Colin Linden Recalls Being Bob Dylan's On-and-Off Guitarist on the 2013 Americanarama Tour

"If anybody has any doubt that he’s one of the greatest singers of my lifetime, if you were in the room when that happened, you would never have that doubt again"

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Four shows into his summer 2013 “Americanarama” all-star tour, Bob Dylan needed a new guitar player—fast. After a difficult few days full of withering looks onstage and tour-bus arguments offstage, his guitarist Duke Robillard abruptly departed the band (he told me the full story for my book). Dylan needed a ringer.

Or two.

For the rest of the summer, Dylan’s lead-guitar slot featured an odd alternating-guitarists arrangement. Some nights it was Charlie Sexton, who had already logged extensive time in Dylan’s band and would rejoin again full-time that fall. Other nights it was Toronto bluesman Colin Linden, who had never played with Dylan before. The rotation was so confusing I had to bullet it out. Here’s who held the lead-guitar chair on the Americanarama tour of Summer 2013 (Stu Kimball was on rhythm guitar throughout):

• Robillard—6/26-30 [4 shows]

• Sexton—7/2-14 [9 shows]

• Linden—7/15-24 [7 shows]

• Sexton—7/26-27 [2 shows]

• Linden—7/28 [1 show]

• Sexton—7/31 [1 show]

• Linden—8/1-4 [3 shows]

Ahead of this summer’s Outlaw tour, with a multi-artist bill kinda similar to Americanarama, I spoke to Linden about his run alternating guitar duties with Sexton and just what the hell was going on with Dylan’s band that summer. These days, Linden is touring with T Bone Burnett promoting Burnett’s recent album The Other Side, which Linden co-produced.

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You’re about to head back out on the road with T Bone and David Mansfield [who I interviewed here] in a couple of weeks. Two Rolling Thunder alums. You ever trade war stories?

Not much. It was a long time ago for those guys. It’s a lot more recently for me. I didn’t see the Rolling Thunder tour, but I saw Hard Rain on TV the way a lot of people did. I saw the tour that Bob played with the band at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto in '74.

You must have been a kid.

I was 13. I had been going to see shows for a long time already at that point.

I was going through your website and enjoying the photos of you with Howlin’ Wolf as a baby-faced child.

Well, I still feel the same. I look a little different.

Colin Linden with Howlin’ Wolf, via colinlinden.com

Talk me through how you got the invite to join the band. I’ve interviewed Duke Robillard, who started that summer tour as the lead guitarist. That went down the toilet almost immediately, so he’s gone after a few shows, then you and Charlie are brought in to pinch hit. How did that happen?

My friend Buddy Miller went to see Bob here in Nashville, which was the day Duke left. I guess Bob asked Buddy if he wanted to play, but Buddy had started the job as executive music producer for the Nashville television show. He couldn’t do it, but he said, “I have a friend who I think would.”

It was that simple. It took a couple of weeks for them to check me out on YouTube and stuff. I think they were peripherally familiar with me through friends in common.

Do you know that they’re checking you out at that point, or is this behind the scenes and you have no idea?

Buddy had mentioned it to me. I had wanted to play with Bob since I was a kid. I was so familiar with all of his music. A lot of people who had been in that role I’ve heard say there’s a big learning curve, but I had all of the records already. Even though the songs were different [live], I knew them all, at least in a simple way. It was something I wanted to do a lot.

How do you get the invite officially, and what happens next?

I got a call from [Dylan manager] Jeff Kramer, who had gotten my number from Buddy. He told me that they were checking me out and looking at logistics. I knew that Charlie was there filling in. It was maybe 10 days later where they said, “Look, we’ll fly you to Chicago. Come and listen to a couple of shows.”

I had to fly to Chicago, and then I had to fly home to Nashville for [my own] show, and then they flew me back up to Detroit. I got on the bus in Detroit and rode to Toronto. The first show that I did was July 15th, 2013, which was the eve of the 30th anniversary of my first date with my wife. And Toronto, of course, is my hometown. It was very exciting to play there.

I didn’t even know until that morning whether I was going to be doing it or not. It’s kind of a complex process where they check things out. I felt like I was up for whatever they wanted me to do. If there was a chance they wanted me to play, I wanted to be ready and do my best.

Was that a stressful way to join the tour? As opposed to having rehearsals and then the tour starts, you’re flown in halfway through in a crisis situation.

It’s a funny thing. My background is in country blues music more than anything else. When I was in my teens, I played with a lot of the early blues artists who’d survived. Not to be too generalized about them, but many of those guys are very instinctual players. You don’t follow a chart to play with those kind of guys. You learn to play with them by understanding their feelings and their emotions. So it was not stressful. I wanted to do good because I had spent a long time dreaming about getting a chance to play with Bob.

