Brownstein: The Band's Last Waltz gets another spin with tribute concert

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It’s not our Thanksgiving, but many Montrealers will still be giving thanks Thursday: A re-creation of one of the greatest concerts of all time, The Band’s 1976 farewell performance The Last Waltz, is being presented that night in one of the more unlikely venues in town, the ornate Le 9e atop the old downtown Eaton’s.

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The event has been dubbed I Shall Be Released: A Re-creation of The Last Waltz.

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This isn’t the first time around for a Last Waltz tribute in Montreal. A previous show, held in 2016 at the seemingly more fitting Théâtre Corona (now the oddly named Beanfield), was one of the great concerts to take place in Montreal, with local performers recreating the spirit of the original concert by The Band (composed of four Canadians — Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson — and one American, Levon Helm).

Held in San Francisco on U.S. Thanksgiving night in 1976, The Last Waltz also featured a who’s who of legends, from Bob Dylan to Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison to Muddy Waters, and was captured in Martin Scorsese’s epic of the same name, one of the most memorable rock docs of them all.

Mitch Melnick’s Billy Bob Productions, which staged the 2016 concert here, has gone whole hog for Thursday’s event. Actually, whole fowl: In partnership with the show’s Le 9e production team, they will be serving up a U.S. Thanksgiving turkey dinner prior to the show, at the venue’s Île-de-France restaurant. Alas, that bird has flown, with those tickets already all gobbled up. However, tickets for the concert itself remain.

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Melnick, along with guitarist Shane Murphy and drummer/producer/bandleader Howard Bilerman — speaking at the latter’s hotel2tango recording/rehearsal studio — hadn’t really contemplated a followup to the 2016 show.

“Earlier this year, Jeff Baikowitz, basically the linchpin behind bringing Le 9e back to life, asked me to check out the space,” Bilerman recalls. “He said the venue was already reserved for much of the year for corporate functions, but he wanted to do some cool stuff the rest of the year. I put two and two together, remembering that the original Last Waltz was a turkey dinner, ballroom dancing and music in a big ballroom. So I pitched this to Mitch.”

Melnick, not quite a ballroom-dance devotee, was intrigued.

“This came right out of the blue, not something I ever had in mind,” says Melnick, whose Billy Bob Productions has put together tributes to all manner of musical genres, along with those to his fave poet/performer of all, Dylan. “So we went out and brought together the usual suspects who did the first show, like Shane, Howard and Arcade Fire’s Tim Kingsbury, and some newcomers.”

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Among the 30 singers and musicians performing are Dawn Tyler Watson, Basia Bulat, Katie Moore, Michelle Tompkins, Mike O’Brien, Chris Velan, Rob Lutes, Rob MacDonald, Alec McElcheran and Josh Trager. They will be playing with either Bilerman’s Mile End Band or, newly assembled for the occasion, the West End Band.

Murphy, one of the premier blues guitarists in the country, concedes he wasn’t a fan of The Band when he first heard them.

“But I was just 10 at the time,” quips Murphy, whose latest disc, Easy Street, was released in July. “But as I grew up, the depth of their material really grew on me — that whole mix of gospel, country, rock and blues. What I find most fascinating is this band, a pillar of Americana, is actually Canadiana, with four-fifths of the group from here.”

“Interestingly, the fact that The Band was able to do that concert on Thanksgiving back then was because they were mostly Canadian and, unlike some American groups who were unable to do the show, they didn’t have to be back home to take part in dinners with their families,” points out Bilerman, who has also drummed with Arcade Fire. “So their parents wouldn’t have been pissed at them.”

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The sold-out 2016 Last Waltz tribute cost patrons $35. The concert-only ticket for Le 9e is $99.

“We made $350 that night at the Corona and gave the profit to Shane for his next album. We also set a record for alcohol sales then — which has since been broken,” Melnick notes. “This one is a different vibe — a three-hour show, but with half the capacity of the first show.

“Hopefully this is the beginning of what could be a monthly or bi-monthly series of shows they might do there. There are music venues closing all over the city and Le 9e has this amazing room with great sound. But they didn’t have any infrastructure there, unlike the Corona. They had to buy or rent everything that’s needed for a rock ‘n’ roll concert. But I can assure people that the only ones making money on this show are the musicians. I’m just excited as to what may come next after this show.”

A rock concert was likely not what Lady Flora Eaton, the widow of John Eaton, had in mind for this art-deco space she inspired when it first opened in 1931.

“I haven’t told Mitch about this yet, but I have created a special death-metal anthem for the occasion,” Murphy cracks. “I think it should wake up the ghosts in the building — a real showstopper.”

AT A GLANCE

I Shall Be Released: A Re-creation of The Last Waltz takes place Thursday, Nov. 28 at 8 p.m. at Le 9e, 1500 Robert-Bourassa Blvd., ninth floor. Concert tickets cost $99, available at feverup.com.

bbrownstein@postmedia.com

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