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Bob Dylan ever on road, playing 100 shows a year. Never Ending Tour to stop at Canton Civic
By Malcolm X Abram
Beacon Journal music writer
POSTED: 01:16 p.m. EST, Nov 04, 2009
Bob Dylan is arguably the hardest-working icon in show business.
If the 68-year-old singer/songwriter isn't the hardest working, he is at least one of the most consistently working.
In 2009 alone, Dylan has released two albums, Together Through Life and Christmas in the Heart, his 33rd and 34th, respectively. His Never Ending Tour — so called because Dylan still plays upward of 100 shows a year — makes a stop at the Canton Memorial Civic Center tonight.
Per the rules of the industry, Dylan is touring to promote Together Through Life, a quickly recorded collection of songs co-written with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. The album, critically hailed, as most of Dylan's recent albums have been, features a mix of blues and light Tex-Mex swing with his longtime backing band and accordion help from David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers.
While Dylan's songwriting skills have never been doubted, his singing voice has always been an acquired taste. Now that it has ''mellowed'' from the lurching signature nasal whine into a scratchy signature nasal croak, listening to it requires an even more forgiving ear, something that doesn't seem to bother the legions of Dylanophiles.
But apply that voice to several Christmas classics with pleasantly bouncy musical backing on Christmas in the Heart and you have one of the odder records of Dylan's long career.
Listening to Dylan croak his way through Winter Wonderland with chirpy '40s-style female backing vocals or sing a verse of O Come All Ye Faithful in its original Latin is a unique holiday music listening experience.
If ''Dylan does Christmas'' confuses or confounds some folks, that is probably just fine with the man himself, as defying expectations and pat definitions of him as an artist, person or icon long has been part of his raison d'etre.
Though he is one of the most deconstructed and analyzed musicians in pop music history — including I'm Not There, a biographical film in which he was played by six actors, including Cate Blanchett — Dylan still says that many people, especially ''critics,'' don't get it or him.
''Popular music has no, whatever you call them, critics, that understand popular music in all of its dynamic fundamentalism,'' he said last spring in Rolling Stone magazine.
''The consensus on me is that I'm a songwriter. And that I was influenced by Woody Guthrie and sang protest songs, then rock and roll songs, then religious songs, for a period of time. But it's a stereotype. A media creation. Which is impossible to avoid if you're any type of public figure at all.''
The media creation known as Bob Dylan was born Robert Allan Zimmerman in Duluth, Minn. Dylan, like many young people in the 1950s, listened to early rock 'n' roll but looked for something deeper and discovered folk music.
In 1961, Dylan moved to New York after dropping out of the University of Minnesota and made a pilgrimage to meet his idol, Woody Guthrie, who was ill from Huntington's disease.
The experience had a huge impact on Dylan and he began playing around clubs in Greenwich Village.
A year later, Robert Zimmerman legally became Bob Dylan (taking his name from poet Dylan Thomas) and recorded his self-titled debut album. Over the next few years, Dylan's songwriting garnered him praise from his folk-loving peers and fans for early songs such as Blowin' in the Wind, A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall and Masters of War.
In 1963, Dylan confounded some and became a champion to others when, before an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, network censors asked him not to play Talkin' John Birch Society Blues. He refused and walked away from what was at the time the most important career step a performer could take.
In 1965, while at the height of his being hailed as the spiritual son of (his hero) Guthrie and the folk troubadour of a generation, Dylan, determined to do things his way on his own time, plugged in an electric guitar at Newport Folk Festival and weathered the storm from the folk community, many of whom labeled him a traitor. That controversy was followed by two of his most important albums, Highway 61 Revisted and Blonde on Blonde, featuring more classics, including Like a Rolling Stone, Ballad of a Thin Man, Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 and Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine).
Later in 1966, Dylan survived a serious and still mysterious motorcycle crash that kept him off the road and mostly out of the public eye for eight years.
In the 1970s, Dylan really began confusing folks with albums such as the not-too-well-received Self-Portrait, as well as classics such as Blood on the Tracks, and, after becoming a born-again Christian, the spiritual themed Slow Train Coming and 1980's Saved.
