Jack White and Bob Dylan

2004-03-17, State Theatre, Detroit, MI

21 years ago this week, Bob Dylan played a three-night residency in Detroit. It was a tour of many such residencies (one of which included my first show!), but the Detroit stand, requested by subscriber Tim S, was special for a couple reasons. One is that Bob covered Bob—that is, Bob Dylan covered local hero Bob Seger, with a raucous “Get Out of Denver.”

The other is that another, much younger, local hero sat in: Jack White. The rumor was Meg was spotted in the wings too—we got so close to a proper Bob-White Stripes jam.

Even more notably, they didn’t play one of Dylan’s usual slot-in-a-special-guest songs like “I Shall Be Released” or “Rainy Day Women.” In fact, they didn’t play a Dylan song at all. They played a White Stripes song: “Ball & Biscuit.” Jack’s Third Man Records officially released it on a 45 a couple years ago:

Some years later, White told the Wall Street Journal how that Detroit sit-in came about:

How did you first strike up a friendship with Bob Dylan?

That was just by accident. I went and saw him play in Detroit and he said to me, “We’ve been playing one of your songs lately at sound checks.” I thought, Wow. I was afraid to ask which one. I didn’t even ask. It was just such an honor to hear that. Later on, I remember I went home and I called back. I said, “Can I talk to the bass player?” I called the theater. I was like, “Did Bob mean that he wanted me to play tonight? ‘Cause he said some things that I thought maybe – maybe I misconstrued. Was he meaning that he wanted me to play with him tonight? I don’t want to be rude and pretend that I didn’t hear or something like that.” So turned out yeah, we played together that night. He said yeah, come on, let’s play something, and we played “Ball and Biscuit,” one of my songs. It’s not lost on me that he played one of my songs, not the other way around.

Three years later, Jack would sit-in again, in his new home of Nashville. This time, across two nights, they would play Dylan songs, but still a long way from “Released” or “Rainy Day Women.” Jack convinced Dylan to dust off three songs, one he hadn’t played live in decades, two he hadn’t played live ever: “One More Cup of Coffee,” “Outlaw Blues,” and “Meet Me in the Morning.”