I had heard the shows in Chicago and Detroit, and the band was superb. Tony Garnier was wonderful to prep me on some basic things. I appreciated that. It was surrealistic though, walking to the stage for the first show. Because it was the Americanarama thing, there were no soundchecks, and I didn’t have any rehearsals.

Literally the first time you’re playing a note with Bob, it’s on stage in front of people?

Yep. I felt completely at home the second that I walked on stage. I felt that through the entire time I was there. The band were so good to me. You read and you hear stories—I think I probably had the best experience of anyone I know playing with Bob. It felt comfortable, and everyone was really nice to me.

I was listening to some of the tapes, and you sound great. You’re playing slide on “High Water” and “Blind Willie McTell.” Ripping it up, but doing cool background stuff too.

That’s one thing that Bob did say to me. I told him of all the stuff that was the path that I came up through, between Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson and Reverend Gary Davis and Son House and Skip James. He said, “Anytime you want to throw that stuff in, you know I’ll want to hear it.” So I felt like he gave me not only a confidence boost, but some encouragement to be who I was.

You guys switched off shows a lot, back and forth, you and Charlie. It became very complicated, who was playing what show. How did that all happen?

I did what I was told. [laughs]

I had no expectations. If they said, “You want to come and do these shows this week?,” that’s great. “We’re going to send you home for a couple of days. Can you come back for Camden?” “Sure.”

It’s complex stuff. This guy is, I think, the greatest artist of our time. He’s been doing it for a long time. Whatever magic he’s looking for, however he’s going to get to that point, I want to be supportive. If I do have a role to play at all, I want it to be a supportive one.

When I started, it was, take it day by day. If the bus is leaving and they want me to be on it, I’ll be on it.

Like you wake up in the morning, and you don’t necessarily know if you’re playing that night?

After the first show in Toronto, there were a couple of days off. I could spend a day in Toronto with my wife, who had flown up from Nashville to be there, and her family and some friends. Then I got a ride to Buffalo. I was on for that week. Then by the end of that week—I don’t know how it happened. When they asked me to be there, I was there, and when I wasn’t, I wasn’t.

You would go home. You weren’t sitting on the bus while the band’s onstage without you?

No. The first little break, I went back to Toronto because my wife was still up there, and it was my brother-in-law’s birthday. Then the next time, I went home for a day to feed the cats and then flew back out to Salt Lake City.

I wonder if it had to do with Charlie’s availability, because he then rejoins the band full-time for the next tour.

It may have been. I don’t know what the story was.

When I finished in Mountain View, California, I was invited to be in the band. I thought that that was going to be the way it was going to be, which was wonderful. I went home thinking, “I’m going to be playing with these guys now.” Then things changed a little bit, and Charlie ended up wanting to come back.

Funny, I heard a very similar story from another guitarist from the Toronto music scene, Paul James. He also got an informal offer to join the band a few years earlier, and then once again Charlie ended up returning and taking the role instead.

Oh really? I know that Paul had become friendly with Bob when he did that film Hearts of Fire. On which I was an extra!

Alright, now you gotta tell me that story.

It was an exciting thing for Bob Dylan to be making a movie in Toronto. A friend of mine who worked for MuchMusic said, “Hey, you want to come and be an extra?” I said sure. I did get to meet Bob and shake his hand for six seconds. I ended up seeing it on video a few years later. They’re walking through an airport, and I’m carrying somebody’s bag. It was a much younger version of myself, but it was me.

What were some of your favorite songs to play on the shows?

I loved playing “High Water,” because I felt like I was not only playing the song, but I was representing a little for Charley Patton, who I always emotionally felt pretty close to. Howlin’ Wolf was mentored by Charley Patton. Charley Patton taught Howlin’ Wolf how to play, like personally mentored him. So I felt close to him.

Also, Charley Patton was raised with the Chatmon family. They referred to each other as half-brothers. I was very close to Sam Chatmon from the Mississippi Sheiks. I made Sam’s last album with him, which we recorded the day after my 19th birthday. So I loved playing “High Water.”

There were some revelatory moments. The first night that we did “Desolation Row,” hearing those lyrics come out of the monitor in front of me, sung by the guy who wrote them, changed everything. Even though it was a song I had known most of my life, hearing it that way was profound.

The music was all good. I loved all the stuff from Tempest. There was one night we played “Early Roman Kings.” I wanted to play as primitively as I could. It has that flat-tire groove that George Receli plays probably better than any drummer I’ve ever heard in my life. I just was feeling it, and I dug in as much as I could. When Bob was walking from the piano back to the front for the next song, he stopped. He said, “That was pretty rough, but keep doing it!”

