Notes from the Road in North Carolina (by Jon Wurster)
"That unique mix of free spirit survivor and flagrant contrarian is what’s so inspiring about Dylan"
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On Sunday night (St Patrick’s Day, which is relevant), Bob Dylan brought the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour to Charlotte, North Carolina. The next night, Bob played a few hours east in Fayetteville. Also in both places: Friend-of-the-newsletter Jon Wurster, for once not on the road himself with The Mountain Goats or Bob Mould or Michael Shannon’s R.E.M. tribute or Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets-turns-50 show.
The headline out of Charlotte was, for St. Patrick’s Day, Bob’s first performance of the Irish folk song “The Roving Blade” since 2000 (a show I wrote about here). Sadly, no recording has surfaced yet, but there is a photo of Bob’s other nod to the holiday. No one’s gonna pinch him:
Jon Wurster reported in on his experience at the two shows, so I’ll turn it over to him!
“I THINK this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen?”
Sunday night’s Rough and Rowdy Ways tour stop in Charlotte, NC was the tenth or eleventh Bob Dylan concert I’ve attended, but the closest I’ve yet been to the action onstage. All thanks and praises to my friend Adam, whose ticket-sleuthing tenacity rewarded us with front row seats to a master class on remaining firmly in the moment while playing (and listening to) music.
First things first: Last time I filed a show report, the great Charley Drayton had taken over drumming duties from the equally great Matt Chamberlain. Every drummer Dylan has played with has been top shelf, and new addition Jerry Pentecost is no exception. To my ears and eyes, he is the most stripped-down and economical of Dylan’s recent drummers. Pentecost supported Dylan with great taste and delicacy, a perfect meeting of Nashville session great Kenny Buttrey and Stax legend Al Jackson Jr.
As a musician, I usually find myself focusing more on the supporting players than the frontperson. It’s a little different with Dylan concerts because “this might be the last time” is always running through my head. As I watched Sunday’s performance unfold, it was hard to believe most of these musicians have been playing essentially the same set for the last two years. While the songs are no doubt stored deep in their muscle memories, I’ve never seen band members so focused on the task at hand, as well as their leader’s actual hands.
History is rife with musicians’ tales of keeping their eyes glued to Dylan for fear of falling off a musical cliff in front of thousands of people. It was quite a treat to see this play out just a few feet away. The band is situated onstage so each member can see what Bob’s hands are doing on the piano at any moment. This is crucial in case he changes a song’s key, rhythm, or arrangement. We operate like this in the Mountain Goats, but there are moments where something in the audience catches your eye, or you’re lost in your own thoughts before realizing you’ve been on autopilot.
Not so, with these guys. Pentecost, bassist Tony Garnier, guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio, and multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron never broke eye contact with Dylan for more than a second or two. This “closed set” atmosphere, combined with the stark, nearly non-existent stage production, made me feel like I was watching a band rehearsing in a warehouse basement. This was even more the case the next night in Fayetteville due to the theater’s cement back wall and the band’s road cases being fully visible.
During one of Dylan’s more animated piano explorations, I found myself making a silly yet reasonable observation: “He’s like your grandfather, but he’s also in a rock band.” It’s such an unusual experience watching an 82-year-old do what Dylan does. In theory, it shouldn’t be happening. But the crazy thing is, he actually seems younger than he did when my band opened for him over thirty years ago in Winston-Salem, NC. Sure, he’s got all the mobility issues of anyone his age, but they’re offset by his intense commitment to performance, and the fact that his singing voice is somehow clearer and more emotive than it was decades ago.
One of the benefits of being so close to the stage on Sunday was getting to see how Dylan directs his band. Mostly, it was subtle head nods signaling who he wanted to take a solo. But every once in a while, there was a forceful finger point to bring down the musical intensity. Dylan was fully in charge, but as always, there was a little chaos in the air. This was evidenced in the last-minute St. Patrick’s Day wildcard, “The Roving Blade,” an Irish folk song Dylan hadn’t dusted off in over twenty years.
As the song’s intro simmered, a guitar-less Britt looked unsure of what was happening (this happens to me at least five times a night). He picked up and spoke into a handheld microphone, presumably alerting the backline crew to a mechanical issue. Britt then took a breath, picked up a nearby guitar and joined right in like nothing had been amiss. You can tell Dylan appreciates his band’s ability to thrive in these kinds of moments. Both nights he introduced his supporting players with a variation of: “These songs are pretty hard to play, and these guys do a pretty good job playin’ them, don’t you think?”
There’s a lot of legacy artists out there on the road doing what are essentially crowd-pleasing, hit-packed victory laps. This is what makes Dylan so enjoyable for so many of us: He knows exactly what people want, and it appears to mean absolutely nothing to him. We forget that Dylan has a handful of genuine hit songs in his quiver. And so does Dylan.
These current concerts feature almost all of his most recent album, and a handful of album tracks and covers a casual listener wouldn’t recognize. It’s almost diabolical when you think about it. But that unique mix of free spirit survivor and flagrant contrarian is what’s so inspiring about Dylan. Most people his age are in the ground, yet he’s out there giving some of the best, weirdest performances of his career. It’s kind of the most punk thing anyone has ever done.
I honestly can’t say if Monday night’s show in Fayetteville was better or worse than Charlotte. Our seats were a little further back, which gave a better perspective of the whole show, but didn’t have the same in-your-face magic of front row. Dylan and his band were in fine form. The new, more laid back “Gotta Serve Somebody” grooved, and “Key West” brought tears to eyes. And the majestic, set closer “Every Grain of Sand”? I think it’s my new favorite jangle rock anthem.
Want to know the coolest moment of the whole double-header? As Dylan made his way off the darkened stage in Charlotte, I caught his full silhouette in a sliver of light. It was the kid in those pictures Joe Alper took in 1962. Same profile, same hair, same body language, same everything. I don’t know what else to say about it other than it’s what I was looking at when I asked myself the question at the top of this review.
Hey, what do you know, I just killed two birds with one stone. I wrote this concert review and also arrived at the subject of next Tuesday’s Best Show call: Bob Dylan is replacing Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. Hibbing just keeps on giving.
Thanks Jon! Catch him out on the road with all the aforementioned bands and tune into The Best Show next Tuesday to hear the aforementioned Dylan/Chalamet bit live on air. And next week I’ll be writing my own show report from Dylan’s shows at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville (paid subscribers only).
No full recording of Charlotte yet (the first half is on YouTube), but here’s Fayetteville:
2024-03-18, Crown Theatre, Fayetteville, NC
If you missed it, here’s my Dylan-centric conversation with Jon a few years back, which features the story of the time his band opened for Dylan in a very different era:
Jon Wurster Stole Bob Dylan's Kleenex
Wikipedia knows a lot about Jon Wurster. But you know what it didn’t know? That, before he was indie-rock-slash-alt-comedy-famous, he once opened a show for Bob Dylan.
Thanks Jon! Can't wait for Memphis and my planes/trains/automobiles trip to Austin in a couple of weeks (from which I'll get back just in time to go see you in Milwaukee on the 10th).
Well shit, I wish I’d known that Wurster was in Charlotte. It was a *great* show. Not a great R&RW show…a great Bob show, period. I was 8 rows out. The crowd was the least unprepared of any R&RW crowd I’ve experienced, so there wasn’t much “WTF is this!?” coming from the audience. The sound was superb (unsurprising at the Blumenthal). And Bob was on it from the start. If this is the end of R&RW (I’ll find out right here in CLT with Willie in June), then that was the way to go. CLT ‘24 and Hershey ‘21 were the two best I saw.