Last Night in Alpharetta

2024-06-21, Ameris Bank Amphitheatre, Alpharetta, GA

I usually only run these show-review posts for paid subscribers, but, for the (wild!) opening night of a brand new tour, I’m making this one available to all. However, all future tour reports this summer—I’ve got two more myself, and some guest ones—will only go to paid subscribers. Upgrade if you want more like this:

Yesterday morning, I tweeted out a joke cue sheet of what Bob Dylan’s setlist could be at the opening night of Outlaw Tour. The premise—because who doesn’t love hearing a joke explained—was that, after a plausible start, it became wildly absurd. The Street Legal outtake “Legionnaires Disease”? A cover of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”? “Joey”…twice? I wasn’t trying to trick anyone, and I (almost) didn’t. We all had a good laugh at how unlikely it was Bob would play any of this and moved on.

But here’s the thing. The actual setlist, while bearing no relation to my joke one, was almost as insane. Although in entirely different ways.

Yes, last night, Bob Dylan kicked off the Outlaw Tour in Alpharetta, Georgia, alongside Lukas Nelson (dad Willie was sick and will rejoin the tour in a few days), Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and opener Celeste. I wasn’t planning on going to opening night, but thanks to a cheap last-minute flight and the extreme ticket generosity of another fan (thanks Robin!), I found myself right up front in a giant outdoor amphitheater just outside Atlanta.

This was Dylan’s first non-Rough and Rowdy Ways tour since the pandemic, so advance speculation had been flying. Would it be more of the same songs? Would it be a greatest-hits setlist better suited for casual outdoor crowds, many of whom aren’t even there to see him?

Nope and nope.

We knew we were in for something different from the first few notes. It wasn’t “Watching the River Flow,” which has opened just about every show for the past three years. It wasn’t even a Dylan song at all. It turned out to be—and due to low mic volume on the first few songs, it took a while to figure this out—a cover of Little Walter’s 1955 Chicago blues classic “My Babe,” a song he’s never sung in public before. He’d rehearsed it once in 1978 (it’s on my Not At Budokan comp), but that’s it.

“My Babe”, the first of some short video snippets—phone pouches are also a thing of the past:

Cover of old time chestnuts he’s never sung live before would be a recurring theme of the night. He did four more too: The Chuck Berry tune “Little Queenie,” continue his recent run of Berry covers; the 1959 Fleetwoods hit “Mr. Blue”; Hank Williams’ classic “Cold Cold Heart”; and the Lee Hazlewood-penned 1956 hit for Sanford Clark “The Fool.”

“Little Queenie”:

“The Fool”:

If that sounds surprising on paper the morning after, imagine how surprising it was in person. As he started singing each cover, we’re all frantically trying to figure out what it is. Some songs I knew, like “My Babe” and “Cold Cold Heart.” Others I’m Googling lyric snatches for. What the hell is “The Fool”? Someone commented after that it was like The Philosophy of Modern Song: The Tour. Was he going to sing “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy” next?

Interspersed with the WTF covers were his own songs. But even those choices had an dose of WTF. For one, the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour is clearly over. Not a single song from that album—or indeed from that entire tour (slight exception for “Early Roman Kings,” which was part of the initial Fall 2021 leg). In fact, he treated last night like it was the Tempest tour fourteen years late. A full 50% of the original songs he played, four of eight, came from that 2012 album: “Pay in Blood,” “Early Roman Kings,” and the show-closing twofer of “Scarlet Town” and “Long and Wasted Years.” 

“Scarlet Town”:

They were selling Tempest tour tee-shirts in the merch booth. Was that a clue? Did he tell them far enough in advance: “I’m gonna be playing a lot of Tempest, dig those shirts out of storage”? No, it turned out these were new tee shirts, manufactured just for this tour even though they had 2012 dates on the back. So how long has he been planning to go so Tempest-heavy? One of many mysteries last night.

That left just four other songs, only one anything like a well-known classic: “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” “Things Have Changed,” and—the wildest card of all—“Under the Red Sky,” not played in over a decade. So the set was, in total, five first-time-ever covers, four Tempest tunes, and four everything-else. 

Simple Twist of Fate:

It made for a fairly whiplash-inducing night. Certainly the most bizarre Dylan show I’ve ever seen. I joked to my buddy after, “That was an amazing show. But was it actually a good show?”

Mostly yes, but it was at times quite ragged. As often happens at this shows, and particularly tour-openers, Bob’s voice warmed up as the night went on. “Cold Cold Heart,” the Hank Williams tune, was the turning point of the show for me seven songs in. An absolutely beautiful vocal performance that recalled the vocal heights of the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour. He hit a high note on the chorus just like the one in “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You.”