Dylan released several critically acclaimed albums throughout the '80s, including Infidels and Oh Mercy. In 1988, he hit the road and seemingly has yet to come off of it, save for recording sessions.
As for the so-called Never Ending Tour, Dylan dislikes the term and seems to think of himself as a guy with a strong work ethic who happens to be a rock icon.
''Critics should know that there's no such thing as forever,'' he said to Rolling Stone. ''So that speaks more about them who would use that phrase as if there's some important meaning in it. You never heard about Oral Roberts and Billy Graham being on some Never Ending Preacher Tour. . . . But critics apply a different standard to me for some reason. But we're living in an age of breaking everything down into simplistic terms, aren't we?''
Whether it's a Never Ending Tour or just another evening at work, Dylan's current quintet has been receiving good notices and, as longtime fans well know, they can never be sure which Dylan will take the stage. Will it be the grumpy old man turning his own songs inside out while shuffling distractedly through a set, or will it be the focused Dylan, who actually seems to be enjoying himself and his band?
Dylan has been playing keyboard and harmonica on the current tour and leaving the guitar duties to Charlie Sexton, who previously played with Dylan in the late '90s and has also spent quality time in the studio and on the road with other icons, such as Keith Richards.
Likewise the set list has varied wildly, including classics such as All Along the Watchtower and Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine), alongside newer songs such as Jolene from Together Through Life.
So far, he hasn't included any of the Christmas songs in sets.
Dylan may be a musical and social icon to millions, but to hear him tell it, he sounds more like a guy who simply enjoys going to work each night in a different town in front of different crowds, though he is aware of his and his band's abilities.
''As far as I know, no one else out there plays like this. Today, yesterday and probably tomorrow,'' he said in the Rolling Stone interview. ''I don't think you'll hear what I do ever again. It took a while to find this thing, but then again, I believe that things are handed to you when you're ready to make use of them.''
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.
Details
• What: An Evening With Bob Dylan
• When: 7:30 p.m. tonight
• Where: Canton Memorial Civic Center, 1101 Market Ave. N.
• Tickets: $39.50 and $52.50
• Information: 800-745-3000, http://www.ticketmaster.com -->
Bob Dylan is arguably the hardest-working icon in show business.
If the 68-year-old singer/songwriter isn't the hardest working, he is at least one of the most consistently working.
In 2009 alone, Dylan has released two albums, Together Through Life and Christmas in the Heart, his 33rd and 34th, respectively. His Never Ending Tour — so called because Dylan still plays upward of 100 shows a year — makes a stop at the Canton Memorial Civic Center tonight.
Per the rules of the industry, Dylan is touring to promote Together Through Life, a quickly recorded collection of songs co-written with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. The album, critically hailed, as most of Dylan's recent albums have been, features a mix of blues and light Tex-Mex swing with his longtime backing band and accordion help from David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers.
While Dylan's songwriting skills have never been doubted, his singing voice has always been an acquired taste. Now that it has ''mellowed'' from the lurching signature nasal whine into a scratchy signature nasal croak, listening to it requires an even more forgiving ear, something that doesn't seem to bother the legions of Dylanophiles.
But apply that voice to several Christmas classics with pleasantly bouncy musical backing on Christmas in the Heart and you have one of the odder records of Dylan's long career.
Listening to Dylan croak his way through Winter Wonderland with chirpy '40s-style female backing vocals or sing a verse of O Come All Ye Faithful in its original Latin is a unique holiday music listening experience.
If ''Dylan does Christmas'' confuses or confounds some folks, that is probably just fine with the man himself, as defying expectations and pat definitions of him as an artist, person or icon long has been part of his raison d'etre.
Though he is one of the most deconstructed and analyzed musicians in pop music history — including I'm Not There, a biographical film in which he was played by six actors, including Cate Blanchett — Dylan still says that many people, especially ''critics,'' don't get it or him.
''Popular music has no, whatever you call them, critics, that understand popular music in all of its dynamic fundamentalism,'' he said last spring in Rolling Stone magazine.
''The consensus on me is that I'm a songwriter. And that I was influenced by Woody Guthrie and sang protest songs, then rock and roll songs, then religious songs, for a period of time. But it's a stereotype. A media creation. Which is impossible to avoid if you're any type of public figure at all.''
