolly singing “Coyote,” which Joni Mitchell sang on “The Last Waltz”; Peña and Krieger teaming up on “Such A Night,” originally covered by Dr. John; Pete Ronstadt and Liz Cerepanya with Don Armstrong covering “The Weight”; Coinman and singer-songwriter Gabrielle Pietrangelo teaming up on Neil Young’s “Four Strong Winds” and “Helpless”; Arzate covering Van Morrison’s “Caravan”; Mamma Coal and Bloom with accordionist Gary Mackender covering “Evangeline,” which Emmylou Harris sang; and Brian Lopez on Dylan’s “Forever Young” and “I Shall Be Released,” which will feature other musicians.

Tucson poets Terry Pollock and Jefferson Carter also will recite their works during the concert.

Stitt said The Band’s music resonates with today’s young people who are “sick of the AI and the manufactured pop stars.”

“They're kind of craving real music, and these are such well-written songs, man,” he said.

Even after 50 years, “The Last Waltz” “feels very timeless and yesterday, and it doesn't sound old-timey,” Slutes said, especially in the hands of Sunday’s local lineup.

“You mix it up like that and all the musicians start to appreciate the other musicians. All the young and old folks appreciate everyone,” he said. “All these different skill levels and styles, they all can blend together because they're all really great.”

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