Bob Dylan ft. Wilco, My Morning Jacket, and More Surprises

2013-08-03, Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, Irvine, CA

Programming note ICYMI: Our second daughter, Maya Rose Padgett, was born a few days ago! (I wanted to name her “Big Jim” but my wife wouldn’t let me for some reason.) So I’m taking some paternity leave this month. You can probably guess what Street-Legal song will be playing in my head while I’m away.

What does that mean for the newsletter? Not much honestly. I’ve pre-written a full month’s worth of posts so they’ll still be hitting your inbox at the usual cadence—some free, some paid—even without me there to press the button. Some good ones scheduled too, including new interviews. I might be slower to respond to emails and comments, but otherwise you shouldn’t notice anything amiss.

Okay, on to today’s newsletter!

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In 2013, Dylan went on the road for the awkwardly-named Americanarama tour alongside Wilco, My Morning Jacket, and more (at different dates: Bob Weir, Richard Thompson, Beck, and Ryan Bingham).

A few months after the tour ended, My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James complained to Rolling Stone about it. “The whole concept of the tour was supposed to be super collaborative,” he said. “We were expecting to be sitting around the campfire with Dylan at two a.m. and go, ‘Let’s cover all of Desire tomorrow!’ We had all these pipe dreams.” 

That didn’t happen. “Bob really wasn’t around,” James continued. “We never talked to him once. He does not hang, which is fine and understandable…or it’s kind of understandable. I don’t know.”

James came in for some grief from Dylan fans for his naiveté. No, obviously a 72-year-old Bob is not going to sit around a campfire with the opening acts jamming on Desire. It seemed ridiculous to expect he might. (Lest this reminder trigger another round of annoyance, later on in the interview, James did add, “The whole tour was a huge honor and I’ll never forget it.”) 

The real surprise: At times, the tour actually did get pretty close to living up to Jim James’ vision. Especially during today’s subscriber-requested show in Irvine, California, which featured a whole host of surprise guests.

The catch is, most of those surprise guests did not come during Dylan’s set (most but not all—we’ll get there). I was able to track down recordings of all four sets that night in Irvine (thanks soomlos) and, throughout the four-and-a-half hours of music, surprises abound. So, today, I thought I’d highlight all those surprise guests, set by set, with audio/video clips of each.

Reminder: A perk of being an Annual subscriber is you can assign me a show to tackle, just like this one from Corky W!

Gruff-voiced roots-rock singer Ryan Bingham began with short opening set. A fairly thankless task for such a long show, as Richard Thompson, who occupied the same slot a couple weeks earlier, told me:

“The only downside for us was we were basically opening the show, usually something like 5:30 PM, when there were about 500 people in the arena. People slowly trickled in during our set. So our sets were a bit throwaway in that sense.”

Bingham likely felt the same thing. He only did six songs, no guests. He’s the only one of the four acts on the bill I don’t know well, but he sounds great on this tape. Nevertheless, his set doesn’t fit our surprise-guest theme. So, moving on…

The surprises began during set two, My Morning Jacket. For those that don’t know, they’re an excellent Louisville band that came up in the 2000s. They often operate in in a rootsy vein, but can rock out hard when necessary (see “One Big Holiday” on Conan, one of the most headbanging late-night-television performances ever).

First up on the surprise-guest lineup, Taylor Goldsmith of the Americana band Dawes—who had opened their own Dylan tour that spring—came out for My Morning Jacket’s beautiful ballad "Wonderful (The Way I Feel).” Goldsmith takes the second verse and harmonizes on the choruses. A precursor to more exciting surprises to come, perhaps, but a pretty one!

Next song, the stakes get ratcheted up significantly. Suddenly Jackson Browne takes the stage. He and My Morning Jacket bust into his 1974 tune “Late for the Sky,” which, while never a single, became well-known after its use in Taxi Driver. Browne sounds great, and double so when James joins in on harmonies. Much as I love My Morning Jacket doing their own material, they work great as a sympathetic backing band (I saw them do the same thing for Roger Waters two years later). “It’s one of the thrills of our life to be performing with Jackson,” James says when the song ends. There’s video of this one:

Browne sticks around for the next song while Ryan Bingham’s fiddle player Richard Bowden joins too. They play—of all things—a Bob Dylan cover!

As I noted when Patti Smith was doing “Wicked Messenger” during her opening slots in 1995, it takes a lot of chutzpah to play a Dylan cover while opening for the man himself. Surely they have to run it past Tony or something right? Luckily, Dylan wasn’t doing “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You” in his own sets anymore, so no toes stepped on here. (Also, at another show this same tour, Wilco performed their deep cut “Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard.” I’m guessing there you just hope Bob’s not watching sidestage going “Wait, what did they just sing?”)

Note that the band is playing the Rolling Thunder Revue arrangement here. James even sings the altered Rolling Thunder lyrics (“Throw my ticket in the wind / Throw my mattress out there too”). Sounds like Browne’s mostly on backing vocals.

They had done the same thing a few years prior for a special concert celebrating I’m Not There in 2007, even bringing out Rolling Thunder player David Mansfield to join, who told me about it:

They obviously had learned the Rolling Thunder arrangement note for note. Jim James was totally channeling the intense, angry Bob from the '76 tour. It was really fun for one night to recreate that moment from the Rolling Thunder tour. It was a freakish time warp and also reminded me how much I love playing it.