The media creation known as Bob Dylan was born Robert Allan Zimmerman in Duluth, Minn. Dylan, like many young people in the 1950s, listened to early rock 'n' roll but looked for something deeper and discovered folk music.
In 1961, Dylan moved to New York after dropping out of the University of Minnesota and made a pilgrimage to meet his idol, Woody Guthrie, who was ill from Huntington's disease.
The experience had a huge impact on Dylan and he began playing around clubs in Greenwich Village.
A year later, Robert Zimmerman legally became Bob Dylan (taking his name from poet Dylan Thomas) and recorded his self-titled debut album. Over the next few years, Dylan's songwriting garnered him praise from his folk-loving peers and fans for early songs such as Blowin' in the Wind, A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall and Masters of War.
In 1963, Dylan confounded some and became a champion to others when, before an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, network censors asked him not to play Talkin' John Birch Society Blues. He refused and walked away from what was at the time the most important career step a performer could take.
In 1965, while at the height of his being hailed as the spiritual son of (his hero) Guthrie and the folk troubadour of a generation, Dylan, determined to do things his way on his own time, plugged in an electric guitar at Newport Folk Festival and weathered the storm from the folk community, many of whom labeled him a traitor. That controversy was followed by two of his most important albums, Highway 61 Revisted and Blonde on Blonde, featuring more classics, including Like a Rolling Stone, Ballad of a Thin Man, Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 and Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine).
Later in 1966, Dylan survived a serious and still mysterious motorcycle crash that kept him off the road and mostly out of the public eye for eight years.
In the 1970s, Dylan really began confusing folks with albums such as the not-too-well-received Self-Portrait, as well as classics such as Blood on the Tracks, and, after becoming a born-again Christian, the spiritual themed Slow Train Coming and 1980's Saved.
Dylan released several critically acclaimed albums throughout the '80s, including Infidels and Oh Mercy. In 1988, he hit the road and seemingly has yet to come off of it, save for recording sessions.
As for the so-called Never Ending Tour, Dylan dislikes the term and seems to think of himself as a guy with a strong work ethic who happens to be a rock icon.
''Critics should know that there's no such thing as forever,'' he said to Rolling Stone. ''So that speaks more about them who would use that phrase as if there's some important meaning in it. You never heard about Oral Roberts and Billy Graham being on some Never Ending Preacher Tour. . . . But critics apply a different standard to me for some reason. But we're living in an age of breaking everything down into simplistic terms, aren't we?''
Whether it's a Never Ending Tour or just another evening at work, Dylan's current quintet has been receiving good notices and, as longtime fans well know, they can never be sure which Dylan will take the stage. Will it be the grumpy old man turning his own songs inside out while shuffling distractedly through a set, or will it be the focused Dylan, who actually seems to be enjoying himself and his band?
Dylan has been playing keyboard and harmonica on the current tour and leaving the guitar duties to Charlie Sexton, who previously played with Dylan in the late '90s and has also spent quality time in the studio and on the road with other icons, such as Keith Richards.
Likewise the set list has varied wildly, including classics such as All Along the Watchtower and Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine), alongside newer songs such as Jolene from Together Through Life.
So far, he hasn't included any of the Christmas songs in sets.
Dylan may be a musical and social icon to millions, but to hear him tell it, he sounds more like a guy who simply enjoys going to work each night in a different town in front of different crowds, though he is aware of his and his band's abilities.
''As far as I know, no one else out there plays like this. Today, yesterday and probably tomorrow,'' he said in the Rolling Stone interview. ''I don't think you'll hear what I do ever again. It took a while to find this thing, but then again, I believe that things are handed to you when you're ready to make use of them.''
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758.
Details
• What: An Evening With Bob Dylan
• When: 7:30 p.m. tonight
• Where: Canton Memorial Civic Center, 1101 Market Ave. N.
• Tickets: $39.50 and $52.50
• Information: 800-745-3000, http://www.ticketmaster.com -->
Comments
Click here to post your comments
Posted 02:15 PM, 11/04/2009
I have enjoyed listening to Bob Dylan for years. "WHEN THE NGHT COME FALLING" is one of my favorite songs by him.
