A long-scheduled Brooklyn tribute show is taking on new weight this weekend. Doll Parts, a Dolly Parton tribute band formed in the borough, will perform a special tribute at Littlefield in Gowanus on Sunday, days after Parton's death at age 80. The show, titled “We Will Always Love You: A Dolly Parton Celebration With Doll Parts,” has doors opening at 7 p.m. and music starting at 8 p.m. at the 635 Sackett Street venue.
Parton died on August 25, 2026, according to The Guardian, at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville following a brief battle with cancer. The news, announced by her team and family, prompted tributes nationwide. As Brooklyn Paper reports, Sunday's Littlefield show has become something closer to a communal send-off than a routine gig, with band members describing it as a way to bring people together to sing Parton's songs.
Littlefield itself is a fixture of Brooklyn's independent performance scene, an art and live-music space at 635 Sackett Street, according to the Gowanaut. For Sunday's show, the band is expanding its usual lineup of drummer and bass player by adding trumpet, trombone, and bass sax, per Brooklyn Paper's report — a scaled-up arrangement with other musicians sitting in. According to NYC.gov's Gowanus Neighborhood Plan, the area was rezoned in 2003 and 2011, with no affordable housing required under those earlier rezonings. According to an NYC.gov technical memorandum, the Gowanus Plan complements and supplements the in-canal cleanup with requirements for remediation of upland brownfields.
A Band Built on Serious Homage, Not Impersonation
Doll Parts formed in 2011 and does not attempt to imitate Parton's appearance; instead, the band leans on layered vocal arrangements to honor her country and bluegrass catalogue, the outlet notes. The band was discovered through a tribute listing buried in a Target Margin Theater program — the same experimental company that staged an avant-garde production of The Magic Flute in Sunset Park.
Julia Sirna-Frest, an Obie Award-winning performer and founding member of the New York experimental ensemble Half Straddle, started Doll Parts after her husband suggested forming a Dolly Parton cover band, according to Brooklyn Paper. She went on to ask Maggie Robinson and Shane Chapman to join, and the trio has anchored the group ever since even as its full lineup has shifted over the years.
Robinson recalled that the band's first show at Union Hall was rough, but audiences still responded warmly, per the same account. Union Hall in Park Slope and The Bell House in Gowanus, where Doll Parts has also performed, are sister venues under shared management and have served as incubators for Brooklyn's alternative performance scene since the late 2000s, according to Sparkle Television. Doll Parts has also played the Sultan Room and Littlefield around the borough.
According to a New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment report, the city's nightlife sector supports 299,000 jobs, $13.1 billion in employee compensation, and $35.1 billion in total economic impact. A New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment report also finds that the city's music industry supports 60,000 jobs, $5 billion in wages, and $21 billion in economic output.
A Brush With Parton Herself
Both Sirna-Frest and Robinson met Dolly Parton backstage at Late Night with Seth Meyers, an encounter the band still points to. Parton told them, “Keep playing my music, girls,” according to Brooklyn Paper's reporting — a line the band has treated as something close to a mandate ever since.
The band's résumé includes some notable stops: Doll Parts performed at the 2018 Los Angeles premiere after-party for Netflix's Dumplin' at the Sunset Tower Hotel, and in 2021 mounted an expanded nine-piece show called “Doll Parts 1970” at The Cutting Room in Manhattan. Shane Chapman, who arranges the band's music and teaches at Brooklyn College and Kingsborough Community College, remains based in Gowanus. Robinson, who lived in Brooklyn for 12 years, now lives in Minneapolis, while Sirna-Frest splits time with an apartment in Bushwick and a home in Dublin, Ireland, where she is pursuing a master's degree in theater directing.
The Setlist Anchors Around Parton's Biggest Hits
No matter the size of the band or the occasion, four songs always make the set: “Islands in the Stream,” “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You,” and “9 to 5,” which Brooklyn Paper describes as the group's “big four.” Parton wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” during the same 1973 songwriting session before recording both at RCA Studio B in Nashville, according to Mental Floss. “Jolene” came out later that year, while “I Will Always Love You” followed in 1974 as a farewell to her mentor Porter Wagoner.
Whitney Houston's 1992 pop-ballad cover of “I Will Always Love You” spent 14 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and had estimated sales of 20 million, making it the best-selling single of all time by a woman, per Wikipedia. Parton retained full publishing rights to the song after famously turning down Elvis Presley's request to record it under a half-publishing arrangement. Over her career, Parton released 40 studio albums, wrote more than 3,000 songs, and earned 25 No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot Country chart, alongside 11 Grammy Awards from 54 nominations and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, according to the Recording Academy.
From Sevier County to Sunday Night in Gowanus
Parton grew up the fourth of 12 children near the Little Pigeon River in Tennessee, and later built Dollywood, the Tennessee theme park that includes concert halls, a museum, and Parton memorabilia. Her Imagination Library literacy program, founded in 1995 in honor of her father, who never learned to read, has distributed more than 300 million free books across five countries.
Doll Parts plays only Parton's songs and has done so through occasions ranging from the “Doll Parts Heart Break” Valentine's Day show to the tribute performances now unfolding across the country. Doll Parts plans to keep performing Parton's music going forward, the band told Brooklyn Paper.
Sunday's show fits into a wider pattern that has emerged since Parton's death, as a previously scheduled tribute in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, has been reworked into a memorial, with fans gathering to grieve and sing her songs together. For Doll Parts, Sunday's gathering at Littlefield offers Brooklyn its own version of that same collective goodbye.
