In September 2022, I spent 48 hours bathed in the ether of Bob Dylan’s talent - working as production advisor to a Dylan tribute at Town Hall on September 30th. The occasion was a celebration of the venue’s centennial year and the fact that Dylan played his first concert hall show at the venue in 1963.
An original medicine man, master poet, and spokesman for the times, Dylan, like Mother Nature today, was crying loud to get the world woke.
Over the decades, Bob Dylan’s music guided and supported me through life’s growing pains and subsequent lessons. No shrink needed, the magic pill was and remains Blood on the Tracks, full volume, with me singing every word to every song as loud and out of key as possible. How is it that I remember song lyrics over a lifetime yet not what I ate for breakfast yesterday? I guess the important things do stick.
In the cocoon of the October production, we became an instant family of strangers, all with a common cause – to celebrate the man and his music, and to serve as a reminder of our collective responsibility to each other then, now, and for always. That was and remains Dylan’s message.
I learned that Dylan wrote “A Hard Rains Gonna Fall” during the Cuban missile crisis and said that each line could have been a song unto itself, but he feared there was no time to realize them all as the world went mad. So instead, he put everything into this song. He sensed looming doom… in 1962. But now, that era seems a mere appetizer of what we are currently experiencing
Spending 48 hours in the orbit of T Bone Burnett, the show’s brilliant producer, I watched him pace the empty theater during rehearsals, hearing the same music as me but through a labyrinth of nuances that perhaps is reserved only for geniuses.
I sat in the empty theater watching T Bone along with co-producer, musician and wordsmith extraordinaire Joe Henry do their magic.
Oscar Isaac’s interpretation of “Tangled Up in Blue” with the Punch Brothers brought me to tears. Mandolin maestro Chris Thile, gyrated with Gumby flexibility, like those touched by spirits in church. He pummeled the tiny 8-string instrument with music mastery, clearly channeling something from a higher plane.
Sara Bareilles opened “Don’t Think Twice” acapella and chills traversed across my body. T Bone guided her through “Knockin on Heaven’s Door,” providing historical context in short interludes, until she said, “Don’t be stingy with your wisdom.”
T Bone and Joe Henry’s brilliance brought MuMu Fresh and Marc Ribot together for “All Along the Watch Tower.” They melded like the most intimate of lovers yet met for the first time just hours before showtime and nailed the song on the first and only take. Creative juju on steroids.
My soul-oscopy for two days was from the classics – “Blowin in the Wind,” “Masters of War,” “It’s Alright Ma,” and many more.
The lineup of talent showcasing Dylan crossed cultures and generations, infused with gospel, soul, bluegrass, jazz, with such masters as Lizz Wright, Bill Frisell, Julian Lage, Joe Henry, and Margaret Glasby.
Just showtime, T Bone wandered through the dressing rooms, backstage and the theater with a lit palo santo stick, purifying the energy.
Native America Poet Laureate Joy Harjo opened the evening with a blessing to the original peoples of these lands.
“We who are gathered here are still responsible for the well-being of life, as we are Earth. The keepers of the land are often the song makers. When we forget we are the keepers, we get lost,” she said.
Allen Ginsburg once asked Dylan if high art could be put on a jukebox. Dylan responded that art, high or otherwise, has no purpose other than to inspire. “What more can one person do for another but inspire them?”
Perhaps that’s the wrong turn we’ve taken… thinking our purpose on earth is meant to be more highbrow and grandiose. Let’s change that. What if we simply inspire one another so we can shapeshift the collective consciousness together?
I couldn’t say this any better than Master of Ceremonies Joe Henry:
“Since Bob first sang out the words, ‘He not busy being born is busy dying’ in 1964, he has been inviting us to hold the truth of both our evolving endurance and inevitable demise, in the same stark moment of awareness, and by doing so, he connects each of us to every single Other, with the thread both gossamer and vital in its nature… the high wire upon which we all dance.”
In the meantime, everybody must get stoned…