“Rough” as a compliment in that case?

I thought it was a compliment. I felt that way. I dug into it in a certain way.

I seem to remember Virginia Beach was a really, really good night. Before we went on stage, Bob said, “Give me a big fat tone tonight, Colin.” I said, “I’ll play it like Willie Johnson played on the early Howlin’ Wolf records.” I played in the front position on my Les Paul for most of the stuff, and I hit it with a certain amount of heat. Not volume, but heat. At the end of the set, he said, “What kind of guitar was that you were playing tonight? They don’t make guitars like that anymore. That’s the way a guitar is supposed to sound.” That made me feel good.

Was it an old vintage guitar?

No. It actually was a custom shop reissue that has a real special magic that I had gotten back in 2007. Gibson sent it to me when I was on the road. I always wanted to have a gold top Les Paul with P-90s. After I played it for five minutes, I sent them an email saying, “I don’t know what I have to do, but this guitar is not going to go back to you.”

The dobro that I played on “High Water” and “Blind Willie McTell” and on a number of the other songs, that’s a 1936 Regal Angelus. It sounds like nothing else I ever played. It’s transformed my playing because of its generosity. That was an old one. And I used an orange Gretsch, colloquially called the Nashville, but I think it’s just one of the Chet Atkins models. Those were the main guitars I ended up using with Bob.

On a podcast you appeared on a while back, you called Dylan “the greatest band leader in the world, hands down.” What made him so?

When I was there, he was in the music every minute that he was on stage. If you keep your eyes on him, and you watch his body language, and you listen to how he’s singing and playing, he will telegraph how the music’s supposed to go. The life in it is so evident. You know, I never was in the band long enough to go through rehearsing or recording or any of that stuff, so I don’t know if it’s a different thing, but in my limited experience, I found that he telegraphed the music so well.

He’s such a good musician. He’s in a different league. I mean, I’ve worked with some pretty great band leaders. T Bone Burnett is a fantastic band leader. I’ve had my own band now for 47 years, so it’s something that I try to pay attention to. Bob was phenomenal.

How is he telegraphing, as you describe it, what he wants? What are you watching for?

Standing up at the mic, and you’re soloing, he’ll turn to the left and you know that he’s looking at you. He’ll put one hand on the mic stand, and you know he’s about to sing. That’s an example. He’s not biding time up there. He’s really listening to what’s going on. Nothing got by him.

I know that people who have done it for years and years have gone through different periods of time with him and know infinitely more than I do about it, so I say this with the understanding that I have less knowledge. I mean, I know Bob Britt and Doug Lancio from here in Nashville, and they would know way more than I do. This is just my perspective on it from that time and that place.

Another thing that was great about doing that particular tour, which may have made it a different thing, was that there were other artists on the bill every night. He would bring people up on stage every night. He would bring Jim James, Jeff Tweedy, and Ryan Bingham. They would all come up.

We ultimately ended up doing “The Weight” most nights. I think that came as a result of Garth Hudson coming to one of the shows and sitting in with Wilco in Saratoga Springs. That was exciting for me because I worked with The Band a lot from the late ’80s till the mid-’90s especially. I stayed close with Garth from then on. I felt Garth was proud that I got to play with Bob. That meant the world to me. I had a real good hang with him that afternoon. Bob loved Garth’s piano playing on “The Weight,” because that’s Garth playing piano and Richard Manuel playing organ, not the other way around. Garth had a way of playing piano that was rooted in Southwest Ontario Anglican church music. That is where he comes from; that’s where my father-in-law came from. It’s a real specific thing. So I hear that when I hear Garth playing piano on “The Weight.”

Starting after that night, we ended up doing “The Weight” with everyone. Of course, I started it off with the iconic Robbie Robertson guitar lick. I felt like, “I’m trying to represent Toronto here.” Because that was real. Robbie was such a hugely influential player for Toronto guitar players when I was coming up.

But before that, we did a few different songs. The first night that I played with them, we did “Twelve Gates to the City,” which of course I’d played many, many times, learning from Reverend Gary Davis’s playing. So I felt completely comfortable jumping into doing that. Bob wrote some different words for it, and he made a reference to the Princes’ Gates and Massey Hall.

Then one night we did “Let Your Light from the Lighthouse Shine on Me,” which I learned from the singing of Blind Willie Johnson, but I know a lot of different people sang that song as well.

Something like “The Weight” or “Let Your Light Shine On Me,” that’s being added mid-tour. You said there’s no soundchecks. How’s the band working it up? How is it getting rehearsed?

With “The Weight,” I played it with Rick [Danko] and with The Band many times. I knew that already. I was told to play it in G instead of in A, but that was pretty easy. But there were a couple of times where we worked out a couple of those things. “Let Your Light from the Lighthouse,” we might have listened to and gone over on the bus before we went on stage.

To the extent you had any rehearsals or woodshedding off stage, was it on the bus?

Mostly, yeah. That was kind of it. Before I started, the day that I was in Detroit, Tony came to my hotel room, and we went over a bunch of stuff. I did check out a couple of concerts that were available on YouTube where I could find some of the arrangements, because there were a few songs that I knew they had done a little differently.

We didn’t change things up that much. Every night, we started with “Things Have Changed,” which was a different arrangement of it than the one from the record. It was sort of a double-time arrangement, which was interesting. The songs are so versatile that they can hold up all that change.

You mentioned Tony giving you some pointers. Do you remember what any of them were?

Mostly just keep your eyes on Bob. They all kind of led to that.

The sense that I got instinctively he corroborated, which is: keep the volume in keeping with where the band is. A lot of them are basic tenets of being a good sideman. Don’t step on the vocals. Keep an eye as to when he’s going to jump in, especially when something doesn’t have a set number of bars. When you’re soloing on something, figure out where it’s going to come back.

Was there any other feedback you got from Dylan as you went on?

Before we went on stage in Toronto, he looked me in the eye and said, “Do your best.” I said to him, “I’ll play with all the love in my heart.” At the end of the show, he said, “You played real good.” It was really simple like that.

There were a few things, a couple little changes he wanted in arrangements and things where he would talk to George about something, and I would nod my head.

What do you mean?

One night, he wanted a stop at a different place on “Love Sick.” It was a very simple thing, but it was a really powerful arrangement change.

Generally, in any interaction I had, he was really positive and nice.

Was that thing before the show where he says, “Do your best,” was that your first actual interaction with him? Not counting Hearts of Fire, I should say.

I met him in Detroit, the night before Toronto, on the bus. Richard Thompson had opened a bunch of the shows. Bob wanted to play “Vincent Black Lightning,” I guess as a tribute to Richard. He came onto the bus, and he and Charlie worked up a way of playing it. I just sat there with my mouth shut. Hearing him sing it on the bus with just Charlie playing guitar and Bob singing—if anybody has any doubt that he’s one of the greatest singers of my lifetime, if you were there in the room when that happened, you would never have that doubt again. He sang it so beautifully. He sang it beautifully on stage that night, too, but hearing him sing it from a foot and a half away in the bus, it was tremendously moving.

I interviewed Richard Thompson a while ago, and I asked him about this. He did not know that Bob was going to perform it that night. In fact, he and his band were already on the road to the next gig.

Oh no!

He thought people were pranking him until a few weeks later finally, a recording popped up on YouTube or something.

The version on stage that night was really good with the full band, but just hearing Charlie and Bob do it on the bus, I was glad to be in earshot.

Do you feel that things musically changed or improved during your month there?

I think that it did get better. I hope so. I felt like I could make a better contribution as it went on. Of course, once again I say this with the absolute deference to the guys who had been there for a long, long time, it felt like it evolved in a good way. I felt, I wouldn’t say comfortable is the right word. I felt welcome. That meant a lot to me. I’ve done an awful lot of sideman work and session work, but I’m not a guy who can go, “You want this sound? I’ll go for this sound. You want that sound? I’ll go for that sound.” I try and be versatile within my own wheelhouse if I can be, but I also know that there’s certain things that are natural to me and certain things that aren’t as natural to me, so being in an environment where I feel like it’s a good fit means a lot.

All the other guys in the band were wonderful to me too. When Tony’s in town, we get together, and George Receli, who has played on at least a half a dozen albums I’ve produced, we have stayed good friends.

I’m such a fan of George’s. I’ve seen him drum with Bob more than anyone else by far.

There’s nobody in the world like that guy. He’s one of the greatest musicians on any instrument I think I’ve ever played with.

Is he still working at all?

Yeah. He doesn’t really go on the road, but he comes to Nashville when I ask him to come and play on something. He’s played on half a dozen albums for me in the last number of years. More since he’s not been playing with Bob. Post-pandemic, every few months he’s come out and done something. He’s like family to my wife and I. He plays like nobody else.

I make a lot of my living as a producer. I’ve done a lot of work in the last 33 years with T Bone Burnett, who has mentored me so much. I think there’s something to be said for trying to bring out the best in musicians by calling the people to do it who you don’t have to say that much to. Who are the right people for the situation. I felt like I was treated that way by Bob.

Thanks Colin! Catch him back out on the road with T Bone Burnett (full dates here) and keep up with his work at colinlinden.com.