An Unforgettable Garth Hudson Show, Revisited

In April 1990, I caught a memorable performance, somewhere between brilliant and bizarre, by the Band's genius-in-residence. With Garth's death in January, 2025, no original Band members remain.

Five minutes before showtime, the backstage area of St. Ann's, a gorgeous, crumbling 150-year-old church in Brooklyn Heights, is aswirl with Garth Hudson and 30-odd (some of 'em real odd) co-perpetrators. Hudson, of course, is the self-effacing, endlessly inventive virtuoso whose keyboards, accordion, and sax once flowed like a happy river through the Band.

Surprisingly slight beneath that bulbous brow and increasingly o’er-spreading beard, Garth, 53, wanders through the crowd, dreamily fingering a curved-neck soprano saxophone similar, or identical, to the one with which Garth so movingly closed “It Makes No Difference” in the Band’s 1976 farewell concert, The Last Waltz. My God, this show’s got everything but jugglers, and no one knows if it's all going to come off. But it does: a mix of the sublime, the whimsical and the underrehearsed. ¹²

Garth Hudson—look again, two Garth Hudsons—playing the Lone Star Cafe, NYC, 11/26/86

As the house lights dim, a sort of world-music string band takes the stage, led by Hudson on accordion. They globetrot briskly from Romanian folk songs through British ballads to the lovely “Feed the Birds,” Hudson's contribution to Stay Awake, producer Hal Willner's 1988 collection of Disney music. (Willner’s on hand tonight, the show’s co-producer).

Next it’s jazz standards time: Hudson at the church’s grand piano in a series of duets with his singing wife Maud; Lew Soloff, one of New York’s go-to recording-session trumpeters (and onetime member of Blood, Sweat & Tears), and Clifford Scott, a 61-year-old saxophonist from Texas whom Hudson, an ardent admirer, has tracked down for this show. The revelation here is Hudson's jazz playing; I'd no idea he could toss off such knotty, Tatumesque/Garnerish runs. For all his contributions to their sound, it’s clearer than ever to what extent Hudson’s talent and curiosity went untapped in the Band. lf any musician deserves his own album right now, ‘tis he.

Turning to his Roland A-8O, Hudson accompanics Soloff on the Appalachian hymn "When Jesus Christ Was Here on Earth," for me the evening's high point. Hitting a sustain switch, Hudson disappears... and re-emerges in the organ loft at the rear of the church, accompanied by an entire freaking choir. Forsaking the sacred for the demonic, Garth plays on alone, the spotlights shining eerie-blue, then hellish-red, on the organ’s huge bank of pipes. Garth gives a passing nod to Music From Big Pink’s "Chest Fever," dips lugubriously into "Shortnin’ Bread" and finishes with a final, glorious blast.

After such splendors, the rest of the night is fun but anticlimactic; it's mostly the Mike Reilly Band, Hudson’s sometime gigging buddies from LA, romping through straight-ahead roadhouse blues with Garth on keyboards. The evening's final, typically oddball note: a video of the late lap-steel guitarist Thumbs Carlisle, another of Hudson’s obscure heroes, playing "Over the Rainbow."

Is an album brewing here? "Hopefully," says Willner. "This show was exactly the kind of record I try to make. (Willner’s specialty is concept albums featuring wildly diverse musicians venturing well outside of their accustomed styles.) “It was wonderfully surreal, right up my tastes. I wish I could take credit but I can't. It was all Garth." And Hudson allows, in his deliberate growl, that yes, he'd like to make a solo album with Willner. But don't hold your breath. As Janine Nichols, tonight’s other co-producer, said, "I've never seen someone more able, and less willing, to take the spotlight."

1. St. Ann’s and the Holy Trinity Church, on Brooklyn Heights’s Montague Street, featured an active, well-attended performing arts program through 1999.

2. This is a slightly edited version of “World According to Garth,” one of the first articles I wrote as a staff editor at Musician. It appeared as “Performance of the Month” in the magazine’s June 1990 issue.