Cowboy Poetry
Bob Dylan
Kimberly Chun, SF Gate
October 13 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, SF
Bob Dylan, the canny old cowpoke who wrote "Forever Young," has found a way to grow old gracefully: Recast yourself as a bluegrass patriarch, or an old bluesman or a C&W wise man. Those were the roles that flickered through the mind as one of the true rock legends tried out those musical personas Saturday, October 13 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium with a group that deserves Dylan's description as "the greatest band in the world."
Those few words of praise comprised much of Dylan's between-song patter that night. But who can blame a wandering cowboy, who has performed about 450 concerts between 1997's Time Out of Mind and this year's Love and Theft, for reserving his energy? On Saturday night, the second of two shows in the Bay Area, the songwriting legend let the tunes speak for themselves in sparkling arrangements that favored rhythmic lightness over weighty darkness, airy optimism over piercing anger.
As Aaron Copland's rousing, "beefy"-sounding "Rodeo" surged in the background, Dylan took center stage, looking like a wiry gentleman cowpuncher in a black-and-white Western suit and elegant black cowboy boots with a white flame motif licking the toes. Surrounding him were guitarist Charlie Sexton, multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell and bassist Tony Garnier in Bordeaux-hued suits, with cowboy-hatted drummer David Kemper off-center to the left.
The group immediately established the evening's tone with an arrangement of Fred Rose's "Wait for the Light to Shine" that mixed classic acoustic bluegrass -- Dylan and Sexton on acoustic guitars, Garnier on stand-up bass and Campbell carrying the melody on mandolin -- with rockier drums. As Campbell and Sexton stepped up to the mics for harmonies then fell back into line, the ensemble seemed about as bluegrass as a band could be with a gruffly distinctive vocalist such as Dylan. "He may be in trouble. / He may need a helping hand," the three sang as Dylan let his guttural lines trail off.
But unlike other Dylan projects such as, say, the Traveling Wilburys, there was absolutely no hint of irony or jokiness to the "Jokerman"'s set: Dylan and the band weren't playing dress-up or trying to bring some long-ago era back home. And they weren't particularly somber, either, treating protest songs such as "Masters of War" and "Blowin' in the Wind" with grace rather than fury.
Instead, songs such as "Simple Twist of Fate" stood out in their beautiful mixture of country-rock and Muscle Shoals soul, recalling the Flying Burrito Brothers with Campbell on lyrical pedal-steel. Looking like a pretty new Robbie Robertson, Sexton picked out Steve Cropper-esque guitar, offsetting Dylan's rough yet sympathetic reading and elegiac, bottom-heavy guitar solo. Surrounded by a bank of small, old and carefully miked Vox and Fender amps, which seemed to foreground the combo's identity as a working band, Dylan and band treated the songs with a sense of intense, loving professionalism, radiating a palpable sense of pleasure in decades-old music rendered anew.
And the numbers seemed truly new, transfigured with an almost Celtic rhythm-guitar-oriented spaciousness, rather than piercing harmonica work or screaming organ. "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" exemplified the style, with Dylan taking the final notes of the chorus higher with a brightening little lilt and a bouzouki-strumming Campbell helping lay down a dense foundation of rhythm. And Dylan and company turned into something resembling an old-time string band, filling out the acoustic "My Back Pages" with Campbell's sweet rather than sentimental fiddle and ending with Dylan on controlled, eloquent harp, holding his right hand out, thin fingers splayed, and gesturing to the rest of the band to play on. "Sugar Baby" from Love and Theft became a tender R&B exercise and "Drifter's Escape," a Texas blues raveup before the raucous set-closer "Rainy Day Woman No. 12 and 35."
As the sold-out audience stood up and roared their appreciation, Dylan stared back steadily at the crowd, as still, wary and fragile-looking as a gazelle, before he turned on his heels and strode back into the blackness behind the amplifiers. He was back a few minutes later to encore with "Things Have Changed," "Like a Rolling Stone," "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," "Honest With Me" (one of only a handful of songs from Love and Theft) and finally "Blowin' in the Wind," and then he was gone again.
Forty-three albums into his career, Dylan may be a travel-worn musical road warrior, but he still knows how to harness a sense of magic. As the audience, which ranged from boomers to teenagers, poured out onto the street, you had to agree with the 20-something woman who was talking about another fan beside her who said, "Bob is now God." "I said, 'No,'" she recalled enthusiastically. "Bob is just one helluva manifestation."
excerpted....
©2001 SF Gate
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