BY MICHAEL CHOWNE
A fantastic night out on Saturday 12th September 2026 billed as ‘The Best Little HonkyTonk in Highgate Celebrates Dolly’. The Dukes Head Highgate had put on this celebration of all things Dolly Parton from 3pm – we arrived around 7.30pm in time to see two sets from the brightest star in any room, Savannah Gardner.
Savannah shone brighter than ever as she paid homage to her Queen – of course she gave us the crowd pleasers in Jolene, I Will Always Love You and 9 to 5 but also some beautifully sung Coat of Many Colors and My Tennessee Mountain Home, amongst others. During this set Savannah was joined by Nicole Ricciardi and Phoebe White aka Feeb and the Queen and the 3 of them, with others, would also provide front row harmonies for the rest of the night!
It felt like the packed pub were all singing along to Savannah’s own City of Cowboys and it was great to hear another outing of her unreleased Makin’ Honey – Carmen Ruiz Vicente was also in the house and able to provide the fun callbacks from the crowd for this one!
The second set we saw was also a lot of fun as Luke Jack Music and his band took over the small stage. Luke is an artist who seamlessly meshes blues, soul, bluegrass and country, with more than a little Elvis style rock ‘n’ roll thrown in, and we’ve seen him before with the Hackney Hill Pickers. Plenty of Dolly references but, in the main, Luke wasn’t singing her songs – a good idea then to get Savannah back up for a series of newly learned duets. They’d trawled Dolly’s old catalogue, including some of those early duets with Porter Wagoner, and did a great job together. Mule Skinner Blues (Blue Yodel No. 8 sounded fab and when they sung ‘Fight and Scratch’ from 1970 Savannah’s dramatic side came out to the full – if you’d told anybody in that packed venue that she was not the Entertainer of the Year then they’d have given you short shrift!
After Savannah reverted to the front row, Luke and his band carried on the party and both Phoebe and Bea Burridge also joined for a couple of beautifully sung songs (including some George Michael which meshed surprisingly well even if Phoebe had to rescue Luke with the words!). There were even a couple of 50s styled rock ‘n’ roll dancers who showed everyone else how it should be done.
A fabulous evening of celebration of which Dolly would have been proud.
