I hear Adam Granduciel singing before I see him. He’s backed by a ton of accompaniment, at least a dozen people, but the frontman of The War on Drugs’ lead vocals are coming through high and clear as I walk into Cain’s Ballroom a little after 5:30 pm on Friday to scope out the sound check for that night’s tribute to Blood on the Tracks.
He’s rehearsing the first verse of “My Back Pages,” and as I round the gigantic sound booth I can see he’s up there with 16 other people. Fresh singers rotate in on each verse: Kevin Morby, Amy Ray, the actor Michael Shannon, Robyn Hitchcock, Emma Swift. Whether they’re in front of a microphone or not, everybody on stage is really leaning into the chorus: “I was so much oooollllllder then, I’m younger than that now.”
They run through the song three or four times, casually but professionally. In between takes Shannon reads out the day’s headlines: “It’s 61 degrees in Cupertino.” The A-list musicians banter among themselves, friendly and warm. Elvis Costello appears and they rehearse “I Shall Be Released,” the other encore number they’ll play later for a sold-out crowd of Bob Dylan Center members and their friends. Among them was the actor Ethan Hawke, who two days later would call it “the best concert I think I’ve ever been to in my life.”
It seems improbable, but at 83 years old, Bob Dylan is once again having a moment. A Complete Unknown just grossed a cool $64 million at the box office and garnered eight Academy Award nominations, including one for its lead, the acclaimed actor and human marketing stunt Timothée Chalamet, whose performances of “Outlaw Blues,” “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” and “Three Angels” on Saturday Night Live inspired emergency podcasts this weekend across the Dylan internet. (If somebody working for Tim reads this, please, I will move heaven and earth to get you a limited edition The Pickup-branded hat.)
An industry with more self-awareness would’ve probably stopped making music biopics after Walk Hard, but the genre has stuck around as a reliable means for introducing old musicians to young audiences. Dylan and Chalamet will now forever be intertwined for millions of Zoomers, which is different from how I was introduced to him: as the mysterious, bird-looking cartoon guy on the Blood on the Tracks CD that my dad played in the car growing up. A source at the Bob Dylan Center told me that traffic to their and the nearby Woody Guthrie Center’s websites are both way up since the hype machine for the film started.
Downstream of all this sits good old Tulsa. Even before it opened nearly three years ago, the Bob Dylan Center has been attracting both talent and new tourism dollars into town, leveraging the attention into one-of-a-kind programming. It’s probably not easy to be the chosen keeper of Dylan’s mammoth legacy, and the Center has gone to great lengths to connect Dylan to Tulsa. For me, Friday night’s show—billed as “Shelter from the Storm,” a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Blood on the Tracks—represented the peak of its effort so far to educate the public about Dylan and his restless creativity.
That all said, the show just fucking rocked. Futile horns were blown, buckets of moonbeams were held in hand. Friends arrived and disappeared. At turns it kept to the album’s roadmap and detoured into originality. Master of ceremonies Luke Wilson periodically reminded the audience of Blood on the Tracks’ mythology. Four of the original players on the Minnesota sessions for the record performed, and one of them, Kevin Odegard, even played one of the guitars from those sessions, which is typically kept on display at the Center. The house band Chatham County Line (Greg Readling, John Teer, Dave Wilson) with Brad Cook, Phil Cook, Doug Keith and Darren Jessee mostly stuck to a rich, slow country-rock tempo as the default for the evening. It was a musical choice that let us appreciate Dylan’s songwriting in full clarity, as well as the interpretation of the singers performing it.
The evening consisted of two sets: Blood on the Tracks performed front to back, followed by a break and a hodgepodge of Dylan songs before a two-song encore. Adam Granduciel’s vivid “Tangled Up in Blue” would’ve kicked the night off a lot harder if it hadn’t been plagued by sound issues. Fortunately those issues only intermittently returned, and Diana Krall’s “Simple Twist of Fate” proceeded as planned, the only solo performance of the night. I thought Amy Ray’s rich, sultry take on “You’re A Big Girl Now” was the best of the album’s A-side. She rendered Dylan’s image of “a corkscrew” to the heart as both intimate and domestic, the pain at the center of one of rock’s great breakup records.
There’s other great thematic stuff going on in Blood on the Tracks too, but Dylan explicitly invokes the heart on five different songs. It sinks like a ship, it can’t change, it keeps the memory of a lover. Even the album’s title calls attention to it. Maybe that’s why Blood on the Tracks still hits 50 years later. It’s raw and always has been.
Lucinda Williams took on “Idiot Wind,” a moment that made me wonder who chose which artist to sing what, mainly because her casting here was a perfect match for its lyrical brutalism. (As an aside, RIP David Lynch—I’m sure you would’ve loved the line “from the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol” if you ever heard it.) There is so much anger, regret and plain self-loathing in it; it must’ve felt amazing back in 1975 for Dylan to get it out of him.
