White Russians will flow April 4 at the Blind Pig for the “Dude Revue,” a celebration of the music of the Coen Brothers’ 1998 cult comedy. Now in its third year, the show has evolved from a marijuana-fueled jam session into a popular annual concert-party complete with skits, dancers, props, and a costume contest. Guitarist and lead singer Bourland oversees the proceedings dressed in the shorts, clear sandals, and bathrobe of the film’s lovable loser-hero Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski. Joining Bourland are his childhood friends, drummer Jordan Otto and multi-instrumentalist Connor Otto. Raised in Ann Arbor, all three grew up to become working musicians in other cities before moving back to town in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. After developing the concept for the show during the aforementioned jam session, and charting out all the songs, the trio assembled a roster of highly regarded local players to complete the band—bassist Joe Vasquez, keyboard player Josef Deas, and trumpeter-keyboardist Ben Green.

The surprising, eclectic setlist offers broad appeal to those who are not die-hard fans of the movie. And the killer band is constantly honing that list, as Bourland says, “The more we do it, the more we find interesting stuff.” The film’s soundtrack, originally assembled by legendary producer T Bone Burnett, is a stylistically diverse mash-up of songs both familiar and obscure, from up-tempo numbers like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Run Through the Jungle,” and Latin grooves by Santana and Juan García Esquivel, to laid-back folk-rock songs like Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me” and Townes Van Zandt’s haunting cover of “Dead Flowers.” Rounding out the sonic journey are a few jazz tunes, a healthy dose of classic Americana, some classical music interludes, and an experimental number by Meredith Monk. 

The varied source material gives the band plenty of room to showcase their technical abilities, with Bourland’s guitar playing a particular highlight on solos for “Oye Como Va” and “Hotel California.” Between songs, emcee Scott Van Sice, an accomplished dance and circus performer, entertains the crowd. Van Sice also runs the highly competitive costume contest, in which audience members dressed from the film recite their character’s lines, with the winner determined by who gets the loudest applause. 

This year, the Dude Revue has been rolled into the Blind Pig’s annual Hash Bash after-party, traditionally a big draw for townies looking to enjoy the festive nature of the day without enduring the (mostly out-of-town) crowd of the main event on the Diag. Be sure to arrive early. The very popular guitar-less local jam band the Macpodz, themselves longtime after-party headliners, kick things off at 9 p.m. with an invigorating mix of funk, soul, rock, and hard jazz they call “disco bebop.” The night marks the group’s twentieth anniversary, having first come together as a band in 2006 backing up poet John Sinclair at one of his post–Hash Bash spoken word performances. It’s a night chock-full of top-notch local music, in a lively atmosphere that’s hard to find anywhere else. And, well, that’s not just, like, my opinion, man.