Highway 61 Re-Imagined: Steve Dawson's Bob Dylan-themed extravaganza

Besides the obvious (covers of Bob Dylan songs led by various local and visiting heavy-hitters), I did not know fully what to expect of the Bob Dylan-themed event (not a tribute - "re-imagining") that took place over the last two nights in West Vancouver. At no point in the description was there any suggestion that songs other than the nine on Highway 61 Revisited would be performed; with a start time of 7:30 (which might have been doors, as there was no distinction between doors and concert start time that I saw) and a listed end time of 9:30, it seemed like we might get maybe an hour and a half of music, probably with ample changeover between acts, since several artists would perform -- the list on the website mentioned "Barney Bentall, Jim Byrnes, Joachim Cooder, Maya de Vitry, Ndidi Onukwulu, Dawn Pemberton, Suzie Ungerleider, Alvin Youngblood Hart, John Boutté" and others, which also included a backing band, featuring, according to the program, Dawson himself on a variety of guitars, Jeremy Holmes on bass, Darrel Havers on organ/ keys, Chris Gestrin on piano/ keys, Tristan Paxton on mandolin (though I somehow never did spot one of those during the night), Liam McDonald on percussion, Brian Harding on trombone, Dominic Conway on sax, Jerry Cook on sax, and Maya de Vitry not just singing Dylan songs of her own but supporting others on both violin and acoustic guitar. Dawson himself would sing a couple of songs, too (in terms of Highway 61 Revisited, it ended up he picked the album's title track, explaining that, for reasons unclear, he'd been reluctant, and tried to "pawn it off" on others, none of whom wanted it; he ended up doing an arrangement that reminded me more of Dave Alvin's roadhouse blues approach than Bob Dylan's zippy original. Dawson would also do "Don't Think Twice It's Alright" but more on that second set below). He also assigned specific songs to specific people, re-organized the order in which the songs were preformed, and acted as MC through the night. 

I mean, it sounded potentially phenomonal, and Highway 61 is certainly among my favourite  Bob Dylan albums (I can't weigh it against The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan -- note, Steve, that that's the source of "Don't Think Twice It's Alright" -- or Bringing It All Back Home, but those are the other contenders). Also, I'd seen a few of the artists gathered perform at the last folk fest, many as part of an expansive Dawson-led take on the Grateful Dead's American Beauty (I reviewed the whole fest here). But $65 for maybe an hour and a half of music, covering, it seemed, one album's worth of songs? ...And what was this Kay Meek Centre, anyway? (First time I've gone; turns out it was lovely, somewhat akin to the Centre for Performing Arts, though a bit smaller, but I had no sense what to imagine). 

Without being obnoxious, I would suggest that the people who write the event descriptions might take heed of the ways in which they almost lost me. In fact, the event, while indeed starting close to 7:30, lasted til after 11, an hour and a half past the posted end time, and not only did we get a song each from all ten bandleaders in the first set (plus a cheat from Ungerleider, who did "one of the best hate songs ever," "Positively 4th Street," since ten bandleaders cannot do one song each off a nine-song album), we also got ample added treats, beyond what was described: an instrumental opening (a vaguely Hawaiian take on "Like a Rolling Stone," which would be returned to at the end of the first set for a stellar performance from Jim Byrnes, putting his hand to his ear to get the audience to join in with a roar of "How does it feel"); a full second set, longer and slightly more relaxed than the first, with each of the ten leaders choosing their own Dylan favourite from across his career (lucky for them no one had picked "Neighborhood Bully," given current events), and a closing let's-get-everyone-up-on-stage singalong rave up of "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35," informally often called "Everybody Must Get Stoned," with different vocalists passing the mic and plenty of enthusiastic audience participation (tho' the only haze in the air was dry ice, I must report. I just opt for edibles, these days, myself, given the tongue cancer experience). And while I was very impressed by the size, sound, seating, and overall presentation of the room, I do have a couple of caveats for going to shows at the Kay Meek, especially that, if you plan to catch transit, figure out the bus situation before you go! West Van is not on the same transit system; some of their signage is quite uninformative; and after twenty minutes wandering around to bus stops that proclaimed they were going to Queens (?), I ended up just breaking down and taking a taxi back to the Skytrain.

But the evening was fantastic, far, far beyond what was described in terms of quantity, and wayyy up there in terms of quality, too. I'm not going to do a song-by-song review, but highlights included:

1. Discovering that Barney Bentall is actually fucking amazing. (Note, there will be no consistent attempt below to continue this bolded numbered list format, though there were many other highlights; Bentall just seems to deserve it). Like Blue Rodeo or those slick 80s Robbie Robertson solo albums that I ignored, Barney Bentall had never, ever seemed cool or intriguing to me. I don't know what songs of his I might know but any I did hear in my time as an assholish youth were on the radio or Much Music some decades ago, during which time I was likely plunged in hardcore punk (82-87), noise rock and grunge (87-92) or, even loftier and more aggro, free jazz (92-96). Whether I was spending my evenings blasting the Dead Kennedys, TAD, or Albert Ayler when his best known albums came out, I cannot exactly say, but at the time, Bentall's music seemed like milk-and-unsalted-crackers by comparison, which impression I never bothered to redress, so it lingered; I recall walking by a free concert he gave a few years ago in Maple Ridge, while I was living there, and barely even slowing down to investigate, once I realized who was playing. That's the sort of asshole music snob I can be (sorry, Mr. Bentall!). 

Front row L-to-R: Suzie, Jim Byrnes, John Boutté, Maya De Vitri (just behind her), Barney Bentall, Alvin in denim, and Steve Dawson in action! All photos by me, such as they are. 

But Barney Bentall, last night, did something that EVEN BOB DYLAN NO LONGER DOES, as far as I know: he offered a complete version of "Desolation Row," with not a verse (that I noticed) omitted. The one-and-only-time I caught Dylan, in Saitama, Japan some 23 years ago, he trimmed that song to a mere five minutes or so. I forget which verses he cut, but I remember being quite choked up about it at the time, railing against the disappearance of Casanova or Quasimodo or Dr. Filth or whoever-it-was-that-got-the-axe. There's not a lyric in that 11-minute masterpiece that I would see dispensed with, since even the most off-the-cuff-seeming couplet in it can reach out and clobber you with its richness (last night's clobbering came via "Praise be to Nero's Neptune/ The Titanic sails at dawn/ And everybody's shouting/ "Which Side Are You On?", the apparently routine omission of which from Dylan's sets gets talked about here). Just getting the lyrics right on a three minute Dylan cover can be daunting (and there were plenty of glitches last night, some of which were kind of entertaining to contemplate in and of themselves; I'm pretty sure the towering bluesman and apparent snake aficionado Alvin Youngblood Hart, whether by accident or design, replaced "blanket" with "bucket" in the first couple of verses of "From a Buick 6," as in, "If I go down dying, she's bound to put a bucket on my bed," which transposition brought to mind the times I have brought my wife, when sick in bed, a trash pail to barf in. Which married folks among us are unfamiliar with this intimacy?). And if three minutes are a challenge, getting the lyrics right on an eleven minute Dylan cover written with maximal poetic complexity would be sheer masochism, and I felt sorry, at the start of the night, for whatever poor sucker drew it. Even Steve Dawson, who served as the main MC for the evening, commented in introducing it that there were a LOT of lyrics to be presented that evening. Surely no one song of Dylan's could be more intimidating than "Desolation Row" (I think "Brownsville Girl" may be longer, but it's at least a straightforward narrative).  

Bentall, though, didn't seem to break a sweat, demonstrating that true virtuosity can present as effortlessness. And he sang it more beautifully than Dylan ever could; in fact, what was most interesting about his voice during the song was that, gorgeously clear and emotive, it sounded nothing much like Dylan's all, whereas his later reading of "Jokerman" (the evening's second-most demanding lyrical smorgasbord, with Dawn Pemberton on backup vocals) had him offer the most Dylanesque vocal of the night, every bit as close-your-eyes-and-imagine-Bob as Daniel Romano's, though it was the Infidels arrangement he offered, not the Plugz. 

Again: impressive indeed. 

And understand, I'm one of those people whose lips move during concerts, whose engagement with the lyrics is almost always the paramount thing of being there, so having someone alter a word can completely distract me (did Maya de Vitry change "warned" to "wanted" in "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry?" Who does she think she is, Peter, Paul and Mary?).

(I jest, and must note that any distress she caused anal-ol'-me there was completely forgiven during her gorgeous reading of "If Not for You," which she dedicated to her departed grandmother -- who didn't even like Bob Dylan, she quipped -- "but I think she'd like this one." I had mentioned De Vitry in that folk fest review, as well; she's on the list of people I will see again at some point, if I can. She's apparently attending a memorial today for her grandmother, in fact, who passed on October 2nd, so we should count ourselves lucky we got to see her at all). 

All that said, Bentall did get the lyrics wrong twice, but it was actually quite funny to see him realizing while singing that he'd transposed "think" and "look" in "you would not think to look at him," making an entertaining garble of it: "You would not look to think at him," like you're a telepath with his eyes closed trying to beam a thought into someone else's head, or something (he also got a "to" and a "from" wrong in the line about sending mail "from" desolation row, but realized this on the fly and fixed himself, weirdly adding the correct preposition, so we got a "to from;" maybe if there's a live recording, they can just edit the "to" out?). 

Of course, if I were to try to recite all of "Desolation Row," I couldn't do it. I mention all this from the safety and comfort of an audience position. I may know where Dr. Filth keeps his world, and what his sexless patients are trying to do with it, but could I deliver a flawless reading of the whole song, or even any three verses in sequence? Hell no. But, put it this way, Bentall got 654 out of 657 words right, which, turned into a grade, would be 99.54 percent. That's beyond an A+, and like I say, it is more than Bob even attempts! 

Anyhow, Bentall was the biggest surprise of the evening, the man who did the most with the most, as it were. I spent some time yesterday staring at one of his CDs and thinking, "Jeez, should I buy this, now?" I didn't, but I'm closer than I've ever been! (I did buy and spin a Steve Dawson album, though). 

It's hard to pick the other standouts. Ndidi Onukwulu got my vote for the best dressed performer of the night, in her colourful, African-cum-tropical pants, and gave a potent introduction to her second-set pick about colonization, without naming any names or specifying any world situations (because, y'know, "Neighborhood Bully" gives a pretty clear index of what side of the Titanic Bob is on, on one relevant front, not that that was necessarily the colonial relationship she had on her mind; I have a love/ hate relationship with that song, which on the one hand is surely the most punchy, fun, English-language defense of Israel ever penned, while dishonestly eliding American arm sales to the same. Obsolete weapons my ass, Bob! But I digress). As the music swelled up, I was trying to guess what this announced anti-colonial song would be, and thought those first chords were announcing an under-sung masterpiece, "Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)," off an under-sung album, Street Legal, which in anticipation and excitement, I was halfway through interpreting as an anticolonial item in my head, before Onukwulu actually started to sing. It kind of does work as such, but I had never contemplated it from this angle before, so even though I was mistaken, it was a productive mistake. Instead of "Senor," she went a bit more for the jugular, with "Masters of War." A great song, which I don't think I've seen anyone cover locally since I saw DOA do it at a post-9/11 anti-war rally involving Noam Chomsky, Jack Layton, Svend Robinson and many others. To be honest, I think I kind of preferred her "Ballad of a Thin Man," earlier in the evening, which she delivered with a somewhat mischievous smile and glittering eyes, but then, I generally prefer Dylan's more abstracted lyrics to his direct and confrontational ones; her delivery was great on both, though. 

Also, Dawn Pemberton gave a rocking reading of "Tombstone Blues" that reminded me of seeing Mavis Staples (whom Dylan once allegedly proposed to) at the Centre several jazzfests ago. She then later blew the doors off with a soulful "Tangled Up in Blue," which was the most daring interpretation of the night, and worked a charm. By way of introducing it, she explained that there was speculation that the lyrics were about a "brief, torrid, complicated affair" ("the best kind," she added) that Dylan supposedly had with Joni Mitchell, which story I had never heard before. I hope she includes it in her regular set, because she owned that song; I've got to catch one of her full-on concerts, because she impresses the hell out of me whenever I see her at events like this. Someday, Ms. Pemberton, I promise. If I were continuing the conceit of the bolded, numbered list, Dawn Pemberton would get #2 for "Tangled Up in Blue." 

#3 would be Suzie Ungerleider's second song of the night, a haunting, acoustic variant on the Billy the Kid theme (the one that begins with the image of guns across the river preparing to pound you. Bob spins a few variants of the song on that album and I don't expect anyone to be able to tell which one I mean by the title; I mean, I couldn't peg it, myself). It was probably the deepest dive of the night, or at least the one I least expected, which Ungerleider intro'd by a story about how it fit the landscapes of a Northern European tour she undertook with Dawson, which, she said, were deeply relevant because there are "lots of cowboys over there." (Ha!). Another person to add to the list of people I need to someday see. 

I think it was Ungerleider who joked about waiting for Dawson to tune his "sewing machine," a lap guitar that he played standing. He joked back that it tuning was an issue when you had nineteen guitars to choose from, but I only counted six up there, of the ones he was playing, anyhow. Maybe there were thirteen more in the wings?

But if Suzie takes bronze, it must be said that, honestly, the list becomes an impossible thing, because everything was fantastic, really. There were no "bucket moments" in Hart's second song, "Just Like a Woman" (though there was an unexplicable postshot at the "once great" David Lee Roth in his intro, which Dawson quibbled with, saying "he's still great." Not sure where that was coming from, and what was that about the snakes in his backyard, anyhow? I contemplated asking him to show me, as he had apparently been showing Dawson his snake pics earlier in the evening... By the by, David Lee Roth had unexpectedly manifested between sets with the DJ's playing "Big Bad Bill is Sweet William Now," which was fun to hear, which may be how he got into Hart's head). 

One of the livelist performers of the night, New Orleans' John Boutté -- who I gather from IMDB sings the Treme theme; Erika and I have been watching that, so that was a fun overlap -- told a story in his second set about how event organizers at a past show had wanted him to sing Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Going to Come," to which he replied, "How old is that song? Nothing's changed! No, I'm going to do this one," which turned out to be a New Orleansy reading of "Blowing in the Wind." Boutté actually seemed to do a complete costume change for that second song (his first had been "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"), and demonstrated that a tambourine can be played skillfully, even though it usually isn't. He was a slick, stylish, expressive and enthusiastic performer who I did not know before last night. Would see him again, too, tho'...! 

Meantime, the funniest story of the evening was offered by Ry Cooder's son, Joachim, who told a tale about the time a disheveled and somewhat lost Bob Dylan came to his dad's house to get help figuring out a Sleepy John Estes guitar part, after which one of Cooder's skeptical neighbours came over to ask, "Was that homeless guy bothering you?" (There were plenty of other occasions for the audience to laugh last night, but no story I heard was funnier or better-received). He also had -- as I remarked to him afterwards, when I asked what the heck he'd been playing -- "the instrument of the evening," which turned out to be a large electric kalimba, pictured above. I think of kalimbas as hand-held thumb pianos; Cooder's sat across his lap and was the size of a small keyboard (note that he and Dawson were the only people who used chairs. Even Jim Byrnes, who uses canes to walk, stood for his performances). Played virtuosically, Cooder's kalimba created an otherworldly, undersea ambience for the songs he did ("Queen Jane Approximately" and... shit, what else did he do? I have no recollection at all, and I didn't jot it down. Sorry, Joachim! I blame the edibles!) 

Anyhow, before I went to the event -- with the intervention and encouragement of one Judith Beeman; thanks, Jude! -- I was skeptical that I'd get my money's worth. In the end, I bought a Steve Dawson album, got him to sign it, and forked out for cabfare to Burrard Station, because the bus situation was proving dire and it was cold and wet and I had vinyl in my backpack. And yet I still felt, given how great and fulsome the night was, I was getting a hell of a steal. Foolish to have been concerned! The $65 pricetag was, in fact, a steal. Who knew?

By the by, Steve, I'm the guy with the speech impediment who promised you future press. I'm good for that, if it seems useful. One word of advice, though: the Stetson, red shirt, and black hat made you look like you were in the RCMP. I'm not sure that was intended? 

But thanks to you and -- what was the co-arrangers' name, Fiona Black? -- for a memorable and beautiful evening. (Weird how few people under fifty seemed to be in the audience. I am not used to feeling like I am on the younger end of an audience. Do millennials not dig Dylan? They need to fix that, if so). 

I wonder what next year's album will be... 

(Ndidi's cool pants are visible at centre stage!).