Lennon’s birthday night returns in song at Rancho Nicasio

Tickets for the West Marin dinner show start at $25. Dave Sholin and Drew Harrison are on a bill built around Imagine, In My Life and Watching the Wheels — and the evening marks what would have been his 86th birthday.

Rancho Nicasio has set a dinner show for 9 October 2026 in honour of John Lennon, the date that would have marked his 86th birthday. The West Marin roadhouse will stage the tribute as a seated evening, with tickets priced between $25 and $30.

The line-up pairs radio personality Dave Sholin with singer-guitarist Drew Harrison. Sholin conducted the last interview Lennon gave, hours before his death in December 1980. Harrison will perform a set of Lennon songs that includes Imagine, In My Life and Watching the Wheels. He is also due to appear in the forthcoming documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview, directed by Steven Soderbergh — a film that uses the same final conversation as its peg.

The work the night draws on

Lennon, born John Winston Ono Lennon, was an English singer, songwriter and musician who first reached a worldwide audience as founder, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. His writing partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in popular music history, and it was the engine of that group’s catalogue. Beyond the band he pursued music, writing, drawing and film, and his solo records still shape how later generations hear the craft of the short song.

The artist file places the solo run in clear sequence. After the experimental Unfinished Music projects with Yoko Ono at the end of the 1960s — Two Virgins, Life With the Lions and the Wedding Album — and the live document Live Peace in Toronto 1969, he released John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band in 1970, a stark, closely miked set that still stands as a pivot in his catalogue. Later reissues and expanded editions have kept that record in circulation, including Ultimate Collection and Ultimate Mixes packages. The same care has been applied to other corners of the archive: as recently as 2025 the Power To The People series brought live and studio jams, Elements mixes, an Evolution documentary set and Ultimate Mixes back into print, alongside an extended Ultimate Mix of Sunday Bloody Sunday. The pattern is consistent — the work is kept audible, remixed and contextualised rather than left on the shelf.

That is the repertoire a night such as Rancho Nicasio’s draws on. Imagine and In My Life belong to the songs that crossed from Lennon’s own records and Beatles albums into the common stock of cover versions; Watching the Wheels sits with the later, more reflective solo writing. A tribute built on those titles is not a novelty bill. It is a direct line to the material listeners already know by heart.

Why the date still carries weight

Anniversary programming of this kind has become a steady feature of the live calendar for artists who are no longer alive to tour. Lennon’s birthday falls each year on 9 October; the 86th is a round number that promoters and venues can hang a single evening on without claiming a full festival or a multi-city run. Rancho Nicasio’s choice of a dinner show keeps the scale intimate: a room, a meal, a set of songs, and a speaker who can place the final interview in living memory rather than in second-hand retelling.

Sholin’s presence is the historical hinge. The last interview is a fixed point in the public record of Lennon’s final day; bringing the interviewer into a birthday room turns that document into something spoken again, not only screened. Harrison’s dual role — stage performer now, documentary subject shortly — ties the live set to the film Soderbergh is preparing. Neither replaces the records. Both point back to them.

For Irish and British audiences raised on the Beatles’ singles and on Lennon’s solo LPs, the evening is less a discovery than a recalibration. The songs remain in daily rotation on stations that still play the catalogue; a roadhouse set in West Marin simply puts three of them back under lights, on the date that belonged to him. What remains unannounced is any wider tour, any further dates, or a broadcast date for the Soderbergh film. For now the fact is local and precise: one night, one venue, a short list of titles, and a ticket price that keeps the door open.

On 9 October the room will open on the work itself — the voice, the piano and guitar lines, the writing that outlasted the man. That is the ground this tribute claims, and the only ground it needs.