Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan Treat Their Canons With Pomp and Playfulness in a Delightful Holly

Publish date: 2024-08-08

Mount Rushmore is a movable thing. Two of the greats of musical granite are out on tour together, co-headlining the traveling Outlaw Music Festival and reminding everyone of that old maxim: “Any day above ground in which Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan are also above ground is a good day.” On July 31, their 26-city joint outing touched down at the Hollywood Bowl for a show that did justice to the stone-faced legacies of both greats, while also, thankfully, paying testimony to their shared, enduring playfulness as performers.

Dylan is performing in the undercard slot each night on this tour. (That’s not counting the first seven dates back in late June, when he was elevated to sole headliner due to Nelson’s illness at the time.) It makes sense that Dylan would be in the penultimate slot on a big, half-day bill like this, since he’s less of a determined crowd-pleaser than his older, country-er counterpart. His current setlist has more familiar songs in it than his last tour, but doesn’t shout “climactic” in the same way Willie’s does. Nelson leaves an audience with the warm fuzzies; Dylan is all about the cool fuzzies.

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Really, a Dylan performance on this tour does exactly what it should: leave the fair-weather attendees moderately pleased and pumped to go get another glass of wine before Willie comes on, while leaving the serious Dylanologists in the crowd thrilled. If you’re among this latter camp, it’s hard to overstate just how delightful it is to have the master doing such a completely revamped set this year. The four covers played nightly attest to how much he wants to keep these shows fun for himself, at 83, from a rollicking roadhouse versions of Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie” to a sweet reinvention of the Fleetwoods’ “Mr. Blue” that proves Dylan’s interest in actual crooning didn’t end with his series of Sinatra cover albums.

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It’s Dylan’s revamping of his own songs, anyway, that makes you wonder if we’ve missed his real genre, or calling, all along: jazz singer. Not every fresh arrangement is going to make you forget the original; I wished “Things Have Changed” was just a little more recognizable. But some of his revisionist takes on Classic Bob were stunning. You might find yourself struggling to remember that “Soon After Midnight” is a Dylan original, and not one of his Great American Songbook choices, or something out of the late ‘50s rock-ballad canon. Best of all was “Simple Twist of Fate,” stripped down to not much more than a solo voice-and-piano recital, benefitting from newly written verses and Mickey Raphael’s mournful harmonica solos. Dylan got so emotionally improvisational with his singing on this one that he seemed to make himself chuckle. The investment he puts into his vocals at this late date should make you smile, too.

A Nelson show follows a more set pattern, and that’s not a bad thing when some of the greatest country, folk and gospel songs of all time are guaranteed. Alhough remaining seated alongside his colleagues these days, the 91-year-old sounds mostly in the same voice as ever, with a beautiful vocal suppleness especially apparent in lesser-known songs like “Still Is Still Moving to Me.” Maybe the greatest gift of seeing him now, though, is hearing how Trigger-happy he still is. His hands look gnarled on the big-screen closeups, but the dexterity of his picking makes you wonder if the world has been sleeping on him as one of this era’s great guitar soloists, all other accolades aside.

As for Nelson’s own sense of play: Only he could get away with making the gospel standard “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” the next-to-last song… immediately succeeded by the ridiculous, egotistical finale, “It’s Hard to Be Humble.” What would Jesus sing? Willie is determined to go out with reverence and a tongue in that weathered cheek. We wouldn’t have him any other both ways.

This year’s Outlaw Music Festival, always led by Nelson, is a quadruple bill. On the first leg, support was provided by the duo of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss and the estimable newcomer Celisse. For the second leg, which began with a San Diego concert just prior to L.A.’s, John Mellencamp is in the third slot; at a mere 72, he is obviously there to bring in the youth vote. But seriously: His hits-filled set — with a band that includes veteran players like Lisa Germano — feels so climactic, in and of itself, that it probably buys Dylan some latitude in doing some things that are more obscure, sandwiched between the failsafe rousers on the bill.

Rounding out the lineup for this second leg is the excellent country newcomer Brittney Spencer, who wowed audiences recently at Stagecoach, and surely did here again, albeit unseen by some of us who struggled to get in under the wire of the 5 p.m. weekday start time.

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