Chest Fever is Back: The Official Revival of the Band, Tonight at the Rickshaw - outtakes and sidenotes

Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of the Band, July 18, 1983 Q E Theatre, by bev davies

Remember the days of Pay TV? Back in the days when you had the proverbial "13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from", in the mid-1980s, there were two Canadian channels, First Choice and Superchannel, that you could subscribe to that played mostly movies, which they would repeat multiple times during the day. I believe this was actually before VHS tapes caught on, certainly before we had much in the way of rental stores. If you saw a movie that you liked, you could go through TV Guide and make a note of what other screenings were on and see it again and again and watch that movie as many times as you liked, while it was in rotation. 

That was my introduction to the Band. There was a video -- I believe this one, The Band is Back --  of the Band in concert, at the very 1983 show that Bev photographed, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. I watched that at least three times and still vividly remember bits of it, like Levon kind of taunting the audience with his refusals to play "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" (which is very much a part of The Last Waltz, made only seven years previous). Neither of the stories out there about his refusal to play the song touch on the politics of nostalgia for the pre-Civil War south, by the way (which is more of a contemporary concern). They usually either revolve around either Helm's dissatisfaction with the publishing royalties (Robbie Robertson, absent that 1983 tour, allegedly claimed more than his due, or was at least subject to complaints along those lines from Helm). It might also have been down (according to Garth Hudson, at least) Helm's dislike for the Joan Baez cover version (which apparently was a massive hit; I'm amused to report that to my knowledge, I've never heard it, was unaware she did the song). 

You can dive down a Levon Helm vs. Robbie Robertson rabbithole starting here, if you haven't been down that road before. I'm pretty sure that Helm would have appreciated that because of my point of entry into the Band's catalogue, I had no idea who Robbie Robertson was for years: the version of the Band I grew up with was very much the 1983 Pay-TV one! 

So how did Dude Cervantes get into the Band? "I remember my Dad showing me early on, over Thanksgiving, something to watch, and then in my early 20s there was a band in L.A. I was pursuing to be a part of. " (This was the band Biirdie, Dude explains later. "And I was having a hard time trying to play, stylistically, what they needed, and the bass player said, 'If you could just play like Robbie Robertson, you'll get this gig, and I was like, 'Who's Robbie Robertson?' He's like, 'Dude, you've gotta watch this,' and then he pulled up 'Up on Cripple Creek'. And I was like, 'Oh, I get it, okay.' And that was it, I started diving into the band, and the rest is history. It started out of necessity, really: 'I've gotta be able to play like this guitarist if I'm going to get this gig.' And then I fell in love with the music."

Dude Cervantes' project Chest Fever, the Official Revival of the Band, plays tonight at the Rickshaw (assuming they aren't stranded in Cumberland due to windstorms!) with, of course, a star-studded lineup of guests. Cervantes last toured through Vancouver in March of this very year, albeit with a different unit. Actually, there were two of them: Blues for Greeny, a tribute act to the music of Peter Green and early Fleetwood Mac, who headlined a show at the Rickshaw (and whom I shot a clip of out in White Rock); and Dude Cervantes and the Panchos (the same musicians under a different name), who played their own original songs at smaller venues like LanaLou's. I wrote about those shows here. 

Chest Fever/ Mrs Henry

As sort of gets explained in the current Straight piece about Chest Fever, just as Blues for Greeny is Dude Cervantes & the Panchos by another name, Chest Fever is an alter-ego of another project of Cervantes, Mrs. Henry, who do their own originals, including a full-blown 3LP rock opera, Keep On Rising. They also have whole albums of cover songs by the Band, though only one of them seems to be on their Bandcamp at the moment (and of course they are in fact are named for a song Bob Dylan wrote with the Band during The Bassement Tapes sessions). 

Actually a few other details get omitted from the Straight piece. The core members of Chest Fever, for example: while Cervantes takes most of the Levon Helm songs, the drummer TJ Rogers, from Niagra, Ontario, sings a lot of the Rick Danko tunes; Jody Bagley, the keyboardist, does the Richard Manuel songs ("and one of the Rick Danko tunes too", Cervantes notes). Kris Rodgers is the band's Garth, and Stu Mahan plays the bass. 

Another outtake involves how Mrs. Henry morphed into Chest Fever (I think of Mrs. Henry sort of like Clark Kent to Chest Fever's Superman). The full quote: "There's a company called Iconoclast that was started in 2021, at the onset of the publishing buys that were happening. And this group, Iconoclast, was started with Robbie as a part of it, to my knowledge, to some extent. And the Band's catalogue was one of the first catalogues for them to own. And members of that organization, who essentially handled the Band's estate, they came to our show in May of 2022." (This was Mrs. Henry's first show back after COVID). "And they said, 'We love what you're doing and we want to get behind it somehow; we don't know how, but we think it would be great if you created a tribute to the Band.' And so we did! We started Chest Fever and we went for it." 

One tip: there is no opening act, and I would suggest that people arrive close to the 7pm door time, since things will likely kick off on the early side, as time is a consideration. "It should be around three hours and change; Mo and David definitely don't want me to push it, as last year it was close to four hours, and they're like, 'Can you please not make it four hours, this show?' No promises, but I've been asked, and I'm going to do my best!" 

One last outtake is actually the full version of the Nicholas Ruiz photo that we had to crop to fit the Straight piece. Pretty cool shot! See you tonight at the Rickshaw. 

Chest Fever by Nicholas Ruiz

Event details here.