Bahamas Live To Tape Episode #1 #2 #3

Afie Jurvanen, the Sad Hunk himself, took his musical moniker Bahamas from an Eric Wreck song "Whole Wild World" typically attributed to the singer/guitar slinger himself. Once Afie got a hold of the song, which appears as the final track of his breakout album 2009's Pink Strat, it was scarcely recognizable from the original now rendered with, what we know today as, "the Bahamas sound". The song contains the lyrics:

When I was a young boy

My mama said to me

There's only one girl in the world for you

And she probably lives in Tahiti

I'd go the whole wide world

I'd go the whole wide world just to find her

Or maybe she's in the Bahamas

Where the Caribbean Sea is blue

Weeping in a tropical moonlit night

Because nobody's told her 'bout you

Jurvanen, who taught himself to play guitar while growing up in the rural hamlet of Barrie, Ontario, once filled in on a few gigs for Jason Collett then shortly thereafter his group Paso Mino became his backing band. The drummer from that band, Rob Drake, along with his friends from The 6ixty8ights, namely Mike O'Brien and Carlin Nicholson, went on to form Zeus who also backed Collett. 

When Paso Mino went their separate ways Jurvanen had the greatest success touring the world with Leslie Feist on what amounted to her three year international tour de force promoting 2001's Let It Die. In early 2006, Feist moved to Paris, where she recorded her followup The Reminder at LaFrette Studios, a residential recording studio in a 19th century mansion with 6 bedrooms and equipped with a Neve A 646 console, joined by Gonzales, Mocky, Jamie Lidell, and Renaud Letang, as well as the members of her touring band Bryden Baird, Jesse Baird, Julian Brown of Apostle of Hustle, and Afie Jurvanen.

By 2009 it was Afie who was taking centre stage internationally with 2009's Pink Strat wherein he introduced the world to "the Bahamas sound", it's a matter of small debate exactly what that sound is. When it came to finding players to play on the album he drew from his immediate circle of musical hombres, members of the Ill Eagle family. O'Brien and Nicholson were producing records as Zeus, for the Golden Dogs and others out of their studio of the same name at the time.

Dave Azzolini, an unsung Canadian legend who fronted various line-ups of the Golden Dogs (which over the years included Neil Quin from Zeus), was pulled in on Pink Strat as a sort of not-so-elder statesmen. Feist herself appeared as well. He also pulled in a solid bass player Darcy Yates, who would later tour with him. Greg Millson, from the Great Lakes Swimmers, was on drums.

Jurvanen recorded his first two albums at his then-girlfriend's house north of Toronto with the help of Robbie Lackritz, his former roommate. Afie refers to him as his engineer, manager and "best buddy." Nicholson is also  credited with additional recording on the first record. Lackritz at the time was Feist's road manager; now he's both hers and Afie's manager. Pink Strat amounted to a good musical hang which Lackritz ably captured like lightning in a bottle.

Despite, or indeed because of, it's homey four track basement recording quality, Jurvanen managed to craft such a complete statement that he realized he was clearly onto something. Displaying an innate sense for melody, Jurvanen's incredibly tasteful guitar playing, in particular his tone, drew the attention of Jack Johnson who released the record and subsequent releases on his Brushfire Records label. 

2012's Barchords stayed in the vein of the first release defined, largely, by its breeziness.  Jurvanen has said the choice of the name Bahamas, a country he by point of fact has never visited, was because people seem to like it when you “pick something weird” to go by, like Bon Iver did. By 2014 he'd tired of the title and tried a rebrand with the album Bahamas Is Afie (it didn't stick). 

Despite his acclaim Jurvanen was due for reinvention; he risked going stale otherwise. Jurvanen had been particularly moved by the surprise release of D'Angelo's long anticipated album Black Messiah which had been gestating for over a decade. Credited to D'Angelo and the Vanguard: drummer Questlove, bassist Pino Palladino, guitarist Isaiah Sharkey, and horn player Roy Hargrove. On one of the album's standout tracks, "Sugah Daddy" with Q-Tip and Foster, the rhythm section is Palladino and legendary R&B session drummer James Gadson.

Many know Pino Palladino from his work touring with The Who, recording with Nine Inch Nails, and, fittingly, as a member the John Mayer Trio. Gadson, who played with the original line-up of the seminal Charles Wright's Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, has worked with everyone from Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, the Jackson 5, Bill Withers, Teddy Pendergrass even Justin Timberlake.

When asked by the Globe & Mail how did you get these guys, D'Angelo's rhythm section, to work for you? Jurvanen's characteristic dead pan response was matter of factly: "You email them." (He left out you pay them, what their worth, but that's fine too.) 

For Bahamas fourth LP, 2018's Earthtones, Jurvanen sought them out due to that album and wrote much of Earthtones with these particular collaborators in mind. The sudden decision by D'Angelo to release Black Messiah, albeit pressured by Questlove, was because of what was happening with the Black Lives Matter movement, "young black men and women are getting killed for nothing" he said. Jurvanen ruminated on those meditations and in turn reflected on his own white privilege lyrically.

Musically the collaboration had the effect of bolstering Jurvanen's laid-back blue eyed soul vibes with a deeper roiling funk groove. Jurvanen went down to L.A. and recorded 9 or 10 songs with Palladino and Gadson finding a deep pocket. You can hear this pocket playing on a song like "No Wrong", which, fasicinatingly was recorded at a later session in the Czech Republic with Bahamas touring drummer Jason Tait formerly of The Weakerthans. In the end what you're hearing is Tait playing what has been described as Gadson's "signature less-is-more approach to a masterly slow groove". This ended up being true for many of the songs on the album as Afie pleasantly observed himself:

"You can't really tell who played what, you know the songs just kind of meld together really nicely"

Drummer Don Kerr who used to play drums with Canada's legendary Rheostatics, and now tours with founder Dave Bidini's group Bidiniband, also plays on the record. To tour the album Jurvanen brought Darcy Yates  back into the fold to deliver the pulsating underbelly that Palladino had crafted on record; a task he was ably up to. Yates is a popular Canadian workhorse on the Fender Bass whose primarily associated with being a member of Fred Eaglesmith's backing band The Flathead Noodlers  (also known as The Smokin' Losers and The Flying Squirrels). Yates has also recorded with Doug Paisley, Kathleen Edwards, Great Lake Swimmers and many others.

The other musician who is always on stage with Jurvanen, central to his sound is another innately musical creature, Felicity Williams, whose instrument is the Shure SM58 microhopone. Her backing vocals are by now central to the Bahamas sound. The daughter of two parents who played in bar bands in the 70's and 80's, Williams sang in her  school’s chamber and jazz choirs as well as the Baptist church every Sunday. She later studied jazz and graduated from York’s music program in 2006. She then studied eastern and western music including at the Banff Centre in 2007. Williams, who is associated with groups including Bernice and The Road To Avonlea Choir, also plays duet shows with Toronto based free jazz guitarist Justin Haynes.

You would think most of the tasty guitar lines on Earthtones come from Jurvanen himself, many however are by another phenomenal guitar talent on the record Christine Bougie on the Fender guitar who also toured the record. Bougie is known primarily for her guitar and lap steel prowess and touring in support of Amy Milan (of Stars and Broken Social Scene) but has flown under the radar for years appearing on well over 30 recordings including her own instrumental album 2012's Hearts and Galaxies. That sonically adventurous release is reminiscent of the cosmic Americana of multi-instrumentalist William Tyler.  The appeal to Jurvanen of a player like Bougie is self-evident ,she straddles a similar line to his; between roots and jazz; between easy listening and sonic experimentation. 

Bougie and Williams are unparalleled musicians, so it's important not to gender their preternatural contributions. But it may be, if less self-consciously, that as a bandleader it is important for Jurvanen to have women in the group in the imprimatur of Sly and the Family Stone and Prince after him. In this light it's not unfair to compare Bougie and Williams to The Revolution's Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, who have been prescribed as the artists "musical shadows".

With 2020's Sad Hunk, Afie Jurvanen, now sporting a fine walrus moustache, a young family at home in Nova Scotia, seems to have embraced the role of being a dad who makes dad jokes and plays dad rock. From that genre he's been compared at times to Randy Newman, largely for his penchant for humour, but his songs scarcely resemble Newman's complex character based songs. Boz Scaggs is a better fit. The Globe & Mail put it well “Taylor Swift digs Afie Jurvanen, but the cool kids do not.”

Perhaps struggling a bit to tap into the wellspring of creativity which fueled his previous releases Jurvanen brought one of his longest standing musical brohemes, Mike O'Brien, back into the fold. Although his band, Zeus, had by now achieved a fair measure of critical acclaim they had nevertheless failed to launch and their 2014 album, the appropriately titled Classic Zeus,  looked like it might have been their last. It may have been that their straight ahead version of rock 'n' roll just wasn't niche enough for the music press. Still,there's a pretty reasonable argument to be made that Zeus, a multiple songwriter group with unerring musical chops and peerless harmonies, are about as close to a modern day version of The Band as you'll find in contemporary Canada (although they also closely resemble The Eagles in the Joe Walsh era).

Jurvanen was joined again by Don Kerr, on drums, and Christine Bougie, on guitar, on Sad Hunk. A new player he brought into the fold was from Canada's west coast, Sam Weber who put out a solo record Everything Comes True on Sonic Unyon in 2019. Weber's material definitely has a Jackson Browne quality, which likely ebbed with Jurvanen's onsetting middle age malaise.

Jurvanen bemoans that he finds himself on so many "Chill" playlists, as much as he does purport to in fact be a "chill guy". Still, for lack of cool cachet, those playlists have driven Jurvanen's music to 2.2 million listeners on Spotify monthly. To put that figure in context, Bahamas' stream easily outnumbers those of underground-press darlings the War on Drugs (2 million average listeners), Father John Misty (1.8 million), St. Vincent (1.4 million), Kurt Vile (1.2 million) and the Broken Social Scene themselves (800,000).

Over the years, in addition to working with Canadian legends like Jason Collett and Leslie Feist (both at one time or another members of the Broken Social Scene), Jurvanen has, by now,  worked with The Lumineers, Howie Beck, City and Colour and another singular musical figure from rural Ontario Tamara Lindeman (who records as The Weather Station).

Now, as a way to slog through quarantine, Jurvanen decided to expand his idea of playing with his dream backing bands, by recording his songs remotely with musicians around the globe. Live To Tape shows Afie peforming largely solo backed by various rhythm sections and singers he reveres or has played alongside over the years. Each pre-recorded installment of Live To Tape will be recorded remotely from his home base of Halifax, Nova Scotia with musicians in locales including Nashville, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Perth and Toronto. 

The premiere episode featured Jason Isbell's backing band The 400 Unit, a group which once included his wife Amanda Shires, like Isbell himself whose father was a legendary Muscle Shoals player, everyone is primarily from that part of Alabama.

Live to Tape Episode 1 features:

Afie Jurvanen - guitar, vocals

Sadler Vaden - guitar

Jimbo Hart - bass

Derry DeBorja - keyboards

Chad Gamble - drums

Dan Knobler - guitar, music director

Afie Jurvanen and his 400 Unit banged out his originals "I Got You Babe", "Little Record Girl", "Trick To Being Happy" (from 2020's Sad Hunk). "Up With The Jones" (which was aired on CBS This Morning Saturday as well) had a great flair with Sadler Vaden taking Jurvanen's trademark electric guitar lines. "All The Time" was an even bigger kick with Vaden now playing the lead from Bahamas breezy anthem on pedal steel.

While the collaboration was well made interestingly it was episode 2 with the little known The Teskey Brothers from Melbourne, Australia that seemed to be an even better fit.

Live to Tape Episode 2 features:

Afie Jurvanen - guitar, vocals

Josh Teskey - vocals, rhythm guitar

Sam Teskey - vocals,  guitar

Brendon Love - vocals, bass guitar

Liam Gough - vocals, drums

The Teskey Brothers, who Jurvanen must have connected with on a tour down under, have released two albums, Half Mile Harvest (2017) and Run Home Slow (2019). Afie's set with The Teskey Brothers kicked off with "Can't Complain" containing the line "I can't complain make my livin' with my brain/ I make something new for all of you from some old refrain".  "Own Alone" from Earthtones had a real peppy Vulfpeck vibe suited to the Aussies. The group have great harmony vocals in particular rhythm guitarist Josh Teskey in particular. "No Depression", "Trick To Being Happy" and "Way With Words" all delivered thanks largely to the back end, Josh's lead vocals and his brother Sam's refined lead guitar. Their set closed out with a Teskey original "I Get Up".

Live To Tape episode 3 was hotly anticipated with Bahamas pulling in the big guns in the form of Bob Glaub, a top drawer session bass player, and Russell Kunkel a drummer and producer from the same echelon. Bahamas Music only describes the pair as “two prolific musicians that have been featured on 100's of legendary recordings” which is an accurate enough assessment.

Jurvanen is probably most closely familiar with their shared tenure backing Jackson Browne whose work bears a strong resemblance to the Bahamas sound which vacillates slightly more towards the sunny side of the street. Together Glaub and Kunkel have also worked with Warren Zevon, Linda Ronstadt and various members of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Kunkel was the studio and touring drummer for Crosby & Nash in the 1970’s, and has played on all four of their studio albums.

Glaub started his career in 1973 playing for Indigenous guitar legend Jesse Ed Davis' record Keep me Comin', which led him to work on records of artists such as Arlo Guthrie, Booker T. Jones, Dave Mason, Rod Stewart, Leo Sayer, Carly Simon, Robby Krieger and Steve Miller Band. In 1978 Glaub joined Jackson Browne's band leaving in 1989.  In 1980 Glaub joined Linda Ronstadt’s band with whom he played until 2000.

In the following years he played on records by Gladys Knight, Katy Moffatt, Dusty Springfield, Jim Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Nicolette Larson, Cher, Kiki Dee, Jennifer Warnes, Rita Coolidge, Donna Summer, Eric Carmen, Gordon Lightfoot, Karla Bonoff, Eddie Money, Peter Cetera, Stevie Nicks and the Bee Gees. Over the years Glaub has played with serious luminaries including Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, John Fogerty, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Jerry Lee Lewis, Stevie Nicks and Journey.

Kunkel, a drummer and producer, has worked with a similar stata of A level talent including Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Stevie Nicks, Glenn Frey, Harry Chapin, James Taylor, Joe Walsh, Steve Winwood, Jimmy Buffett, Bob Seger, Stephen Stills, Carly Simon, Rita Coolidge, Neil Diamond, Dan Fogelberg, Art Garfunkel, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Carole King, Lyle Lovett, Reba McEntire and still others himself.

Jurvanen/Glaub/Kunkel's set featured "Not Cool Anymore" and "Half Your Love" from this past year's Sad Hunk. Glaub comments before "Half Your Love" that "this one has no rhythm or band under it so we can just sort of do our thing right?" Kunkel right away slips into a pocket with a little shuffle pattern. You can hear a bit of back and forth after the track between Robbie Lackritz, best known as a recording engineer at first, now Bahamas and Feist's manager and co-producer, and the players as to how they liked the last cut to which there was no response as they scratched their heads. "Turn Back Time" which follows, also from Sad Hunk, works musically but lyrically it can be a bit of a head scratcher hearing Jurvanen, whose clearly doing alright for himself, singing about how "I'm not thinking about the distant past if I'm trying to make first and last".

Glaub and Kunkel were joined in studio by Sam Weber. The musicians are likely familiar with one another through Tyler Chester who produced the record and has also done work with Jackson Browne as a session musician himself. Glaub also recorded on Everything Comes True as did a really strong contingent of L.A. based session players.

Countless musicians have been able to figure out how to work remotely, recording fine albums or recording performances for TV or the internet, but watching the Live To Tape series gives you a sense of how actually difficult it is to build a musical rapport over cellphones on speaker phone. Before "Be My Witness", which Jurvanen plays on the pink strat itself, they quickly hatch out how to work the drum pattern with Afie calling out cues over the phone. 

Nearing the end of their set with "Never Again" from Barchords the ensemble has really locked into an uncommon bond with Felicity Williams and Robin Dann on backing vocals elevating the whole affair. One thing that Williams, a jazz musician who plays in progressive contexts, personally works on is using her voice more freely to improvise outside of standard vocal conventions. You hear that at the end of this live rendition where Williams, if given the chance could extemporize considerably. By the time they get around to the set closer "Summer Time", from Bahamas Is Afie, which is particularly well suited to this rhythm section, hence the selection, you would think the ensemble had been playing together 100 dates a year. 

Future episodes will include Bahamas teaming with Wylie Gelber and Griffin Goldsmith of Dawes; and Gus Seyffert (Beck, Adele) and Joey Waronker (REM, Atoms for Peace) featuring Lucius. Jurvanen also has a session in the can with The Secret Sisters and famed Nashville studio musicians guitarist Russ Pahl, bassist Dave Roe and drummer Gene Chrisman. 

Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour (1988-present)

On June 7th, 1988, Bob Dylan kicked off his so-called Never Ending Tour at the Concord Pavillion in Concord, California.  That night in Concord, Dylan played "You're A Big Girl Now" and "Gates of Eden" for the first time live since 1978; "You Gotta Serve Somebody" for the first time live since 1981; and "Boots of Spanish Leather" astonishingly for the first time since 1963. According to Swedish researcher Olof Björner, Dylan played his 2,000th show of the Never Ending Tour on October 16, 2007, in Dayton, Ohio.  He played his 3,000th show of the Never Ending Tour on April 19, 2019, in Innsbruck, Austria. Having by now circumnavigated the globe many times over, Bob Dylan and his band encored at Olympiahalle with "Blowin' In The Wind" and a wistful "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry".

In 1986, Dylan played 60 dates, including 13 in Australia, 2 in New Zealand and 4 in Japan, on the True Confessions Tour featuring Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Both Dylan and Petty took a break after this tour before returning to the road in June to perform a 41 date tour of the United States and Canada.

In July of 1987 he did 6 dates in large stadiums featuring the Grateful Dead with each concert beginning with a lengthy set by the Grateful Dead of their own material (sometime broken into a first and second set, per the Dead's own practice), followed by a roughly 90-minute set of the Dead acting as Dylan's backup band.

Then again that fall of 1987 Dylan played another 30 dates featuring Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on the Temple In Flames tour. This would prove to be the last time Dylan toured with Petty and the last tour before the beginning of the "Never Ending Tour". Dylan and Petty would, though, briefly reunite in Holmdel, New Jersey in the summer of 2003 as well as throughout their work with the supergroup the The Travelling Wilburys.

The name itself, though commonplace by now, is more than a bit of a misnomer. It's not even something Dylan set about to name a single one of his tours in the first place. The tour's name was cemented in an interview by journalist Adrian Deevoy with Dylan in Q Magazine (December, 1989, no. 39). But when the critic Michael Gray went back and listened to Deevoy's interview tape, he pointed out (in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia) that though Deevoy's article put the phrase into Dylan's mouth, in fact the label came from Deevoy in the following exchange:

AD: "Tell me about this live thing. You've gone straight into this tour again — one tour virtually straight into the next one."

BD: "Oh, it's all the same tour."

AD: "It's the Never Ending Tour?"

BD: (unenthusiastically) "Yeah, yeah".

Dylan has himself been dismissive of the Never Ending Tour tag. In the sleeve notes to his album World Gone Wrong (1993), Dylan wrote:

"Don't be bewildered by the Never Ending Tour chatter. There was a Never Ending Tour but it ended in 1991 with the departure of guitarist G. E. Smith. That one's long gone but there have been many others since then: "The Money Never Runs Out Tour" (Fall of 1991) "Southern Sympathizer Tour" (Early 1992) "Why Do You Look At Me So Strangely Tour" (European Tour 1992) "The One Sad Cry Of Pity Tour" (Australia & West Coast American Tour 1992) "Outburst Of Consciousness Tour" (1992) "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down Tour" (1993) and others, too many to mention each with their own character & design."

In a 2009 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Dylan went on further in questioning  the validity of the term Never Ending Tour, saying:

"Critics should know there is no such thing as forever. Does anybody call Henry Ford a Never Ending Car Builder? Anybody ever say that Duke Ellington was on a Never Ending Bandstand Tour? These days, people are lucky to have a job. Any job. So critics might be uncomfortable with my working so much. Anybody with a trade can work as long as they want. A carpenter, an electrician. They don't necessarily need to retire."

Love it or leave it, it's the name that has stuck. Despite some very rocky patches, including one disastrous show in Germany in 1991 that cast a long shadow, Dylan throughout the nineties and aughts eventually drew himself into rare form both live and on record. The low water mark came in a particularly disastrous rendition of “New Morning” from his June 19th, 1991 gig in Stuttgart. It stretches for seven minutes, although much of it is just the band vamping, with someone on piano clomping out child-like chords, until Dylan kicks in at the 4:30 mark with incomprehensible muttering that sounds vaguely like the words to the song.

Performances like Stuttgart, though there are countless others, some of which fans have rightly described as "traumatizing", generated a toxic buzz that has surrounded Dylan's live show even to this day in some quarters. But in the span of two short years Dylan crested to a particularly high tide when he did a short stand of shows in November of 1993 at New York's Supper Club, by all accounts a stunning achievement and arguably a career highlight. 

Excellent bootleg recordings of two of Dylan's four club dates were released as (And It Ain’t) In The Seats Of A Supper Club on the Liberator label. Although they are called soundboard releases, they sound more like professionally mixed multi-track recordings that arguably sound better than many official releases. Dylan's band has had, of course, a considerable amount of churn over the years but you can hear the musical lock between several constants, including his longtime bass player Tony Garnier, guitarist John "J.J." Jackson, Bucky Baxter on pedal steel and drummer Winston Watson.

The Supper Club shows really are masterful and the musicianship is nearly unparalleled, particularly as captured in a small intimate room. The set from November 16th has the first live version of his arrangement of the traditional tune “Blood In My Eyes” which was released on World Gone Wrong. It also marked the debut of acoustic “unplugged” versions of “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” “Lay Lady Lay,” “Queen Jane Approximately,” “Tight Connection To My Heart,” “Disease Of Conceit,” and a particularly fine “I Want You.” 

The setlist places emphasis on the album World Gone Wrong which had been released three weeks prior. “Tight Connection To My Heart”, from 1985's Empire Burlesque, is a definite highlight. Stripped of the mid eighties production, this unplugged arrangement displayed the song’s pristine beauty. Purists bemoan that it hasn't been performed since. “Ring Them Bells” from Oh Mercy is likewise beautiful. The set ends with “Forever Young” in the same arrangement he would employ two nights later on Late Night With David Letterman. On the 17th his set included a debut of the traditional "Jack-A-Roe" (which many people know through the Dead) and an "I Shall Be Released" show closer.

That early nineties line-up was particularly popular amongst devotees. Gigs from 1995 and 1996 continue to be favorites in the Dylan bootleg community. Guitarist John “J.J.” Jackson was a common link in that period during his six years with the band between 1991-1997. As was drummer Winston Watson who played 400 shows in his five year tenure. 

Dylan's longest-running sideman, sometimes characterized as his "musical director", is bass player Tony Garnier. He was a long-time sideman for David Johansen in his Buster Poindexter persona, and was also briefly a member of the Saturday Night Live house band. Before joining Dylan's Never Ending Tour Band in 1989, Garnier added bass tracks to films by Jim Jarmusch, most notably the film Down by Law, which stars Roberto Benigni, Tom Waits and John Lurie, which was filmed in Louisiana. Garnier has strong musical ties to the downtown New York Jazz scene, by way of Marc Ribot and Lurie's group The Lounge Lizards. He's also recorded with Tom Waits, Loudon Wainwright III and Paul Simon

What really elevated Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour band to the next level, though, was when Garnier introduced guitarist Larry Campbell into the fold. Campbell, who replaced Jackson, would go on to be a member of the band from March 31, 1997 until November 21, 2004. Campbell expanded the role to multi-instrumentalist, playing instruments such as cittern, violin/fiddle, pedal steel guitar, lap steel guitar, mandolin, banjo, and slide guitar. His passion and enthusiasm is credited with elevating Dylan personally and his live shows to a new level. A great way to put it would be to say that Larry Campbell did for Dylan and his band what Bruce Hornsby did for Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.

Dylan has attributed much of the versatility of his live shows to the talent of his backing band, with whom he recorded each of his 21st Century studio albums: Time Out Of Mind (1997); Love and Theft (2001); Modern Times (2006); Together Through Life (2009); Christmas in the Heart (2009); Tempest (2012); Shadows in the Night (2015); Fallen Angels (2016); Triplicate (2017) and Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020).

In March of 1997 Dylan kicked off the year by recording Time Out of Mind at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida. His 30th studio album was released as a single CD as well as a double studio album on vinyl, his first since Self Portrait in 1970. For many fans and critics, the album marked Dylan's artistic comeback after he appeared to struggle with his musical identity throughout the 1980's; he had not released any original material for seven years, since Under the Red Sky in 1990. Time Out of Mind is now hailed as one of Dylan's best albums, and it went on to win three Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year in 1998. 

The album has an atmospheric sound, the work of producer (and past Dylan collaborator) Daniel Lanois, whose innovative work with carefully placed microphones and strategic mixing was detailed by Dylan in his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One. Although Dylan has spoken positively of Lanois' production style, he expressed dissatisfaction with the sound of Time Out of Mind. Dylan has self-produced his subsequent albums.

While it had been marketed as the third in a conceptual trilogy, beginning in 1997 with Time Out of Mind, Dylan himself rebuffed the notion. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he stated that he "would think more of Love and Theft as the beginning of a trilogy, if there's going to be a trilogy". But Dylan was hospitalized in June 1997 with the chest infection histoplasmosis, forcing him to cancel a European tour, fearing publicly that he’d be “seeing Elvis soon.” By October he was back on stage though, just as glowing reviews for Time Out of Mind were pouring in and songs like “Love Sick,” “Cold Irons Bound,” and “Can’t Wait” were finally ready to be presented live. It all added up to the most positive buzz around Dylan since the Rolling Thunder Revue over 20 years earlier.

Time Out of Mind featured players from the touring band, including drummer Winston Watson, Bucky Baxter on pedal steel (who toured from 1992–1999) and guitarist Duke Robillard who had, by then, also joined on guitar. But Rolling Stone reported that Robillard seemed to have parted ways with Bob Dylan, just three months after the blues guitarist joined his touring band. (Robillard posted on Facebook “For sale: Bob Dylan CD and record collection, slightly used.” He later wrote, “I will be selling a lot of guitars and amps soon. I’ll keep you posted.”)

It's highly unusual for a musician to depart Dylan’s band midway through a tour. Robillard only played at 27 Dylan shows, but that isn’t even the record for shortest tenure in Dylan’s backing band. Former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Billy Burnette joined the group in February of 2003, and he left after an 11-show tour of Australia and New Zealand.

In keeping with Dylan's expanded group of collaborators, both Lanois' go-to drummer Brian Blade played drums on Time Out Of Mind as did Jim Keltner who has been described on occasion as "the leading session drummer in America". Keltner had already played drums on both albums released by the 1980's supergroup The Traveling Wilburys, playing under the pseudonym "Buster Sidebury".

Dylan capped off 1997 by booking a series of clubs in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago before wrapping up with a five-night stand in Los Angeles at the El Rey Theatre that featured Beck, Jewel, Sheryl Crow, and Willie Nelson rotating as his opening act. The El Rey seats just 900 people and tickets were extremely hard to come by, although bootleggers still managed to capture tickets every single night.

The best one is the penultimate show at the El Rey on December 19th, 1997. This is an audience tape, but the bootlegger was clearly a pro and the sound is excellent. Many bootleg aficionados argue that great audience tapes are superior to soundboard recordings since they capture the ambiance of the room. This recording is strong evidence in their favor.

In addition to standard fare like confident opener "Maggie's Farm", the El Rey setlist includes rare gems like "Silvio", a song whose lyrics were written by Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter and set to music by Dylan for a muddled collaborative record 1988's Down In The Groove. The Rastafarian influenced "I and I" from 1983's Infidels also makes an appearence in the set.

It’s an explosive show from the opening chords of “Maggie’s Farm” to the final notes of “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” but the highlights are a blistering “Highway 61 Revisited” and "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" with Sheryl Crow on guitar and vocals, a rare take on the Desire deep cut “Joey,” and a haunting “Cold Irons Bound.” The show also includes a mid-show acoustic set of "Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie", "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" from Bringing It All Back Home and "Tangled Up In Blue".

A show from February 9, 2002 at Philips Arena, Atlanta, Georgia, which circulated for years under the name Got A Line on You, is particularly revered amongst fans. It was reportedly sourced to an Assisted Listening Device connected straight to the soundboard, which explains why the sound quality is absolutely perfect. Simply put, it sounds just about as good as any official live album.

The immaculate sounding concert opens with the Ralph Stanley number "I Am The Man, Thomas" sounding like something right out of O, Brother Where Art Thou? The set which leaned towards Love and Theft material, including "Floater (Too Much To Ask), "Summer Days", and "Sugar Baby" also featured "My Back Pages", "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", "Lay Lady Lay" and a stunning "It Ain't Me Babe" as well as deep cuts like "Drifter's Escape" from John Wesley Harding and "Masters of War" from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

The show captured Dylan and the Never Ending Tour band during a peak era. This was just five months after Love and Theft hit stores and the new songs infused the show with incredible energy and purpose. Rolling Stone described Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell as "two of the best guitarists he’s ever played with, and he gave them a lot of freedom to stretch out and even harmonize with him on the vocals."

There's been a fair bit of musical chairs in the guitar department over the years. Larry Campbell's amenable departure in 2004 opened the door for Denny Freeman on guitar and slide guitar (from 2005-2009) and Stu Kimball (from 2004-2018) who has played 1,323 shows alongside Dylan- the longest of any guitarist. Sexton first played guitar from 1999-2002 replacing Denny Freeman. Between the years 2003-2004, Tommy Morrongiello, a technician on the tour, would frequently play guitar with Dylan & his Never Ending Tour band. 

Initially Sexton was replaced by Duke Robillard for the first half of 2013, before returning on July 3, 2013. Sexton was then himself also replaced for seven concerts by Canadian blues guitarist Colin Linden, including one at Toronto's Molson Ampitheatre, which apparently didn't stick either, returning once again on July 26, 2013. The final year of the Sexton/Campbell era was on the Never Ending Tour was 2002. And, although Sexton returned to the band in 2009 after a seven-year absence, they’ve never managed to recreate the magic of this period, despite some incredible shows in 2018 and 2019.  

Dylan's album, Modern Times was recorded with Dylan's then touring band, including Freeman, Tony Garnier, Stu Kimball, and George G Receli who joined on drums (from 2001-2019) plus multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron. Dylan produced the album under the name "Jack Frost". During a 2006 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan spoke about his then current band:

"This is the best band I've ever been in, I've ever had, man for man. When you play with guys a hundred times a year, you know what you can and can't do, what they're good at, whether you want 'em there. It takes a long time to find a band of individual players. Most bands are gangs. Whether it's a metal group or pop rock, whatever, you get that gang mentality. But for those of us who went back further, gangs were the mob. The gang was not what anybody aspired to. On this record (Modern Times) I didn't have anybody to teach. I got guys now in my band, they can whip up anything, they surprise even me."

Dylan's newest guitarist, Bob Britt, was invited by Leon Russell to audition as a young man and spent a decade playing with the elder statesmen. Britt, who also recorded on Time Out Of Mind, does constant session work and has toured with The Dixie Chicks and John Fogerty. In 2011, Delbert McClinton enlisted Britt to play guitar in his band, which then lead to him becoming his music director, co-writer and co-producer of gigs.

Currently, Bob Dylan's band consists of the following members:

Bob Dylan — vocals, piano, harmonica, guitar

Donnie Herron — pedal steel, lap steel, electric mandolin, banjo, violin

Charlie Sexton — lead guitar

Tony Garnier — bass guitar

Matt Chamberlain — drums, percussion

Bob Britt — guitar

Bob Dylan & Grateful Dead rehearsals (Club Front 06/01/1987)

In the summer of 1987, Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead toured together for a small run of six concerts. Each concert began with one or two lengthy sets by the Grateful Dead of their own material (sometimes broken into a first and second set, per the Dead's usual practice) followed by a roughly 90 minute set of the Dead acting as Dylan's backup band.

Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead 1987 Tour

The band played big stadium shows on the run: Foxborough's Sullivan Stadium on the 4th of July, Philadelphia's JFK Stadium on July 10, Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ on July 12, Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon on July 19, then their homebase Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum and Anaheim Stadium in California on the 24th and 26th respectively. All of the shows racked in major league net gate receipts.

That tour is documented musically on the live album Dylan & the Dead which was released in 1989 by Columbia Records. The album was viewed poorly critically, a fair assessment, but sold well initially hitting no. 37 on the Billboard charts.  The review for AllMusic was particularly harsh, giving it one star out of a possible five, and calling it "quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead" and "a sad, disheartening document"

Two of the songs from the Grateful Dead's performances from the tour are documented on the album and video View from the Vault IV, and one of the tour-rehearsal songs is on the album Postcards of the Hanging. That release, from 2002, is a compilation album consisting of only Dylan covers from the live context . Another Dylan covers collection, Garcia Plays Dylan, includes performances by the Grateful Dead, but mostly by the Jerry Garcia Band and other Garcia side projects. 

In 1992, a bootleg of the first concert of the tour was released under the title "Orbiting Uvula". The video includes the first-ever live performance of "Queen Jane Approximately", which would go on to be played heavily by the Dead between 1987-1995, the first live performance of "John Brown" since 1963, and the first live performance of "Chimes of Freedom" since 1964.

When Dylan showed up in San Rafael to rehearse in June of 1987 he was anticipating playing songs he was comfortable with, the sort of songs he'd been playing on tour with Tom Petty the year prior. Dylan said as much in his book Chronicles:

"I needed to go rehearse with the band for these shows, so I went to San Rafael to meet with The Dead. I thought it would be as easy as jumping rope. After an hour or so, it became clear to me that the band wanted to rehearse more and different songs than I had been used to doing with [Tom] Petty. They wanted to run over all the songs, the ones they liked, the seldom seen ones. I found myself in a peculiar position and I could hear the brakes screeching. If I had known this to begin with, I might not have taken the dates. I had no feelings for any of those songs and didn’t know how I could sing them with any intent. A lot of them might have been only sung once anyway, the time that they’d been recorded. There were so many that I couldn’t tell which was which — I might even get the words to some mixed up with others. I needed sets of lyrics to understand what they were talking about, and when I saw the lyrics, especially to the older, more obscure songs, I couldn’t see how I could get this stuff off emotionally."

The band rehearsed where they always rehearsed for nearly two decades, a space in the Canal District, that was best known for nearly two decades as Club Front which functioned as a recording studio, tape vault, equipment storage facility and hang-out space for the Grateful Dead. The exterior of the 'club' was a bunch of repair shops and, fittingly, a VW dealership.

From 1975 to 1994, Club Front was one of the Grateful Dead's main hubs. Some of the band's best known output, including Shakedown Street, Go To Heaven, Dead Set, Reckoning, In The Dark, Built To Last, Without A Net, One and Two from the Vault, and Dick's Picks 1 was produced there.

A lot of the songs they ended up playing live were already in the Dead's repertoire, or soon would be, including "Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues" (also a live Dylan & The Band staple), "Ballad of A Thin Man" and "Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Blues Again". But Dylan was palpably uncomfortable with the song selections that the band members were bringing forward, like Ian & Sylvia Tyson's "The French Girl" which had only ever been recorded on Dylan & The Band's The Basement Tapes and only sung that one time in the basement. Similarly they were bringing forward material like "John Hardy" or "John Brown", "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" or the "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest"- fairly clearly songs Dylan hadn't anticipated and wasn't comfortable with playing live at the time.

Recall this wasn't necessarily a good period for Dylan live, in fact it most definitely wasn't, he was known for wearing a hoodie often up over his head even turning his back (literally) to the audience and bumbling through sets. If ever he needed a moment of redemption in the live setting this was it. But Dylan wanted to bolt, and at one point he actually did:

"I felt like a goon and didn’t want to stick around. The whole thing might have been a mistake. I’d have to go someplace for the mentally ill and think about it.After saying that I’d left something at the hotel, I stepped back outside onto Front Street and started walking, put my head down against the drizzling rain. I wasn’t planning on going back. If you have to lie, you should do it quickly and as well as you can. I started up the street — maybe four or five or six blocks went by and then I heard the sounds of a jazz combo playing up ahead. Walking past the door of a tiny bar, I looked in and saw that the musicians were playing at the opposite end of the room. It was raining and there were few people inside. One of them was laughing at something. It looked like the last stop on the train to nowhere and the air was filled with cigarette smoke. Something was calling to me to come in and I entered, walked along the long, narrow bar to where the jazz cats were playing in the back on a raised platform in front of a brick wall.

I got within four feet of the stage and just stood there against the bar, ordered a gin and tonic and faced the singer. An older man, he wore a mohair suit, flat cap with a little brim and shiny necktie. The dummer had a rancher’s Stetson on and the bassist and pianist were neatly dressed. They played jazz ballads, stuff like “Time on My Hands” and and “Gloomy Sunday.” The singer reminded me of Billy Eckstine. He wasn’t very forceful, but he didn’t have to be; he was relaxed, but sang with natural power. Suddenly and without warning, it was like the guy had an open window to my soul. It was like he was saying, “You should do it this way.” All of a sudden, I understood something faster than I ever did before. I could feel how he worked at getting his power, what he was doing to get at it. I knew where the power was coming from and it wasn’t his voice, though the voice brought me sharply back to myself. I used to do this thing, I’m thinking. It was a long time ago and it had been automatic. No one had ever taught me. This technique was so elemental, so simple and I’d forgotten it. It was like I’d forgotten how to button my own pants. I wondered if I could still do it. I wanted at least a chance to try. If I could in any way get close to handling this technique, I could get off this marathon stunt ride.

Returning to The Dead’s rehearsal hall as if nothing had happened, I picked it up where we had left off, couldn’t wait to get started — taking one of the songs that they wanted to do, seeing if I could sing it using the same method that the old singer used. I had a premonition something would happen. At first it was hard going, like drilling through a brick wall. All I did was taste the dust. But then miraculously something internal came unhinged. In the beginning all I could get out was a blood-choked coughing grunt and it blasted up from the bottom of my lower self, but it bypassed my brain. That had never happened before. It burned, but I was awake. The scheme wasn’t sewed up too tight, would need a lot of stitches, but I grasped the idea. I had to concentrate like mad because I was having to maneuver more than one stratagem at the same time, but now I knew I could perform any of these songs without them having to be restricted to the world of words. This was revelatory. I played these shows with The Dead and never had to think twice about it. Maybe they just dropped something in my drink, I can’t say, but anything they wanted to do was fine with me. I had that old jazz singer to thank."

 

Whatever the singer, who reminded him of Billy Ecktsine, imparted to him quixotically in that instant Dylan seems to have found his footing as reflected and captured magically in this artifact, a 6-CD set from the soundboard masters. The rehearsals have a bit of that fun clubhouse quality you hear on the Perro Sessions recordings. The rehearsals are also reminiscent of Dylan and the Band's Basement Tapes output insomuch as they're really just fumbling through material, much of which is traditional. During that magical period in West Saugerties, New York, The Band were actually largely unfamiliar with Folk music American, Canadian or otherwise. So Dylan was really teaching them, for instance playing their own countrymen Ian & Sylvia Tyson's "The French Girl" or other traditional ballads they were unfamiliar with.

You hear some of that shared tradition comraderie on this rehearsal, where Dylan & the Dead find some common ground in songs like Hank Williams "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", "Rollin' in My Sweet Baby's Arms" which most people know through Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs version, Merle Haggard's "Blues Stay Away From Me" and Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues". Then there are traditional songs like "Stealin'", first recorded by the Memphis Jug Band, which went on to become associated with Jerry Garcia in other contexts namely his collaboration with David Grisman later released on the album Shady Grove in 1996. 

In the proud tradition of late-era Grateful Dead there was a good dose of fifties music, by way of Buddy Holly & The Crickets, here "Oh Boy" gets a run through ("Not Fade Away" was of course a stadium anthem and not infrequent show closer). Other selections are timely like their contemporaries Kris Kristofferson's "They Killed Him". Then there are just spirited throwaways like the Rolling Stones "I'm Free".  One of the best fly on the wall moments is when they make a semi-karaoke attempt at Paul Simon's "The Boy In The Bubble" from Graceland which was, of course, omnipresent in everyone's car stereo at the time. Bob Weir, Dylan and Garcia sing over one another mixing verses about "millionaires, billionaires and babies" with "lasers in the jungle". Just hearing Garcia sing the lyric "lasers in the jungle" is worth the price of admission even if it is a hot mess.

Some of the more obscure material of Dylan's which they worked up included "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" from John Wesley Harding with Jerry on pedal steel, a version that could have handily made it onto a release elsewhere. "Tomorrow Is A Long Time", from Greatest Hits vol. II later released on Masterpieces, also features some tasteful pedal steel from Garcia. Clearly one song which Garcia himself seems to have advocated for was “Señor” (Tales of Yankee Power) from Street-Legal which came just before Dylan's conversion to Christianity. It's one of Dylan's darkest songs, and, like the album it's imbued with apocalyptic and religious meaning that would have appealed to Garcia in particular.

Elsewhere they made something of "Under Your Spell" which appears on Knocked Out Loaded released the year prior in 1986, a strange collaboration which Dylan wrote the music for then Carole Bayer Sager later helped him finish the lyrics to. Sager, bizarrely, is best known for her collaboration with Burt Bacharach, fittingly, on "That's What Friends Are For". In fact almost half of Knocked Out Loaded, suggesting his low ebb creatively, was written by others including Petty and Kristofferson. 

The Dead were clearly making Dylan reach, managing to give, for instance, "Heart of Mine" and a long forgotten track "Shot of Love", from the album of the same name, a shot in the arm. Considered to be the last in his trilogy of Christian albums that song makes thinly veiled references to substance abuse, darkly ironic given Garcia and keyboardist Brent Mydland's shared heroin addiction in full bloom at the time. Dylan said in a 1983 interview with NME:

"To those who care where Bob Dylan is at, they should listen to 'Shot of Love'. It's my most perfect song. It defines where I am spiritually, musically, romantically and whatever else. It shows where my sympathies lie. It's all there in that one song."

There's so much good stuff in these rehearsals it's hard to wade through for the real standouts. Certainly at least one of the takes of  “Señor” with Garcia on vocals deserves top billing. As does "All I Really Want To Do" and "Chimes of Freedom" from Dylan's Tom Wilson produced 1964 album Another Side of Bob Dylan (it's a miracle even that the Dead got him to play the latter for the first time in nearly 25 years). 

Out of the rehearsals "Slow Train Coming" from the 1979 album of the same name is clearly top of the pile (this multi-cam clip is from the July 12th show at Giants Stadium). As is a particularly funky version of "Tangled Up In Blue" which plays to the rhythm devils strengths. The presence of the dual drummers is a little baffling on some of these songs at times, particularly ones that would have benefited from spare treatments, albeit they were a monster band by that point preparing for an arena tour. 

"The French Girl", for our money is one of the most sublime songs amongst the rehearsal versions, first they take a stab with Dylan coaxing out the chords and Weir adding the vocal melody. Later they do a spotless version where Dylan's voice is truly in fine form begging the question from whence did this supposed lack of confidence flow? It's the second take, with Garcia now on pedal steel, that is particularly tasteful. As Dylan himself mentioned this was a song that was probably sung once, in the basement of Big Pink, and immortalized from bootlegs. "The French Girl" Take 2 is also a good version from The Basement Tapes Bootleg Series vol. 11 released in 2014.

"The Times They Are A Changin'", a song you probably never needed to hear again, gets a beautiful treatment with Garcia on banjo. "When I Paint My Masterpiece", a Dead and the Band staple, is a particularly greasy and muscular version. It's been suggested that a lot of the material from the rehearsals that didn't get live airings would have been better suited to smaller indoors venues, though songs like "John Brown" and "Man of Peace" made it into setlists as did "It's All Over Now Baby Blue". In the end it was the more anthemic predictable fair like "All Along The Watchtower" that played to the bleachers which ended up getting repeated live airings. Of course "Joey", the much beloved and much pilloried staple of the Dead's live show, a deep cut from Desire in 1976, which made it on the album, gets an extended version in rehearsal. 

In the end there really is just too much to choose from. Just pick a lane and enjoy.

Dylan & Grateful Dead July 17, 1987, Autzen Stadium, Eugene, Oregon

Dylan & Grateful Dead July 12, 1987, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey