Comrades From The North

Comrades From The North

Isn't it just the way? You wait ages for a bus and then two come along one after the other. Having just undergone an election campaign in the UK where the key message was Change (isn’t it always) and the result a foregone conclusion, Dylan opened up his appearance at the first Outlaw Music Festival tour with a fistful of changes. First off, the band has changed. Gone is drummer Jerry Pentecost, replaced by veteran Jim Keltner and Dylan has parted company with multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron after two decades together. So that takes Dylan's band down to a four-piece outfit and, with Herron's absence, produces a potentially more limited musical tapestry. Secondly, the setlist has completely changed. Gone are the songs from Rough and Rowdy Ways, not one has survived. So does this signal the end of that tour or might there be one last hurrah after this Outlaw Music Festival diversion? Anyway, the first show boasted thirteen songs with no fewer than five 1950's covers. He opened up with Little Walter's My Babe, later he played Chuck Berry’s Little Queenie, DeWayne Blackwell's Mr. Blue, Hank Williams' Cold, Cold Heart and The Fool (Naomi Ford and Lee Hazelwood). Also present were four cuts from Tempest and a new arrangement of Things Have Changed that lived up to its title! By the second night, Dylan's now fourteen-song show boasted nine changes from the previous night. Gone were the covers My Babe, Cold, Cold Heart and The Fool to be replaced by stalwarts from the previous tour, Stella Blue and Six Days On The Road. In came the lovely Shooting Star, Soon After Midnight and Ballad Of A Thin Man amongst others. By now Dylan had settled on this setlist which he expanded to fifteen songs for the remainder of the tour with the addition of Simple Twist Of Fate. Sadly this meant that the less than thrilling Early Roman Kings was a fixture!

There was a further, welcome surprise with the announcement of a substantial tour of Europe in October and November including ten here in the UK. This would seem to be the last hurrah for the Rough And Rowdy Ways tour so one presumes that Dylan will present the same songs that he has been touring for the past few years. Could it be his swan-song for European touring?

Also announced was the September release of a mammoth box set to cover almost the whole of Dylan's triumphant 1974 return to touring with The Band. The 27-disc set will feature every concert that was professionally recorded so that means almost the whole tour. Accurately titled Bob DylanThe 1974 Live Recordings, the set is relatively reasonably priced in comparison to other similar recent offerings.

Since last issue there have been a number of number of musicians and others whose careers have intersected with Dylan’s that have passed away. Jotting Down Notes covers most of these but we concentrate here on one of the shapers of Dylan’s musical progress.

18th May witnessed the death of old Dylan compatriot Spider John Koerner. A fixture on the Twin Cities music scene, he was around when Dylan arrived in Minneapolis as a freshman at the University. Alongside Tony Glover and others he befriended the young but daily growin’ bard, teaching him songs, jamming and hanging out. Dylan had fond recollections of the man in Chronicles Vol. 1:

"The first guy I met in Minneapolis like me was sitting around in there (Ten O’clock Scholar). It was John Koerner and he also had an acoustic guitar with him. Koerner was tall and thin with a look of perpetual amusement on his face. We hit it off right away. When he spoke, he was soft-spoken, but when he sang he became a field holler shouter. ….Koerner was an exciting singer, and we began playing a lot together, I learned a lot of songs off Koerner by singing harmony with him and he had folk records of performers I'd never heard."

May you climb on every rung ..........

Mike & John

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