I Have Ignored Bob Dylan For Too Long... At My Own Peril

"I ain't no false prophet..."

The night of Nov. 5, 1999, was a magical, mystical moment in the musical journey that my life had become at that point in my late teens.

It was the night I saw Bob Dylan perform live for the first time, after hearing his records for literally my entire life via my Dad's record collection. It was one of the first times where I found it almost difficult to believe what I was seeing, this guy who loomed larger than life over at least 30% of the music I grew up listening to. I'd seen Bruce Springsteen, and this was Bruce's idol.

The other thing that made it magical: it was also the night that started me on a Challenger-Deep-level dive into the Grateful Dead. Phil Lesh & Friends were the opening band, with Steve Kimock and Derek F***ing Trucks on twin lead guitar. Before we'd even gotten to Dylan, I had my mind blown by these guys I'd never heard of who started playing and didn't stop for almost two hours. I'd go on to see Phil & Friends as often as possible. (the main incarnation of that group with Lesh, Haynes, Herring, Baracco and Molo is the most ass-kicking band I've ever seen live, they could do anything)

But while that turned out to be a great discovery, I was there for Dylan... and he didn't disappoint. 

This show came in the midst of his tour supporting Time Out of Mind, the '98 or '99 record produced by Daniel Lanois that is one of his best, in my opinion — a beautiful, dusty, bluesy collection of songs that had several tunes ("Not Dark Yet," "Cold Irons Bound") that hinted at the balladeer he would become starting around 2010.

He opened with a rocked-up version of the old Stanley Brothers tune, "Roving Gambler," which is now one of the songs my own bluegrass band covers the most... and we do the Dylan arrangement. I could never find a recording of that show, but I did find a 2001 bootleg from Japan where they opened with the same tune.

The setlist was awesome, and included "Desolation Row," "Cocaine Blues," "Tangled Up in Blue," "Shelter from the Storm," "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," "Highway 61 Revisited" and a high-energy "Not Fade Away" closer. The only minor disappointment for me was I'd hoped to hear more live versions of the Time Out of Mind tracks — I only got one, "Love Sick," but that was Dylan. He's gonna play what he wants, and I was plenty happy with what I got.

I saw him again almost exactly three years later, a Nov. 8, 2002, show in the A.J. Palumbo Center at my alma mater, Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. I was crazy excited. It was great — a three-minute stroll from my dorm room to go see the Master again, and this time with my Dad, who'd introduced me to Dylan in the first place. 

Dylan had released Love & Theft the previous year, another record I thought was really great, if not exactly groundbreaking. Look, some people are bothered by the fact that a whole lot of Dylan tunes are just various iterations of 1-4-5 blues, and I get it. Doesn't bug me at all. A lot of his music is a backdrop for the lyrics. If you're going to a Dylan show strictly for the music.... I dunno what to tell you. Some people dislike his penchant for re-arranging his greatest hits when he performs them live. Not a problem for me. When I go to a show, I wanna hear something I've never heard before. 

The 2002 setlist was, again, a BANGER. In addition to a bunch of my favorite tunes from Love & Theft, he broke out "Tombstone Blues," "It's Alright Ma," "Masters of War," "All Along the Watchtower," I mean DAMN. 

But.... this was also around the time he'd started playing most of the set from behind the keyboard. And I was just not into it. I remember thinking how glad I was to have seen him in '99. 

He released several more records, I bought a few, and they were each decent in their own way. Modern Times had a little more energy than some previous efforts, and I'm never gonna get mad at having Los Lobos as your studio band (Together Through Life). He released an album of old pop standards, and that was okay. For me, it was mostly notable because of the new melodic quality Dylan had discovered when a song was paced properly. He still talked his way through a lot of the verses, but it was more of a back-porch-storyteller situation, and not just a guy kind of yelling rhymes. None of it, however, convinced me that I wanted to go see him live again.

That was probably a dumb idea. And once again, I had to go all the way to Japan to find what I was looking for.

I recently discovered that Dylan released a 2020 record, Rough & Rowdy Ways, and it's real good. In addition, I also stumbled across a bootleg of an April 20, 2023, show from Nagoya, Japan. And it's just sooooo goooooooood.

This is, I believe, a completely different band than the Larry-Campbell-led group that was with Dylan for a good while — it's Doug Lancio and Bob Britt on guitar (not Dylan, not at all, strictly piano), Donnie Herron on mandolin, violin and steel guitar, Tony Garnier on bass and Jerry Pentecost on drums. And they're fine.

But it's the way that Dylan seems to have settled into more of an old-school mode that really caught my attention. His piano acumen has certainly improved since I last heard him tinkle the keys, but it was the way he eased into almost every tune. It was very reminiscent of guys like Ray Charles or Isaac Hayes on the Live from the Sahara album... most every song starts with Dylan teasing the chords on piano while he mumbles the opening lyrics and the band slowly creeps in behind. He usually gets through a verse and then the band kicks the song proper. 

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Most of the songs on Rough & Rowdy Ways are pretty laidback, and you can just as easily imagine much of the Nagoya setlist happening in a dark nightclub as opposed to a venue that seats thousands. But then the band launches into a cover of the Grateful Dead's "Truckin'," and everyone's reminded that this is indeed a rock concert.

Is it a good cover? From the band's perspective, sure, they sound great. From a lyrical-performance perspective? Again, opinions have alway differed on Dylan's delivery. To me it doesn't matter. If I'm Bob Weir, I'm ecstatic that The Man is covering one of my tunes. If anything, it's even more of a tribute to the Dead that Dylan flubs several of the lyrics. It makes little difference that the song is mostly out of his vocal range. It's a touchstone in the New Great American Songbook, and worthy of inclusion in the repertoire of one of the artists whose tunes make up that book's early pages.

So, in a very long and rambling roundabout way, this is my apology to Bob Dylan. Plenty people have doubted you along the way in what is now a vastly successful career spanning more than a half-century. I was briefly one of them, but in what should be common practice (and all-too-frequently isn't), convincing concrete evidence has shown me otherwise. 

In the immortal words of Jeffrey Lebowski, "New sh*t has come to light."