November 1, 2019
Review by John Haas
South Bend, Indiana. Wow. A very impressive concert. Both my
wife--who has seen him maybe 12 times--and my daughter--who first
saw him in 1989 or so when she was six and has seen him about
five times since--thought it was the best concert of his they’d seen.
I’ve seen him perhaps 40 times since 1974 and wouldn’t go that far,
but it was amazing, gorgeous, exciting, beautiful, quite touching in
mysterious ways, and not to be missed, if at all possible.
(Both wife and daughter confessed to tearing up at moments. Me, I
only cry at “Charlotte’s Web” and the “Mass in B Minor.”)
The stage lights come up at about 8 PM and 15 seconds and there’s
Bob, looking shockingly small, holding an electric guitar, and they’re
already chugging into “Things Have Changed.” (It takes just a little
while for the sound guy to get the vocals just right.) The sound level
is not at the rock level (Bob hasn’t really been doing “rock” concerts
per se since sometime in the mid-2000s, which isn’t to say they don’t
“rock” on about a third or a quarter of the songs. They do and they
could much more--this band could do anything, one quickly realizes)
but it’s not too soft either. It gets your attention but isn’t
overwhelming. Could have been louder for my tastes, but maybe not
without distortion, and Bob doesn’t want anything to get lost,
apparently.
At every level--from the arrangements (which are pretty radically
re-worked at places) to the playing to the singing-voice employed--it’s
quite obvious that he’s put a lot of thought into everything, and he
really wants the music to be right where he’s imagining it. Nothing is
sloppy, half-baked, or left to chance. Nothing is routine either, at no
point does anything sound old or tired or phoned-in (and sometimes,
not even very familiar). Maximum creativity at every moment and at
every level is on display. Do I like every departure from the familiar
more than the original? Maybe not. Is it of the essence of whatever
at his deepest of recesses makes Bob Bob to keep searching,
improving, finding new songs inside the song? Apparently. Anyway
Bob wouldn’t be Bob if Bob wasn’t doing what Bob does now and
always, and I’ll go along with Bob being Bob every day of the week.
There’s a reason he has a Nobel Prize and I don’t, and it’s located
somewhere in the essence of Bobness--which, needless to say, Bob
has in spades.
So, I could maybe stop there. If you’ve grokked somewhere along
the line what makes Bob Bob, you’ll know what I mean when I say
this concert was just so very Bob. There were surprises (many),
confusions (a few), disappointments (to the casual fan, I suppose,
more than a few--though none to me), and sublime moments of
great beauty, sly and difficult to define humor, and great humanity
(while maybe still hiding a little behind that mask--the “song and
dance man mask,” of course). And that’s ok. In fact, it’s great. He’s
Bob. That’s what I want.
But a few more observations.
The first startling musical moment came for me with “Can’t Wait”--a
song I love--which has this great slow-it-way-down vocal highlight
which stops time and leaves you pole-axed. As with the entirety of
“Not Dark Yet”--also a song I really love--and which is fully rearranged
and loses nothing in the transformation and at least for as long as it
lasts becomes an entire world you’re inhabiting, and grateful to be
doing so.
Not sure about the piano on “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” but, again,
he’s Bob, I’m not, and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Harmonica breaks are great throughout. Chamberlain is fully integrated
and on top of it.
There were three maybe four guitar solos, and Britt seemed to be
taking all but one (the last, on “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a
Train to Cry,” the last song, where Charlie clearly takes the solo). My
view of Britt was obscured by Bob’s piano, and it’s hard sometimes to
see what Donnie is doing when he’s playing lap steel especially), but
whenever I heard something approaching a fairly classical face-melting
guitar solo, it didn’t seem to be Charlie, so I assumed it was Britt.
These solos were great, and it amazed me that with Charlie Sexton up
there--a 20 year veteran of the band too--he was largely devoted to
rhythm guitar and various colorful stylings along the way. Here’s one of
the top electric guitarists in the world right there on the stage and
ready to go, and he isn’t taking the siolos? Why? I think it’s because
Bob wants the music right where he wants it, and he can trust Charlie
to do that--that moment-to-moment precision is more important to the
overall impression made by the songs than any solo, and Charlie delivers.
The band does an amazing job--from this listener’s standpoint--of
creating a mysterious soundscape that’s not a lot like anything you’ll
hear anywhere else. It’s mostly a pre-rock 1940s and 1950s sound--with
some rock tossed in here and there. “Honest to Me,” eg, seemed a lot
like whatever the Golden Chords must have been reaching for at that
talent show back in 1958, Bob standing at the piano looking a lot like
Little Richard, the whole band blowing like a hurricane.
I would never have guessed that Bob could stop me in my tracks and
overwhelm me with “Girl of the North Country,” a very familiar song for
almost half a century now, but boy did he ever. I could have stayed
inside that one for a long, long time. (Should have known: Back in 1997
he knocked me over with the very familiar “Mr. Tambourine Man” of all
things at Deer Creek in Indiana.) Both Tony and Donnie bowed their
fiddles on this one, and it was like a slow, deep river carrying the song
along and couldn’t have been better. (Tony’s electric bass was sounding
fantastic all night, by the way.)
“Tempest” is not a greatly loved album on my part, and I was very
curious how those songs would look this time, and how they’d be
accepted. I like a lot of the lyrics, just not the delivery on the album.
“Pay in Blood” was really good live, really good; “Early Roman Kings” is,
however, a highlight. The crowd just loved it for whatever reason, and
Bob seemed quite intent on getting it across. I suspect something was
happening there and I’m not sure I knew what it all was, but I did enjoy
it very much and it left me wanting more.
It was nice to see “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” as
the final encore, for a rather personal reason. I first began listening to
Bob in earnest when I was nine or ten, in 1966, and the only album of
his I had regularly available to me was “Highway 61 Revisited.” No one
else in my circles was into or even aware of Bob, so I had to find my own
way into that record, and for whatever weird reason, that was the
standout song for me more than any of the others. Charlie’s guitar solo
on that song tonight was of special interest, therefore, and it did not
disappoint. Somewhere, Mike Bloomfield was smiling, I like to think. I
wouldn’t have complained if it was louder, however.
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