Last Night in Troutdale (by Dave Depper)

2026-06-04, McMenamins Edgefield, Troutdale, OR

Photo via @marchibeth

Last night, Bob Dylan kicked off what is officially called—according to a t-shirt on sale in the merch booth at least—the Long Hot Summer Tour. He played alongside openers Lucinda Williams and John Doe (who I interviewed last year) in an outdoor venue in Troutdale, Oregon, near Portland. The setlist featured a number of songs returning from last summer’s setlist as well as, for the first time, a few Rough and Rowdy Ways songs played at a non-“Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour” show.

The big news though was the debut of an extremely deep Basement Tapes cut: “Baby Won’t You Be My Baby.” I crunched the numbers and this is the longest gap ever between Dylan recording a song and playing it live. 59 years! That easily tops the previous record-holder, “Outlaw Blues” at 42 years (I did a whole list if you wanna see more).

Dave Depper was on hand to report in for us. Depper is a member of the iconic indie-rock band Death Cab for Cutie, who have a new album out today, I Built You a Tower. (I also highly recommend his solo album covering the entirety of Air’s landmark electronic record Moon Safari.) Since he had a million other things on his album release day to-do list, Depper called me on the phone a couple hours ago, and I pulled his remarks together into this piece.

(This will be the first of many show reviews from this summer’s tour, including a few by me when the tour heads east. Most go out only to paid subscribers. Sign up here if you want to get them all.)

---

I’ve seen Dylan twice before. I saw the Time Out of Mind tour in ’98 when I was 17 in Eugene. The setlist that night, I had no idea how lucky I was. Then I saw the Love & Theft tour in Bend. It was the first tour where he started playing keyboards a lot. I have not seen him since then. Part of the blessing and curse of being a touring musician myself is that pretty much any time that all these acts are on the road and coming to my town, I’m not home to see them. Because I would have seen Dylan like 15 times otherwise.

I have been checking in with those set lists, and I’ve dipped in here and there to listen to some bootleg recordings, so I had a sense of what I was in for. But like everybody, I didn’t know what he would do in the context of this no longer being the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour. That was really my only regret about last night. I did not get to catch a Rough and Rowdy show. I adore that record, and I adore the live versions of the songs I’ve heard from that, and we only got two Rough and Rowdy Ways songs last night. I was a bit sad about that.

The all-acoustic band really flatters what he’s trying to do right now. You can hear every single note everyone’s playing, and it really centers his voice and his keyboard playing in a powerful way. His keys led everything. I remembered the last time I’d seen him feeling like he was just kind of diddling around on the keys, coming in and out, and some of it was more amateurish. But he was completely leading the way on every song last night. And his voice was just pristine. It was like the Shadows in the Night croon, just really loud and cutting through the mix. My last experience with him, he wasn’t in quite as in command of his voice as he is now. He’s done so much work around his vocal instrument, and his piano playing has come so far since then, that I was just stunned.

Edgefield is the classic summer outdoor shed in Portland, about a 20-minute drive from town. It’s just like a nice green grassy venue sort of near the Columbia River. It’s run by a local promotion company, so there’s a local non-corporate flavor to it. I’ve played there with Death Cab several times. It’s where you see someone of Dylan’s size or our size. It’s an amazing place to see a show because, if you just have a little bit of motivation, you can get extremely close to the stage. With Dylan last night, there were reserved seats that were quite expensive, like a little half moon of them in front of the stage, but we just had GA lawn seats and got very close without much effort. He had the hood up, but you could see his face. Nothing in front of the piano.

The Dylan crowd was heavily boomer, hippie folks. I saw a lot of very interesting hippie haircuts and people wearing their best Oregon country-fair garb. It felt very much like a Dylan crowd, but maybe a Dylan crowd that was expecting “all your favorite hits of the 1960s.” I think a lot of people were confused.

One of the high points was “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” that Cuban arrangement. When he started doing it, my girlfriend said, “Is he playing ‘Putting on the Ritz’?” I was like, “I think he might be?” Then I heard, “Well, the streets of Rome…” We were just cracking up. It was the kind of crowd that I bet only half the people even know the song at all, and they certainly don’t know the Calypso version that he’s doing. But I loved it.

I’m embarrassed to say I did not realize at the moment that I was experiencing the live debut of “Baby Won’t You Be My Baby.” I mean, I’m a Basement Tapes fanatic. That box set is my favorite of the bootleg releases. But there had already been several covers at that point of songs I didn’t recognize. I just figured it was another one. I was like, “Alright, here’s another old-time bluesy song. His voice sounds great. I’m on board.” I had written in my notes “I looked East, I looked West,” because I figured I’d look up what the song was later. I was like, “I know I’ve heard that somewhere. Is it like a Chuck Berry song?” For a second I also wondered if he was previewing new material.

I was completely stunned to see that it was a bootleg Basement Tapes song from 59 years ago. I mean, even by the standard of Basement Tapes tracks, it’s sort of a throwaway song, in the best way. It’s about the band cooking and him being ridiculous. It’s just another great lost Basement Tapes song, and that’s why it just sounded like another lost interesting cover. He looked like he was having a good time.

No real lowlights. I would say that in a 16-song set, four covers feels a little ungenerous in terms of throwing the fans a bone. I personally am very invested in the “modern day Bob can do whatever he wants, I’m grateful to just be in his presence” mindset, but I heard one guy walking out afterwards say, “I’ve seen the crappiest indie bands in the smallest venues and I had a better time than at this show.” But in terms of the material itself, and the performances, there was nothing to fault. I would have loved to hear a couple more Rough and Rowdy songs just because I’ve never had a chance to hear any of them, but beyond that, I don’t know what I would have changed.

Actually, one lowlight. They didn’t have the Yondr bags, but security had clearly all been instructed to berate anyone that had their phone out, which led to a lot of hearing security guards yelling “Put your phone away!” and people arguing back at them. There were all these mini-situations of people arguing with security guards that were constant and distracting. I would have rather had the inconvenience of just putting my phone in a bag.

I took my dad for his birthday. Dylan is his favorite artist of all time. He’s the reason that I love Bob, so it was this very kind of full circle moment for us. Plus, the opener at that Eugene show on the Time Out of Mind tour was Lucinda Williams, and she was the opener last night as well.

My dad’s a Dylan fanatic, but Dylan ends for him after Desire. He just checked out at that point. It’s been fun to be a Jokermen-mindset kind of son to him. “You should listen to Infidels or Oh Mercy.” When I gave him the tickets a couple weeks ago, we had a long talk about expectations. I said, “Your homework assignment is to listen to nothing but Rough and Rowdy Ways for a couple of weeks.” He loved it.

That felt very special to go with him. I was just feeling overwhelmingly grateful to see this guy at 85 years old doing this thing and being clearly so passionate and committed to doing it. And also just being fearless about not catering to anyone’s expectations of what his show should be. When he walked off after “Crossing the Rubicon” at the end and people were yelling for an encore, I was laughing my head off. “This dude’s not coming back. And that is the song he’s leaving you with, guys. Get over it.”

---

Thanks Dave! Check out Death Cab’s new album ‘I Built You a Tower’ wherever you get music. Here’s them playing a song from it on Jimmy Kimmel a few nights back (that’s Dave on the right).

PS. No tape yet beyond the one song in the video I embedded above. Paid subscribers, keep an eye on our Discord for when the full tape drops.