“You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” and “Meet Me In The Morning” were both terrific, but we soon got the first performance of the evening that actually forced me to reconsider how I think about Dylan, and that was Michael Shannon’s “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” an over-extended poker metaphor that I traditionally skip. (The people who insist Blood on the Tracks is perfect are crazy.) Shannon accepted the corniest assignment of the night with gusto, matching its freak with a manic enthusiasm. With Jason Narducy squeezing fun bonus guitar parts into everything he could, “Jack of Hearts” came through fast and bouncy like a Pogues song. My Bob Dylan Center source said that Shannon had showed up with his lines memorized, urging the house band in rehearsal to play it even faster.
Kevin Morby slowed things down with a gentle “If You See Her, Say Hello,” which gave way to the most adventurous cover of the evening, Joy Harjo’s “Shelter from the Storm.” Maybe I’m being a Tulsa homer, but her gooey, extra-slow rendition (with help from Laura Cantrell and Lonnie Holley) was incredible, moving the focus of the song from Dylan’s harried narrator to the calm, divine feminine power invoked at the end of each verse. I felt suspended in its time.
Sharon Van Etten’s “Buckets of Rain” concluded the record with a touch of grace. The melody on that one is particularly supple and she nailed it. I couldn’t help but laugh at how beautifully she sang “everything about you is bringing me misery.”
As the band took a break, the crowd quickly took to talking. I wondered again who sent out the Doodle Poll for the artists to claim which songs they’d perform. Free now to range over the entirety of Dylan’s catalog, the choices in the second set seemed to turn toward personal favorites, producing a fun mix of staples, deep cuts and even a rare track or two.
There were few performances of songs released after Blood on the Tracks, but Martin Courtney’s crisp “Mississippi” was a pleasant surprise. Likewise, it’s always cool to hear somebody with a set of pipes sing Dylan, and Emma Swift’s version of “Visions of Johanna” made no apologies whatsoever for her immense talent. Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy came back out for “Maggie’s Farm,” which Shannon again rendered with the courage of a man anointed by god.
Joy Harjo did an exquisite “Blowin’ in the Wind” and stuck around to play harmonica for Lonnie Holley’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” “Bob Dylan’s Dream” was dedicated to the late Red Dirt legend Jimmy LaFave, Lucinda Williams inhabited “Not Dark Yet” and Amy Ray scorched “Like a Rolling Stone” just before everybody came back out to play “My Back Pages” and “I Shall Be Released.”
It was near midnight by the time the show ended, and I walked away down Main Street wondering what Bob thought of all this. He’s famously shrouded, of course, electing a mode of feigned indifference when it comes to the public. He still has yet to visit his own museum. Maybe that will change when he returns in March.
But I did notice one compelling piece of evidence of Bob’s approval of the festivities. Behind the bar at Cain’s, the staff served his whiskey free of charge to guests all night long.
SHELTER FROM THE STORM: A CELEBRATION OF 50 YEARS OF BLOOD ON THE TRACKS SETLIST
“The Times They Are A-Changin’” (house band)
Introduction by Luke Wilson
“Tangled Up in Blue” (Adam Granduciel with house band and Bill Berg, Gregg Inhofer, Kevin Odegard and Billy Peterson)
“Simple Twist of Fate” (Diana Krall solo)
“You’re A Big Girl Now” (Amy Ray with house band)
“Idiot Wind” (Lucinda Williams with Doug Pettibone and house band)
“You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” (Elvis Costello and house band)
“Meet Me In The Morning (Robyn Hitchcock, Emma Swift and house band)
“Lily, Rosemary & The Jack of Hearts” (Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and house band)
“If You See Her Say Hello” (Kevin Morby & Martin Courtney and house band)
“Shelter from the Storm” (Laura Cantrell, Joy Harjo, Lonnie Holley and house band)
“Buckets of Rain” (Sharon Van Etten and house band)
Set break
“Girl from the North Country” (Chatham County Line)
“Mississippi” (Martin Courtney and house band)
“Visions of Johanna” (Emma Swift and house band)
“Mr. Tambourine Man” (Laura Cantrell and house band)
“She Belongs To Me” (Robyn Hitchcock and house band)
“Maggie’s Farm” (Michael Shannon, Jason Narducy and house band)
“Bob Dylan’s Dream” (Bill Berg, Gregg Inhofer, Kevin Odegard, Billy Peterson and Paul Metsa) dedicated to Jimmy LaFave
“Blowin’ In The Wind” (Joy Harjo and house band)
“Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” (Lonnie Holley and house band)
“I Pity The Poor Immigrant” (Kevin Morby and house band)
“It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” (Diana Krall)
“Lay Lady Lay” (Sharon Van Etten and house band)
“Not Dark Yet” (Lucinda Williams and house band)
“Abandoned Love” (Adam Granduciel and house band)
“Dirge” (Elvis Costello and house band)
“Like A Rolling Stone” (Amy Ray and house band)
Encore break
“My Back Pages” (everybody)
“I Shall Be Released” (everybody)
In the interest of full disclosure, Vince LoVoi is the chair of This Land Press and also sponsored Shelter from the Storm.
