Dylan

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the
key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the "D"
train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane
Louise, she's all right, she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall
How can I explain?
Oh, it's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze
I can't find my knees"
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel

The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for
him
Sayin', "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and
say a prayer for him"
But like Louise always says
"Ya can't look at much, can ya man?"
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

Louise, she's all right, she's just near
She's delicate and smells like veneer

I didn't know where to put this and this fucker certainly doesn't deserve his own thread but Zantzinger, don't RIP:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/us/10zantzinger.html?ref=obituaries

A lowlife to the end:

In 1991, The Maryland Independent disclosed that Mr. Zantzinger had been collecting rent from black families living in shanties that he no longer owned; Charles County, Md., had foreclosed on them for unpaid taxes. The shanties lacked running water, toilets or outhouses. Not only had Mr. Zantzinger collected rent for properties he did not own, he also went to court to demand past-due rent, and won.

He pleaded guilty to 50 misdemeanor counts of deceptive trade practices, paid $62,000 in penalties and, under an 18-month sentence, spent only nights in jail.

is Visions of Johanna seriously about having a hard on and wanting to wank in a room full of sleeping/fornicating people? damn

who knows?

Heylin

we were one JBR xpost away from the greatest first response ever

This is amusing: https://www.spin.com/2018/10/bob-dylan-lyrics-drawings-review/

he he it is indeed

Great interview with Larry Campbell about what it was like to tour/play with Dylan. As mentioned in the interview, the Larry Campbell/Charlie Sexton band (first with Kemper on drums, then Receli) is often considered the best band Dylan had on the NET, and I would agree.

https://dylanlive.substack.com/p/larry-campbell-goes-deep-on-his-eight

Thanks for posting this. I've been listening to a lot of 'Love and Theft' tour bootlegs lately. Such a great band. The Warren Zevon covers were so good.

No idea where to put this:

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SONG by BOB DYLAN coming 11/8/22

60+ essays
150+ photos
350+ pages

the man is simply unstoppable pic.twitter.com/0sheWWgsQd

— Jokermen (@JokermenPodcast) March 8, 2022

I can't wait to read it. Loved "Chronicles Vol 1".

Wow!

The man in me will hide sometimes to keep from being seen
But that’s just because he doesn’t want to turn into some machine 😀

a most reasonable explanation

Splendid song & track---also the Persuasions cover---and an appealing alibi, but not for Self-Portrait, which is like a cut-rate greeting card designed by a bot.

(Thinking of that since New Morning was his return to cred after S-P)

Audiobook has an interesting selection of readers.

saw him live (for the umpteenth time) recently

setlist almost same every night, heavy on the rough & rowdy material (alas, no murder most foul)

key west was great

but really, who am I kidding, he is just the weirdest legacy live act I've ever seen, it's never really bad, but always just so weeeird... money rolling in, tour goes on forever, just the weirdness of it all, maybe this time emphasized by beeing in a big arena, and people were just applauding, happy... seem to recall people used to disappointed, which was practical, I could be enthusiastic and exegetical, now they just love it

anyway, roll on Bob

After visiting the Lou Reed exhibit at the NYPL, I checked out Light in the Attic's preview of the upcoming release of 1965 demos, and this one for "Men of Good Fortune" stuck out - it has NO relation to the song that later appeared on the 1973 album Berlin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLNnlYYhz2M

It's basically a rewrite of Dylan's "Song to Woody," which itself is a rewrite of Guthrie's song "1913 Massacre." (The same demo tape has Reed covering "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right.") It's a nice glimpse of a great artist finding his voice, absorbing one influence (in this case Dylan) and virtually mimicking that influence before finding a new path.

xp my MO with Bob shows is to just steadily lower my expectations for the weeks leading up to the show, so I'm usually pleasantly surprised with what actually transpires musically. That said, I haven't seen him in a decade or more, so no idea if that would be different.

I'm surprised how great his most recent shows have been. I almost gave up on going to anymore after the Americanarama tour. Probably a combination of three things: 1) phrasing improved after the per-rock standards project, 2) stopped changing the setlist, which meant the band was very familiar with the material and were sharper and more precise as a result (downside - if you went to multiple shows, you got the same songs over and over again), 3) on the current tour, he had the lyrics laid out for him (at least for the first leg), so instead of trying to remember, he could read them, and honest to God, he hasn't enunciated this well since the '70s. It's pretty amazing.

*pre-rock standards

yeah good points

and that men of good fortune take is hilarious!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/books/bob-dylan-book-excerpt.html

The title of Bob Dylan’s latest book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” is, in a sense, misleading. A collection of brief essays on 65 songs (and one poem), it is less a rigorous study of craft than a series of rhapsodic observations on what gives great songs their power to fascinate us.

Dylan, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, worked on these for more than a decade, though they flow more like extemporaneous sermons. The chapter on Johnnie Taylor’s “Cheaper to Keep Her,” for example, is mainly an indictment of the lawyers whose profiteering of heartbreak drives the divorce “industry.”

Elsewhere, Dylan writes in oracular riddles. His one-paragraph piece on “Long Tall Sally,” by Little Richard, likens Sally to the Nephilim giants of the Old Testament, and postulates Richard as “a giant of a different kind” who took a diminutive stage name “so as not to scare anybody.”

About half the essays in the book — his first collection of new writing since “Chronicles: Volume One,” in 2004 — are accompanied by what Dylan’s publisher calls “riffs”: even shorter, even looser pieces, in which Dylan attempts to embody the spirit — the philosophy? — of the song itself. On “Poor Little Fool,” by Ricky Nelson: “She sized you up, she was captivating and shrewd and lousy with lies. Oh yeah, you were an absolute blockhead beyond a doubt.”

Dylan on "My Generation" by The Who via that NY Times article

This is a song that does no favors for anyone, and casts doubt on everything.

In this song, people are trying to slap you around, slap you in the face, vilify you. They’re rude and they slam you down, take cheap shots. They don’t like you because you pull out all the stops and go for broke. You put your heart and soul into everything and shoot the works, because you got energy and strength and purpose. Because you’re so inspired they put the whammy on, they’re allergic to you, and they have hard feelings. Just your very presence repels them. They give you frosty looks and they’ve had enough of you, and there’s a million others just like you, multiplying every day.

You’re in an exclusive club, and you’re advertising yourself. You’re blabbing about your age group, of which you’re a high-ranking member. You can’t conceal your conceit, and you’re snobbish and snooty about it. You’re not trying to drop any big bombshell or cause a scandal, you’re just waving a flag, and you don’t want anyone to comprehend what you’re saying or embrace it, or even try to take it all in. You’re looking down your nose at society and you have no use for it. You’re hoping to croak before senility sets in. You don’t want to be ancient and decrepit, no thank you. I’ll kick the bucket before that happens. You’re looking at the world mortified by the hopelessness of it all.

In reality, you’re an eighty-year-old man, being wheeled around in a home for the elderly, and the nurses are getting on your nerves. You say why don’t you all just fade away. You’re in your second childhood, can’t get a word out without stumbling and dribbling. You haven’t any aspirations to live in a fool’s paradise, you’re not looking forward to that, and you’ve got your fingers crossed that you don’t. Knock on wood. You’ll give up the ghost first.

You’re talking about your generation, sermonizing, giving a discourse.

Straight talk, eyeball to eyeball.

enjoyed that will probably read the book

Dylan on "My Generation" by The Who via that NY Times article

Is that actually Dylan's excerpt? I was confused at first, but it looks like that is actually Ben Sisario channeling Dylan's style. The actual excerpt from the book comes later, in italics, and is read by Oscar Isaac.

They’re both by Dylan. The part in italics is a “riff” on the song; the article points out that many of the essays are accompanied by these additional “riffs.”

Also, Dylan OTM. I’d be interested to hear Townshend’s reaction/response.

Because Dylan is really known for his riffs

Has Bob really been irritated by this song for nearly 60 years?

Ah now it makes sense, thanks! xxp

That's the wild thing, isn't it? There's room for all sorts of opinions with this guy. Even the guy I posted, he doesn't rate Blood on the Tracks particularly high, and that one's usually a given in best-of lists. And he acknowledges as much.

