Poster for the Bob Dylan concert -
Wahconah Park, Pittsfield, MA,
August 26, 2006

Bob Dylan delivered as even and as excellent a show as you could imagine Saturday night at Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, MA; it felt like this was a big deal for him rather than another run through a list of old songs in front of a mass of faceless people in another nameless town. It was a remarkable performance of a predictable setlist; he’s done so many shows that I’m sure this list was predicted by someone’s software program.

Here’s how it broke down chronologically: middle, early, recent, early, early, recent, early, early, early, recent, early, recent, early, early.

Mr. Dylan’s voice rang clear over a rocking rendition of “Cat’s in the Well,” getting the show off to a fast start at 9:00, setting a tight, energized tone that would carry throughout the hour and three quarters show. Following a day off, the band were playing their tenth show in two weeks on this leg of the Never-EndingTour – they were in perfect sync, seeming eager to do the jobs they’ve got so much time, talent, and soul invested in.

No need for me to rank this lineup among the various ones I’ve seen dating back to 1975, here’s what Dylan himself told Rolling Stone about them last week: “This is the best band I’ve ever been in, I’ve ever had, man for man. When you play with guys a hundred times a year, you know what you can and can’t do, what they’re good at, whether you want ‘em there.”

In the same interview, he decried the state of music recording in these modern times, which thinking may account for the inclusion in tonight’s setlist of two songs that came out of his 1967 Big Pink jam sessions in nearby Saugerties, NY with the Hawks (soon to be renamed The Band), “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” in the second spot, and, in the the eleventh, “I Shall Be Released.”

The former could serve as a template for the whole set: really clear vocals from Dylan, his keyboard fairly high in the mix, and a solid harmonica coda (which, coincidentally, brought the huge diamond ring on his left hand to everybody’s attention), and notably tasty pedal steel licks from Donny Herron, as every song had at least one star turn from the band.

Herron and guitarist Denny Freeman each had several, always augmented by the brilliance of the rhythm section. There were exciting elements to the arrangements throughout. For instance, the fourth number, “Just Like a Woman,” opened with something of a duet between Herron’s pedal steel and Dylan’s organ and closed with Herron echoing Dylan’s harp. In between were sweet, sublime solos by Freeman and the audience’s filling the gaps left by Dylan for them to sing “just like a woman” before he did.

Vocal highlights included “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum,” which sounded way better than we’d heard before. We may have been too quick to dismiss it earlier because of the silly name and its surface cartoonishness, but upon further reflection, it may be on a par with the mid-60s’ ballads in terms of substance, only that went unrecognized because his later song writing style is spare where it once was florid. Anyway, Dylan sang it with relish, the band played it with flair, and now I’m wondering what Christopher Ricks thinks about it!

The soloing Freeman did on the next song, “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again,” was apparently a highlight for Dylan because it had him wiggling his eyebrows and waggling his tail, simple gestures that become hilarious when done by this most stoical performer. A very cool reading of “Million Miles” came next, sounding more like the official recorded version than any song on the set list.

Having called the setlist predictable earlier, we ought note now that that doesn’t imply inferior, because any setlist that has “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Desolation Row” back to back is a good one. And what a great time to lay those gems side by side, with truly rejeuvenating and re-revealing arrangements inspired by how charged-up Dylan is these days and having these cats in his band.

The setup for “Don’t Think Twice…” was semi-acoustic, with Tony Garnier laying down a hypnotic, pulsing beat on the double bass over which Freeman and Dylan interwove juiced-up melodic lines against which the lyric bounced. (There were times tonight when Dylan’s keyboard emerged from the mix just enough to remind one of Al Kooper.) The song ended with a hot solo by Freeman giving way to a cool one on harp by Dylan.

The arrangement of “Desolation Row” was simply spectacular – it was a sound ballet. There was luscious acoustic work between Garnier and Freeman, laying down swinging, jazzy lines and then doubling them. Geroge Recile was all over his drum kit, making thunder and great brassy noise. And Herron pinned down every phrase of Dylan’s with hot rivets of electric mandolin; a wicked cool effect.

By now these guys have got it all going on, they’re deep in a glorious groove, loosed from the bonds of gravity. Eight songs down and six to go. Dylan had a blast singing “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight;” a purely playful number, a delightful interlude before the freighted “Cold Irons Bound,” another one off Time Out of Mind. Tonight it had a crazy feel to it, dictated by Recile who crafted a beat that sounded somewhat martial and/or reminiscent of a score from an old detective movie.

We’d been listening to Time Out of Mind alot lately and are coming to think that it merits placement in the upper echelon of Dylan albums, alongside Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, and Blood on theTracks. It differs from those in its literary sensibility and is less complex musically, but it is so audibly affable that frequent listening starts to reveal subtle profundities – and isn’t that what we’re in search of, after all?

The other Big Pink number “I Shall Be Released,” notable for the interplay between Freeman and Herron, set the stage for the set closing “Summer Days,” which first we loved and then grew tired of, and tonight got a whole new appreciation for, as it was done, as everything tonight was done, in Watermelon Sugar.

The stage went dark for a couple minutes before Dylan and his Band returned for the first encore, “Like A Rolling Stone,” a great celebratory rave-up that featured Herron’s steel guitar riffs sounding like Al Kooper’s Hammond B3 on the original recording.

Dylan then responded to the riotous applause with “Thank yahhh, I’d like to introduce my band …”

The show ended with “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35;” despite a longtime predilection for a variety of stoning substances, this has always been among my least favorite songs, but, tonight – you guessed it…totally fuggin awesome!

