Review | Dancing the Next Waltz with Santa Barbara Symphony and the Doublewide Kings

They may call themselves “a professional dad band” but the Doublewide Kings were living out every kid who’s ever had a garage band’s dream when they teamed up with the Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS) to the play “The Next Waltz” tribute to The Band’s The Last Waltz at The Granada Theatre on November 9. And what a fun collaboration it was! 

From the welcoming remarks from the ubiquitous John Palminteri (Truly, where would we be without that guy? I seriously wonder sometimes if he has a clone.), to the Symphony’s dramatic opening playing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, with guest conductor Brett Strader at the helm, followed by the Doublewide Kings and S.B. Symphony jumping right in with The Band’s “Up On Cripple Creek” — it was already a night to remember in the first ten minutes. 

Featured violinist Jenavieve Varga joined the Doublewide Kings as a guest artist, and her beautifully animated fiddle served as a nice bridge between the rock ‘n’ roll of the Kings and SBS’s special breed of orchestral maneuvers in the dark. The bands were back together after doing a similar tribute show collab last year (titled “Moondance,” a nod to the music of Van Morrison) — which Kings’ bandleader Palmer Jackson alluded to when he thanked the sold-out crowd for coming out, and said, “A year ago when we played the Granada, I woke up the next morning and I thought it must have been a dream.”

In many ways, it was indeed a dream, realized in part because Jackson is an avid arts supporter who serves on the boards of both the Granada and the Symphony, and also thanks to the support of another avid music patron in town, Earl Minnis. With a variety of bandmembers on lead vocals — including special guest Miriam Dance whose fabulous range was on great display in Joni Mitchell’s “Coyote” and mashup of a few songs including Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Helpless”) — I was particularly impressed by drummer Charlie Crisafulli’s singing on The Band’s ionic “It Makes No Difference,” and “The Weight” (a song everyone seems to know but no one can ever agree whether the lyrics are “take a load off Fanny” or “take a load off Annie”). 

Like The Band’s The Last Waltz farewell show in 1976, which you can stream via a fabulous Martin Scorsese documentary (it’s widely and deservedly considered to be one of the greatest documentary concert films ever made), “The Next Waltz” also took some liberties with the playlist and guest performers. The Symphony’s lead in with “Nimrod,” to the original song “High Water Blues,” sung by the Doublewide Kings’ primary vocalist and harmonica player John Simpson, was one of those detours that was particularly worthwhile, as was Marvin Gaye’s “Baby Don’t You Do It,” the penultimate song before the standing ovation encore of The Band’s classic and oft-covered “The Night They Tore Old Dixie Down,” with Jackson on lead vocals. 

Purposely titling the night “the next” rather than “last” waltz was a nod toward future Santa Barbara Symphony and Doublewide Kings collaborations of this kind — and I, for one, am more than on board for whatever kind of musical mashup ride they want to take us on.