Photo by Blaine Schultz
Bob Dylan - Riverside Theater 11.2.21
You buy your ticket, as the man says, you take the ride.
Bob Dylan’s worldwide tour, scheduled to run through 2024, opened Tuesday night at the Riverside Theater. If the “Rough and Rowdy Ways” sub-heading was not exactly accurate then the “Things Aren’t What They Were” appellation hit the nail on the head.
Never one to pretend that audience expectations matter much, Dylan’s shows in recent years were akin to watching a master painter take to a canvas in real time. A true road warrior, he began his Never Ending Tour in 2007 and since the dawn of this century has released a string of albums often propelled by his stellar, evolving band.
What toll would the pandemic take on the Nobel-prize winning octogenarian with nothing left to prove?
On Tuesday, if you were a casual fan or if this was your first Dylan show, you were kinda’, sorta’, outta’ luck. Of the 18-song performance, less than half would be drawn from what might be called his canon: the opening pair “Watching the River Flow” and “Most Likely You’ll go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine)”, “Simple Twist of Fate,” “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry.” And many of those were deceptively arranged; picking them out was not for the faint of heart. Does Dylan do this to keep things interesting and stave off boredom or is he too clever by half? That is your call.
Veteran Band
Dressed in a white tuxedo coat and flanked by his band dressed in black—drummer Charlie Drayton; Tony Garnier on upright and electric bass; Bob Britt and Doug Lancio on guitars; and Donnie Herron on steel guitar, mandolin and pedal steel—Dylan spent most of the evening behind an upright piano that sure sounded like a modern keyboard.
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The noir stage set, lit from below, was an improvement over the can lights of previous tours that were allegedly used to dissuade photos and videos.
Surprisingly, Dylan performed eight songs from his 2020 Rough and Rowdy Ways album—nearly the entire album, choosing not to tackle the nearly 17-minute “Murder Most Foul.”
Among the show’s highlights: “Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine,”) featured a honking guitar riff and slowed to a molasses bridge section; a loping “Simple Twist of Fate” graced by inflections of surprise in Dylan’s singing; the crooner “Melancholy Mood” graced by a seemingly incongruous Flying V guitar accompaniment. A ramrod take on “Gotta Serve Somebody” recalled Dylan’s David Letterman surprise appearance with punk band The Plugz more than its Gospel origins and “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was dripped with Roy Head’s “Treat Her Right.”
Longtime bandleader/bassist Garnier, multi-instrumentalist Herron and guitarist Britt are veterans of Dylan’s group. So, this wasn’t exactly a new band since Dylan’s last show in December of 2019. Maybe it was opening night, maybe it was chemistry but this band felt like it was playing it safe. Solid but safe. At times Garnier was cueing band members; the guitarists didn’t show that dangerous spark that Charlie Sexton had provided and “Early Roman Kings” was missing the mannish-Muddy Waters stomp of the recorded version. Dylan himself had what appeared to be lyric sheets atop his piano. It would be worthwhile to see how this band sounds later in the tour.
Dedicating the show to Les Paul, they returned with encore numbers “Love Sick” and the aforementioned “Train,” which were welcome but might have been better moved earlier in the show.