Everybody just got goofy, including Dylan, who had Recile cracking up on L.A.R.S. and who, himself, was cracking up on the closer, doing his little boogie-in-place and exhorting the fans on the rail. A swell night it was in Wahconah Park.

:
August 26, 2006 setlist: All song lyrics available on: bobdylan.com

1. Cat’s in the Well (Under the Red Sky, 1990)
2. You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (1967, First release: Greatest Hits Vol. 2, 1971)
3. Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (Love and Theft, 2001)
4. Just Like A Woman (Blonde on Blonde,1966)
5. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again (Blonde on Blonde,1966
6. Million Miles (Time Out Of Mind, 1997)
7. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,1963)
8. Desolation Row (Highway 61 Revisited, 1965)
9. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (John Wesley Harding,1967)
10. Cold Irons Bound (Time Out Of Mind, 1997)
11. I Shall Be Released (1967, First release: Greatest Hits Vol. 2, 1971)
12. Summer Days (Love and Theft ’01)
(encore)
13. Like A Rolling Stone (Highway 61 Revisited 1965)
14. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (Blonde on Blonde,1966)
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The setlist for Bob Dylan’s June 23 concert in Pittsfield’s worn green wooden Wahconah Park (built in 1919) was old, with 9 songs from 1967 and earlier, and the playing was more jazz blues than blues rock, reflecting the presence of newcomers Denny Freeman (guitar) and Donny Herron (steel guitars, banjo, fiddle, mandolin), who joined Dylan’s band in March 2005.

Together with lead guitarist Stu Kimball (joined June 2004), their leads and solos, rooted in a raft of genres, provided apt accompaniment to Mr. Dylan, whose singing was strong and varied, whose keyboard playing was high in the mix, and whose center stage harmonica solos included some that made him resemble a wooing suitor.

Knowing Bob Dylan’s lyrics is not a requirement to enjoying his shows, but it’ll give you a leg up. The best way to learn them is to listen to the albums. You’re not going to learn them at the shows, where they take on an extra-literal dimension, with Dylan often treating lines of lyric as if they were strings on a guitar.

A big, broad rendition of “Drifter’s Escape” (John Wesley Harding ’67) that gave everybody in the band time to get limber was the opener, followed by “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” which had the band laying low while Dylan sang, intoned, and crooned the beatnik-crazy lyric all the way down to the penultimate stanza,

“Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost”

after which Herron let loose a wailing steel guitar riff that sent the band off on a rollicking ride that Dylan finally whistled to a stop with a center stage bended-knee harmonica coda.

That was the first of three songs from Highway 61 Revisited (August 1965) and the next on this setlist comes from Bringing It All Back Home (April, 1965), a rendition of “It’s All Right, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” that was worth the price of admission all by itself. While the band took their stellar turns weaving the melody and waxing the groove, Dylan kept his focus square on the audience, leaning over the keyboard to deliver the song that contains the line that always gets a loud response, “But even the president of the United States/Sometimes must have/To stand naked.”

Bass player and musical director Tony Garnier and drummer George Recile underpin the whole operation with masterly playing, adding accents, embellishment, and punctuation in all the right spots. Garnier, a fellow Minnisotan, has been on Dylan’s Never-Ending Tour since its second year, 1989; Recile, from New Orleans, has been Dylan’s drummer since 2001 (which frequently, but not tonight, requires being the object of Dylan’s silly dumb-drummer jokes).

An interesting bit of business at the Pittsfield concert was Garnier reaching up and slapping one of Recile’s cymbals, to signal the start of “Chimes of Freedom,” from the 1964 album Another Side of Bob Dylan, which, in a multi-layered acoustic rendition, was one of the show’s most affecting numbers.

What a piece of writing that song is! From the opening lines,

“Far between sundown’s finish an’ midnight’s broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing…

to the closing verse,

“Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse.”

The first of 2 encores came from that album, too, “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” Dylan opening and closing it on harmonica. The Turtles had a huge hit with it in 1965, and the genius of Dylan the composer can be glimpsed by scanning the range of artists who have covered the song: Hugo Montenegro, Nancy Sinatra, Flatt & Scruggs, Sebastian Cabot, Glenn Campbell, The Mike Curb Congregation, Duane Eddy, and Johnny Cash, to name just a few!

The only song that didn’t seem to work this night was the set-closing “Summer Days,” (Love and Theft ’01) which sounded earnest but fatigued. The other 2 songs from Highway 61 Revisited were the title song, given a thundering reading an hour into the show and “Like A Rolling Stone,” the grand finale, the song so grand it has its own biography! (Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, by Griel Marcus)

For our story about Bob Dylan’s 1963 performance, as Joan Baez’s unannounced guest at her Pittsfield Boy’s Club concert, please go to this page.

June 23, 2005 setlist: All song lyrics available on: bobdylan.com.

1. Drifter’s Escape (John Wesley Harding ’67)
2. Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (Highway 61 Revisited ’65)
3. It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (Bringing It All Back Home ’65)
4. Moonlight (Love and Theft ’01)
5. Down Along The Cove (John Wesley Harding ’67)
6. Girl Of The North Country (acoustic) (The Freewheelin Bob Dylan ’63)
7. High Water (For Charley Patton) (Love and Theft ’01)
8. Every Grain Of Sand (ShotOfLove ’81)
9. Highway 61 Revisited (Highway 61 Revisited ’65)
10. Blind Willie McTell (The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 ’91(recorded ’83))
11. Chimes Of Freedom (Another Side of Bob Dylan ’64)
12. Summer Days (Love and Theft ’01)
(encore)
13. It Ain’t Me, Babe (Another Side of Bob Dylan ’64)
14. Like A Rolling Stone (Highway 61 Revisited ’65)