The Wallflowers
Tulsa Theater
September 22, 2024
I don’t think “ordinary” is pejorative. Without at least some artists finding contentment as part of a greater tradition, what would happen to jazz or ballet or opera? The extraordinariness of these art forms stems from constant contact with their deep and familiar roots. What about rock ‘n’ roll as we know it?
Jakob Dylan, the creative force behind thirty-something-year-old band The Wallflowers, would be hard pressed to find a tour stop more beholden to his roots as an artist and as a human than the Tulsa Theater, which sits a couple of blocks from both the museum bearing his famous father’s name and its partner museum, named for his father’s songwriting idol.
With that pressure in the air, I was happy to find Dylan onstage expressing a joyful, content ease inside the timelessness where he lurks: He is simply a good songwriter playing good rock music with a good rock band. That is his aim, and that is what he is doing. There were no pyrotechnics, no costumes, no light show — underscored by Dylan stopping at one point to politely ask the house engineer to dim the lights shining on the crowd’s faces because he was “trying to be a rock band up here, but it feels like we’re in a living room.” There wasn’t even a tastemaking stab at choosing his own opener; the band’s tour is supported by local bands added by show promoters.
After walking onstage to Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” — the least congruent musical moment of the night — The Wallflowers performed a career-spanning setlist. The second level was curtained off and the floor of the Tulsa Theater mostly full of middle-aged and older concertgoers, some of whom proved devout Wallflowers fans and some of whom were there to revisit another era of their lives.
A few songs in, at the opening slide guitar notes of 1996 single “6th Avenue Heartache,” you could feel the titter of the crowd escalate. The first single from the band’s 1996 album Bringing Down the Horse, the track was performed faithfully by Dylan’s touring band, none of whom were in the band at its outset and one of whom joined only this year. Despite that, they all shared a remarkable chemistry onstage, with Dylan giving a heartfelt introduction to each of them and hyping the crowd to cheer louder after solos.