I think in general it's hard to record a guy who rarely does the same thing twice and doesn't always give anyone a heads up when he's going to do it differently. Just get the mics in the right place and hope for the best, I guess. I always thought his (literal) work with Lanois was intriguing, because by all accounts their relationship was contentious recording "Oh, Mercy," and yet Dylan still worked with him again. It's a good example of no constants: "Time" has a great batch of songs *and* sounds pretty radical (or murky, or whatever), I'd have to go back to reviews at the time and read what resonated. I know well before the album came out I was helping Greg Kot with something, and he had an advance copy of the record on repeat (maybe he reviewed it for Rolling Stone?), and iirc it was really clicking with him well before there was any sort of public consensus. I remember being dubious, and he was basically, no, trust me, this one is well worth your time.

I remember reading about the sneaky approach Lanois took with TOOM. He had Dylan and band set up in one room, playing pretty straight forward, and Lanois set up in another room, sort of mixing in effects and whatnot in real time. (It's not unlike what Eno did on Zooropa and Wah Wah). So Dylan heard it one way, and Lanois heard it a slightly different way, and then messed with it more. Of course nothing is getting released without Dylan signing off on it.

Dylan's produced himself since 2001 tbc.

that's because he can. people know blake mills is why rough & ready ways sounds like it does, chris shaw & al schmitt & scott litt are the engineers of recent years...these are not guys who twiddle knobs at the whim of the producer, these are producers of hit records & winners of grammys who are taking a "lead engineer" credit because it's bob dylan. if dylan's doing the mic selection on the kickdrum I'll eat my shoe.

well, sure, we know the old racket of demoting engineers who are actually producing. On the other hand Lou Reed liked to give his engineers co-producing credit in the '80s.

The Cure's David Allen is another essential engineer-producer.

in the case of dylan I can imagine engineers saying "I don't want the producer credit." the person "producing," with an artist whose stature is so huge, is gonna either get to wear an "I produced the dylan album everybody loved" button on his lapel (lanois, who himself was assisted by engineers of uncommon talent & vision, specifically trina shoemaker) or is gonna catch "this album would be good if dylan got a different producer" heat. I once had a producer try to talk me into giving myself a producer credit because I was very controlling about shooting down instrumental parts I didn't like. some of this is why albini thought the term was some bullshit, and while there's more to it than that -- some artists need a producer to help them make sense of their vision, to make it cohere -- albini wasn't entirely wrong, either.

I think I mentioned this before, but Chris Shaw gave a pretty great podcast interview that included a lot on Dylan. (I think it was Gear Club?) It's a nice view into how those sessions go down and how Shaw supported him. He clearly didn't want to step on his toes, but 1) he seemed to have a good feel about when to ask certain questions, like if they could use Pro Tools instead of Dylan's preference for analog tape, and 2) he's really observant even when it came to things he couldn't control, and he could tell what the musicians were going through. (For example, he noticed only Sexton and Campbell were bold enough to test the limits of Dylan's edict that "you're not soloing when I'm singing," and they would play a game of cat-and-mouse where they'd plug in a fill here and there whenever they saw an opening. Later guitarists weren't so bold and that push-pull more or less evaporated once Sexton and Campbell were gone.)

On the other side of the story, one of my favorite things in the gigantic Cutting Edge box set was how Tom Wilson produced Dylan. The way they were recorded during a few exchanges - Dylan sounding distant and Tom clear and upfront through the intercom feed - perfectly captures this teacher-student vibe going on, with Dylan being the impatient and agitated one and Wilson being an unperturbed rock who did not hesitate to correct or lecture Dylan.

Anyway, all this brings to mind Lenny Kaye's interview for a book on Todd Rundgren, where he discussed one thing he learned from Rundgren during Patti Smith's Wave:

"I learned his philosophy which is, and something I’ve repeated many a time to any band I’ve produced with, it’s a great aphorism which is: ‘If you know what you want, I’ll get it for you. If you don’t know what you want, I’ll do it for you.’ And that’s pretty much the job of a producer, and producers like it when artists have ideas."

Shaw's account pretty much paints a picture of the former, and he's doing his best to get what Dylan wants in handling the technical side of things. otoh, I think Lanois was usually doing the latter even when Dylan knew what he wanted, and that's what led to the tense accounts about both of their albums.

Haven't listened to Oh Mercy (almost wrote Have Moicy) in a long time, but Dylan seems very candid in Chronicles about the differences between him and Lanois, with whom he sympathizes, though no apologies: He says, I think, that he went in the studio with some chords and some words, figuring it would work out, as it had before sometimes, and DL wanted him to do proper versions of things he'd left in the can long ago---says the Dead wanted this too---but something about hadn't really lived with those songs---also, DL had a lot of splendid NOLA musicians lined up, but Dylan just wanted a setting, nothing distracting from whatever songs he might come up with. Doesn't mention the swamp gas, as I recall, although says Bono urged him to go with DL, and I guess he might have heard the DL-treated U2 albums.

Speaking of Chronicles, Lucy Sante's 2005 NYRB take on that (now paywalled, but in her collection Kill All Your Darlings, builds on the tension in Dylan's work that xgau touched on, when he xpost wrote:

This Was Bros. pseudothrowaway improves on the hushed emotion, weary wisdom, and new-age "maturity" of the Daniel Lanois-produced Oh Mercy even if the lyrics are sloppier--the anomaly is what Lanois calls Oh Mercy's "focused" writing. Aiming frankly for the evocative, the fabulistic, the biblical, Dylan exploits narrative metaphor as an adaptive mechanism that allows him to inhabit a "mature" pessimism he knows isn't the meaning of life.

Sante talks about the struggle that Dylan also says something about in Chronicles: the pressure of being 60s Dylan, people hanging on your every word, also turning up on your front porch with revelations and questions---and he says he tried to blow all that off with Self-Portrait (which always did sound like an attempted escape from his life and those often sickening times). Also, somewhere, he says that he already wanted to do normal music, but found himself writing John Wesley Harding for the critics (think it was the "literary critics.")
Of course he re-established his cred with the equilibrium of New Morning, and, although some crits complained about its seediness, demonstrated how to keep balance even in a more overt grab bag, Planet Waves. successfully tackled Arena Rock and old expectations in Before The Flood, and then we get the tasteful 70s Singer-Songwriter set, Blood On The Tracks.

As Sante says, it's, eh, good of its kind, like a sad but still charming old friend, with occasional postcards and calls setting the stage for late-night diner coffee and sympathy, then over to your place with a little wine, grass, and acoustic guitar---but not wearing out his welcome, well maybe getting little boring overall, despite most of the songs being pretty good in the same way. but then he's out, see you next year.
(When he recorded "Abandoned Love," where he actually takes some responsibility for the marriage going bad, but then he abandoned it to next decade's Biograph, though also to the Everly Brothers.)

But then the sometimes stinky midlife crisis of Street Legal, and the Purpose-Driven Life of Slow Train Coming and Saved (also the good music, even the singing, and that rattlesnake tambourine leading into that performance of "Gotta Serve Somebody," and those purple paranoid rants, that another ilxor summed up as "The Gospel According To Cocaine," on that live box: the tension, man!)
(Gotta say also that S-P was a great publicity device, much moreso than just another masterpiece would have been---somehow, some of him knows these things, and can't resist such moves---like "Joey" is the antipodal "Hurricane," one of his antianthems as anthems---)

Blood On The Tracks is the only album that I recall Sante describing, and I expanded on that a little; all the other stuff in that post was stimulated by her philosophical investigation of Cap'n D.

Remember, you can get around most paywalls with archive.ph and pasting the URL.

https://archive.ph/uK7Dv

Part of an awesome story Mike Campbell has in his book about working with Dylan:

We worked on two more songs that day. “Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll” and “Look Yonder.” Bob didn’t ask what I thought of those. But at the end of the session, as I was slipping the Broadcaster into the case, he walked up to me.

“‘Boys of Summer.’ That’s you.”

I latched the case and stood.

“I just wrote the music.”

Bob gave that statement a quizzical look and shook his head.

“Drum machine.”

“Yeah.”

He leaned over and spoke low out of the corner of his mouth, like he was putting a crew together for a heist.

“You know how to use it?”

“Yeah, that’s my beat on it.”

Bob nodded, thinking.

“That sounds pretty good.”

“Thank you.”

“‘Boys of Summer.’ That’s a big hit.”

He looked around. He leaned forward. He spoke under his breath.

“You still got it?”

“The drum machine? Yeah.”

“Same one?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you bring it next time?”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, bring it with you next time. Bring that drum machine. I wouldn’t mind having a big hit too.”

