Review: With 2 new guitarists, Bob Dylan paints a near-masterpiece in concert ahead of Chicago show Wednesday
Bob Dylan
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 8
Where: Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island, 1300 S. Linn White Drive, Chicago
Tickets: Start at $54.50 at ticketmaster.com/
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MINNEAPOLIS — These days, Bob Dylan rarely speaks from the concert stage or grants interviews. However, he — or his team — keeps a social media presence, with infrequent but quizzical posts, including historical fiction on his Patreon page.
Therefore, it was most unusual last month when Dylan gave a comment to the New York Times seeking advice for President Donald Trump turning 80. Dylan, who is 85, gave his usual enigmatic but trenchant bon mots about the best thing about being 80:
“You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to program. You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.”
Hard core Dylan fans, those Bobcats, dissected his words as if the Great Philosopher had delivered a Sermon on the Mount.
In essence, it was Dylan being Dylan. He’s going to do it his way, just as he’s done since emerging from Minnesota at age 20 in 1961 as a complete unknown. No matter his age, he’s resistant to any hint of doing the expected or phoning it in.
Such was the case Monday night at Mystic Lake Amphitheater in Shakopee in the bard’s first metro headline gig since 2017 in St. Paul. He was focused, committed, age-appropriately laid-back and in seriously fine voice. It was a rewarding show that few of the 7,000 concertgoers will ever forget.
In his first appearance in Shakopee since 1999 with Paul Simon, Dylan was a mysterious hooded character standing at a piano creating a haunting vibe on a pleasantly warm night in the North Country. The bare-bones stage was dimly lit, though perhaps a little brighter than on his indoor Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour of the past five years.
Although concertgoers weren’t allowed to use cellphones, there was large live screen video of Dylan and his black-clad band mates, the bandleader in a white hoodie standing maybe 10 yards from the front of the stage. There weren’t any close-up shots; in fact, it appeared to be a stationary one-camera setup. Well, you don’t go to a Dylan concert for the visuals.
It’s about the songs, the surprises and the bucket-list gravitas of seeing a legendary and influential singer/songwriter who was a giant of the ‘60s and ‘70s but has remarkably delivered five essential albums since 1997.
Dylan’s current 35-show run is officially the Long Hot Summer ’26 Tour, featuring a handful of tunes from 2020’s excellent “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” some obscure oldies associated with Bobby “Blue” Bland and Jerry Lee Lewis, and a handful of reworked Dylan classics probably unrecognizable to casual fans but the reason Bobcats flock to concert after concert.
That’s because, despite all the sobriquets attached to him that he’s rejected like voice of a generation and protest singer, Dylan in concert is a jazz man, breathing new life into old songs. It’s all about the nuance in the vocal phrasing, arrangements and solos. His voice is like a percussion instrument, his piano like a compass, his harmonica a shot of adrenaline to perk up the proceedings and the crowd.
His voice was clear, assertive and very musical on Monday, more flowing than freewheeling, though he put space between lyrics and often punched the final word in a phrase in a positively Dylanesque way.
He got lost in the vocal flow on the bluesy boogie “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” from “Rough and Rowdy Ways” as the band was cooking and Dylan danced a bit, probably the most emotion he manifested all night.
Maybe the biggest surprise was how much “It Ain’t Me, Babe” sounded like the familiar version from 1964. He usually doesn’t sound so conventional. The song didn’t groove or move until the choruses when Dylan unleashed “it ain’t me you’re looking fooooooooor babe.”
By contrast, the most striking reimagining was the 1971 nugget “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” which was recast as a rumba, which was a masterstroke. One could almost picture Dylan, an exhibited artist, dancing by himself in front of a canvas.
The singer and the crowd really got into the closing “I Shall Be Released,” a 1967 song that has been missing from Dylan concert set lists since 2008. He was so into it that he repeated lines like “I shall be,” followed by an almost mumbling “re-leeeeased.” He ended the song with a harmonica solo to the fans’ delight.
Another aspect of the performance that impressed was how efficiently Dylan has assimilated two new guitarists in the last few weeks. Always on their toes, longtime Chicago journeyman Joel Paterson and 38-year-old California jazz sensation Julian Lage faced the bandleader, not the audience, looking for cues in his face or fingers.
Lage brought a jazzy swing touch and noticeable physicality for a Dylan sideman. Paterson provided confident blues, jazz and country filigree while veteran drummer Anton Fig defined the rhythms, and bandleader Tony Garnier of St. Paul, who has been on board since 1989, switched from electric to acoustic without missing a beat.
After Dylan finished his 16-song, 85-minute performance, he bowed his head quickly, acknowledging the generous response. Then he did something he seldom does: He clapped briefly for the audience and waved goodbye. It was almost as if he spoke. Almost.
Appearing before Dylan were Americana queen Lucinda Williams and the rootsy John Doe Folk Trio.
Named this year as one of the 30 greatest living U.S. songwriters along with Dylan, Williams seems to have accepted the mantle of protest singer from one who wore that title in the ’60s.
She peppered her set with such pointed tunes as this year’s “The World’s Gone Wrong,” and “How Much Did You Get for Your Soul” as well as the earthy blues “You Can’t Rule Me” (which she dedicated to President Trump) and a galvanizing treatment of Neil Young’s anthem “Rockin’ in the Free World” to close her potent 45-minute set.
“Don’t give up the fight,” she implored afterward as if channeling some 1960s rally that Dylan attended. “People have the power.”
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