Last year, the final vestige of The Band passed into memory with the death of Garth Hudson, the pioneering Canadian/American ensemble’s last living member. But the group’s spirit lives on with Crazy Chester: A Very Carrboro Tribute to The Band and “The Last Waltz,” a yearly hoedown that has blossomed into one of the local music community’s signature holiday events.
Crazy Chester’s sixth annual local show is set for Nov. 28, the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro. The series has been successful enough that the musicians are also taking the show on the road for the first time, a 10-date tour through the Southeast and as far north as Catskill, New York.
“The Cat’s Cradle show has really become part of a lot of people’s Thanksgiving weekend traditions,” says founding member and ringleader Justin Ellis. “The crowd tends to be a mix of people who stayed local for the holiday and want to get out of the house, and people who went away but came back in time to see it. Sometimes we’ll ask from the stage if anybody was at the actual ‘Last Waltz’ show, and a couple of people will raise their hands. We’ve become unofficial stewards of this thing. It’s special that it resonates for so many. We’re stoked to do it.”
The event that Crazy Chester recreates is one of the most storied in rock history. The Band cut a wide swath through the 1960s and ’70s, serving as Bob Dylan’s backup band while also releasing classic albums of their own. “The Last Waltz” was the final live performance of The Band’s original lineup, Thanksgiving 1976 in San Francisco, with cameo guests including Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Dr. John and many others. Director Martin Scorsese filmed the proceedings for a concert movie widely acclaimed as one of the best.
Crazy Chester’s origins go back to “The Great Cover Up,” an annual shindig that downtown Raleigh nightspot Kings has put on since the late 1990s. It’s Halloween for the local music community, with musicians play-acting favorite bands. Ellis and Rob DiMaurio have been frequent “Cover Up” participants over the years, covering the likes of Alice in Chains and Smashing Pumpkins. They decided to do The Band in January 2020, and it went so well they reprised it the following month for DiMauro’s birthday.
Then they had the idea of expanding the show by recreating the entire “Last Waltz” Thanksgiving performance, with guests playing the icons. They dubbed themselves Crazy Chester after one of the characters in The Band’s 1968 anthem “The Weight.” The first Cat’s Cradle show in 2021 drew around 120 people, with attendance steadily increasing to over 500 last year. Given the fact that 2026 is the 50-year anniversary of “The Last Waltz,” this might be the year it sells out.
Ellis portrays Rick Danko, the band’s singer/bassist, with DiMauro as singer/drummer Levon Helm. The rest of the core cast is Charles Cleaver as Band keyboardist Hudson, Jones Bell as pianist Richard Manuel and Rafael Green as guitarist Robbie Robertson. There’s also a five-piece horn section, and around a dozen cameo guests – Charles Latham as Dylan, Georgia Moon as Joni Mitchell, Glenn Jones as Van Morrison, even Greg Bell as beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
“It just keeps growing bigger and bigger every time, and all from something that started out as just a one-off thing we did,” says Ellis. “The fact that it has very organically grown into this huge thing is fun to me. At this point, there’s actually not much to rehearse. We’ve been doing it for six years, so just running through it once before the show is usually enough – although we’re practicing a little extra this year for the tour, rearranging some parts to make them work better. All the core band and most of the guests are full-time musicians and instructors and teachers, so learning and remembering songs comes pretty naturally.”
Crazy Chester: A Very Carrboro Tribute to The Band and “The Last Waltz” happens Saturday, Nov. 28, 2026 at Cat’s Cradle, 300 E. Main St. in Carrboro. Doors are at 7:15 p.m. and Sugaree String Society opens the show at 8 p.m. Advance tickets are $17.22 at eTix.