A few days later, I put the Broadcaster and the LinnDrum in my trunk and drove back over to Cherokee for another session. We worked on a new song of Bob’s called “Trust Yourself.” Keltner played a low rumble that swayed in time with Bob at the mic. Bob had his back to me, and I watched him motion—to Benmont, to Jim, to the other musicians—guiding them through the song. Benmont watched Bob like he watched Tom, listening and responding to Bob’s nods and looks and gestures with organ splashes and slash chords and simmering, sustained notes that answered Bob’s phrasing. Bob glanced back at me, holding his Strat tight to his ribcage with his forearm as he fingerpicked. He smiled like Pops Staples. I leaned forward and tried to play it like “Stop Breaking Down,” and as Bob nodded to the beat, my right hand naturally moved with him like we were boxing or dancing.

We played the song a couple more times, then Bob waved it away with his hand. He looked to the control room window and told them to erase those takes. In the Heartbreakers, the tape started rolling ten minutes before we walked in, just in case, and we saved every second.

I said, oh no, don’t do that. Bob shook his head.

“I’m never going to listen to that. Why keep it?”

Bob asked me if I had brought the drum machine.

I set up the LinnDrum in the main room. As Bob showed me the tempo and changes of a new song he was working on, I programmed a simple beat. Bob strummed his guitar to it softly.

Bob called the rest of the band back into the studio. I got the beat pulled up as everybody took to their instruments. Jim Keltner appeared in the doorway and watched with a small smile, like he knew all along what would happen.

The LinnDrum beat started and Bob strummed along. We all fell in with him. After a minute or so, Bob started to fall a little behind the beat. Within a few more measures, he was way off. Nobody knew whether to stay on the LinnDrum or to follow Bob. We sounded like three pairs of sneakers in a dryer.

Bob raised his arm to bring the song to a close. I stopped the beat on the LinnDrum. Benmont and I exchanged a look. Bob nodded. He wanted to hear it back.

The engineer rewound the tape and pressed play. We all watched Bob. He listened, nodding his head softly. Then he heard his guitar go off the beat. He looked at me and furrowed his brow. He cocked his head and listened closer. When we got to the part where he had strayed badly, Bob had the engineer stop the tape.

He turned to me.

“That ain’t right.”

“No,” I agreed.

Bob waited for me to expound. There was a tense silence.

“Well, yeah. You kinda went off the beat a little there, Bob. You gotta stick a little closer to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You gotta follow the drum machine a little closer.”

“I have to follow it?”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t follow me?”

“Uh, no, Bob, it doesn’t.”

Bob shook his head.

“Then what good is it?”

Excellent Bob story

Baby Let Me Follow Your Linn

Amazing. That one goes in the 100 funny Dylan stories thread for sure.

Ha, I forgot we have that thread! Posting a favorite there right now.

I loved campbell's book so much

great show last night even though i think they dropped a song from the setlist. dylan clearly engaged, the band mostly playing high-stakes follow-the-leader. a couple songs sounded prearranged like that crazy rhumba on "masterpiece." have to say those insouciant vocal inflections, while charming, lend a sameness to the songs and can suck the drama out of the serious ones. that's a quibble. nice night (despite the tornado warnings), great band, crystal clear sound (could have been louder but the neighbors complain) and bob freaking dylan. i posit that hoodie is to trim the high frequencies from the cymbals he stands near.

Hmm, good theory, but Bob seems like he's been a hoodie guy (at least in his off time) for decades. Drummer was pretty quiet, too.

It looked like a raincoat to me. https://i.redd.it/md1zr6glmpeh1.jpeg

Full show here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YuTKdRBydY

I was going to try my luck with Stubhub but the forecast was looking so dire and I decided to pass. I'm glad everyone else got to enjoy it but for me, I don't think I would've been able to shake my concerns about the weather, would've been too distracting.

Thanks again, bird!
Seems like a long way for him from Mike Campbell to Blake Mills. From what I've read, he seems to have latched on to TP and the Heartbreakers because they were the big commercial-critical success most suited to his most popular approach, and "I wouldn’t mind having a big hit too.” That was the main thing on his mind, not finding new sounds of serendipity, just digging for gold, like with their tour together.
I've also read, maybe on this very thread, that later he could be very passive, like asking an engineer to do something, and the engineer says it wouldn't sound good, like taste more than tech, and D is like, "Oh, okay." But I think all of his this-century albums have sounded pretty good.

so Jad Tariq and Joel Paterson are his guitarists this weekend at Wolf Trap Park near DC

He must really like Lage if he's letting him come and go like this. Lage does seem like a good guy, and of course he's a joy to watch, so maybe Dylan digs that aspect, too.

Was hoping Lage would be with Dylan tonight. Oh well.

Saw Dylan last night and it was slightly different from the September 2025 show I saw of him on the Outlaw tour with Willie Nelson. On that tour he played a full sized grand piano and sat on the piano chair back near the drummer, this time he stood when playing a keyboard and mostly only sat between songs though he did play some songs sitting. As at the earlier show he kept it very dark onstage and last night allowed only a single in-house camera from far away for the video screens in the Wolf Trap open air shed and for those on the lawn. No video camera closeups of Bob in his hoodie jacket with a hood over his head . Luckily I had pretty good seats. Guitarist Joel Paterson added nice jazzy touches to the jazzy lounge band sound. Bob sang the Bo Diddley, Bobby Bland, and Jerry Lee Lewis covers he’s been doing. While a fan of those 3 I don’t remember the originals. Dylan has made them his own. The other guitarist didn’t make too much of an impression, just helped fill out the sound with emphasis still on Dylan’s slow sing-songy and occasionally more than that vocals . A bunch of songs from the 2020 Rough and Rowdy Ways and then various others. No encores, no talking to the audience.

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/bob-dylan/2026/wolf-trap-national-park-for-the-performing-arts-filene-center-vienna-va-b4969ee.html

Wait? Lage? Julian Lage?

Sorry, I wasn't keeping up. If I had been, I would have gone and been disappointed if he didn't show up

Yeah, per curm's earlier post:

so Jad Tariq and Joel Paterson are his guitarists this weekend at Wolf Trap Park near DC

looks like he does trad early r&b, jump blues type stuff

Jad Tariq Sings | Jad Tariq https://share.google/mHXHnxtFOoKat6Ps5

Yep

was playing in Charlie Musselwhite’s touring band in June I saw on his Facebook , and earlier doing gigs in his home base of Memphis ( as that Google share shows)

Lage played last night - he's never had this rotating guitar slot before! I didn't think it was feasible, but I guess when you're Dylan, it's easier to find great talent willing to be that flexible.

*Dylan's never had this rotating guitar slot

thanks for that bob story upthread, great one

did anyone catch the bon dylan show at eaux claires? i gotta say it sounds... pretty good to my ears

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRUYP20fAYM

all along the watchtower very on point

Oh I was hoping it was Bon Jovi doing Dylan songs.

re the rotating guitarists, as I understand it, it's been more or less the same setlist for a while now right? regardless of guitarists?

Largely the same , different order sometimes

I knew there must be a break in the tour because Joel Paterson is playing down the street for free tonight. And it's $5 burger night, too!!

what a strange year it must have been for Joel Paterson

He's posting a lot of where he's playing, and it's such a fun array of places any given week.

He was pretty active already, but maybe he's getting even more gigs now thanks to the Dylan tour?

He may just be getting more people intentionally seeing him, so he’s putting all of the show info out there. Love that, on his first week back, he played the The Gale Street Inn in Jefferson Park, totally old school ‘nice’ neighborhood restaurant.

He's such a fun player, did some Beatles and Willie Nelson along with the swing stuff. Burger was good, too, especially for $5.

Jesus, I miss getting good burgers for $5. Even Shake Shack here charges much more than that for their regular burger.

otoh, I'm sure my health has benefitted from cutting out the red meat I used to eat, so there's that.

(I wasn't that resistant to giving it up, I've been trying to go veggie on and off for many years.)

I have to say, complete 1976 Rolling Thunder recordings might be the least I could possibly care about a Dylan archive release. Where are the Supper Club shows?

really? 1976 is great. 39 discs is obviously a lot but ...

also, SBDs of the supper club shows are readily available, a lot of this 76 stuff has never been booted.

Fair - I just personally dislike the hectoring, strident delivery of the Rolling Thunder shows, and I’m mildly allergic to Baez, so it adds up to a no. I should make the effort to find Supper Clubs, I just wish those shows were more acknowledged than a few tracks on TTS.