“Cold Cold Heart”:

That was a rare connection to the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour though. This was as clean a break as I can remember between tours, even though they were only two months apart. It’s not just that were no songs repeated from the spring last few years. The sound was entirely different. Everything I’ve written about recent shows—the tender vocals, the prominent piano, the increased harmonica—was gone. This show was loud, it was guitar-driven, he barked and yelped and shouted more than he crooned, and he didn’t touch the harmonica. Though the setlist still had its share of ballads, the mood couldn’t have been more different from a few months ago. All that poise and polish was out the window. This was, hilariously, far more rough and rowdy than the tour of that name.

Some of that comes down to two major band changes. For one, after 15 years, multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron is gone. His absence was felt. On Saturday Night Live in the ‘90s, Phil Hartman was nicknamed The Glue; you could put him in any sketch, even one where he wasn’t the star, and his consummate professionalism would hold everything together. Donnie was The Glue of that band. He was rarely featured—you often couldn’t even hear him—but you noticed when he was gone. The leaner guitar-driven lineup threatened to collapse on several occasions, especially early on. The band watched Bob even more closely than usual, occasionally conferring with him or with each other. It’s a testament to their skill that, even in uncharted waters, they managed to hold things together. If the first few songs get repeated, I expect they will tighten up quickly.

The other bandmember change: After 20 years, our friend Jim Keltner is back on drums! When I interviewed him, my headline mentioned “thirty years of drumming for Bob Dylan.” Well, make that fifty years. He first played with Bob in 1973, and, 51 years later, he’s still at it. Alas he was seated right behind Bob’s giant piano so I could not see him one iota, but he sounded great. Of course he did. He’s Jim Keltner! Sounding great is kind of his whole thing.

Afterwards, I gathered with some fellow superfans. Everyone was excited and elated, of course. But there was a palpable sense of bewilderment too. Good bewilderment though; this is why you follow Bob, these wild left-turns. He was, as usual, not capitulating at all to anyone expectations. He played what he wanted to play, and so what if no one else knew why? The set was like Toad’s Place in miniature, just one curveball after the next. Why all the old covers? Why is he stuck on Tempest suddenly? Of all the songs to revive after a decade, why “Under the Red Sky”? You wonder if this can possibly be the new every-night set, or if we’re back to regular changes. (“Tough Mama” was rumored to have been soundchecked yesterday, and he played shorter than his allotted 75 minutes so a couple more could get added.)

“Under the Red Sky”:

As I said up top, I wasn’t planning to attend this show. He’s playing Boston, much closer to home, in a few weeks. I’m taking my four-year-old to that one, her first Dylan show. We’ll sit back on the lawn, eat some popcorn, watch the screens. It’ll be great in a different way. But there’s nothing like an opening night where anything could happen. And, last night, anything did.

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PS. Here are a few video clips from the other three acts. Opener Celise was fiery, like a funkier Alabama Shakes, with a killer ten-minute cover of Bill Withers’ “Use Me” that sounded like Funkadelic. Definitely worth arriving early for if you’re seeing a show.

Celise, “Use Me”:

I was a huge fan of the first Robert Plant and Alison Krauss record (the decade-later second was fine, but diminishing returns). They delivered a stunning show, singing some songs off their two records as well as some from the Plant catalog, including more Zeppelin than expected (stunning “Ballad of Evermore” and “When the Levee Breaks,” an amazing combo of Krauss singing the old folk song “Matty Groves” into “Gallows Pole,” and a more pedestrian “Rock and Roll”) and his outside work. He paced the stage like a shaman, conjuring up the music with his hands, and for two people from such different musical background their voices blended beautifully.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, “The Ballad of Evermore”:

Willie Nelson, as I mentioned, was MIA. Under doctors orders he is taking four days off. He was missed, and son Lukas stepped up to sing some Willie tunes. On paper this seemed unpromising, but Nelson Jr. knocked it out of the park. Playing Willie’s trademark guitar Trigger [correction: A Trigger look-alike], he sounded just like his dad in peak form, and brought out surprise guests Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi for half the set. Maybe not surprisingly, considering, the crowd seemed way more into ‘Lukas sings Willie’ than ‘Bob sings old ‘50s tunes.’

Lukas Nelson and guests, “Workingman’s Blues”:

No full show recording yet, but I will post it in the paid-subscribers Discord when it drops.

UPDATE—Here’s a piece on Night 2: