Bob Dylan and the Nashville Skyline
An antidote to cynicism
I’ve seen Bob Dylan and now, nothing else matters.
Last week, on a chilly Tuesday evening, my wife and I left the house without our daughter for the first time since she was born two years ago. To this point, nothing had been able to pry us away from her for a single night. Not a dinner, not a movie, not a concert — that was, until Dylan came to town.
When I got the alert that he was coming to Nashville, to a venue that wasn’t also home to a sports team, there was little deliberation as to whether or not we’d be attending. It was one of those things I just never thought would happen. I’ve been pretty lucky to see some of my favorite artists as I’ve grown up — which is saying something since most of them are two generations older than me.
I saw Jeff Beck and John Fogerty at Bonnaroo and I saw the Rolling Stones play at Nissan Stadium with my dad in the 2010s. This was different than any of those, however. It was no festival appearance, no stadium tour but a two-night stand at a 1200-person venue in my hometown. I’ve played in larger rooms than that so the fact that I could see one of my heroes in a setting so intimate was more than just incredible — it was personal.
My wife fell in love with ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ when we were dating. Ever since the folk singer has slowly been creeping up her personal charts. As a brief side note, my wife’s excellent taste in music has been both a blessing and a curse to me. On one hand, it’s been an infinite source of inspiration and celebration. On the other, though, it’s a deep well of competition and inadequacy.
It’s both her adoration and appreciation that I’ve sought after more than any other reader or listener. I don’t need to know where I rank amongst anyone else’s preferences, but selfishly, jealously, I want to be her favorite artist. You can imagine my frustration when I’m forced to contend with the likes of Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and Joan Didion.
Nevertheless, our shared love for his music only made the event more special. When our little girl would sit still in her arms, I would play songs like John Prine’s ‘Angel from Montgomery’ or Dylan's ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ to them both. When my wife would put her down for the night, I could hear her softly singing the words to ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ in the dark of our daughter’s room. It’s funny how songs you’ve heard all your life can suddenly and irreversibly take on new meaning.
The show was a phoneless event — which if it hadn’t been for who was performing on stage, that sight may have been the most remarkable of the evening. A live event in the 2020s that wasn’t mired or obscured by smartphones held aloft above the heads of the concertgoers.
What followed was two hours of the greatest American songwriter of the 20th century banging on the piano and blowing on his harmonica. It was like a live reading from Mark Twain itself, an American Herodotus. What that night truly highlighted for me was the failure of our culture today.
To be certain, Bob Dylan is a generational talent but where is ours? How is it that ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ was a number-one hit in the 60s and we’re stuck with the likes of Miley Cyrus and Jack Harlow? We went to the moon and passed the Civil Rights Act. We used to dream of dreams; now, we lie awake at night thumbing through fifteen-second clips on a dopamine drip.
Dylan, who is one year older than our current president at the age of 82, except for altered, almost-unrecognizable versions of ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece’ and ‘Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way (I’ll Go Mine)’, played almost exclusively new material. He scooted onto the stage, sat himself down on the bench behind the grand piano, and went to business intermittently muttering a handful of words to the audience which had been capped at a number much less than the max capacity of the venue.
At one point, I turned to my wife and said, “No way Joe Biden could do this.”
More than that, however, what his performance illustrated was that, even in his old age, the man still had something to say. It would have been much easier to stick to the hits and let the crowd do all the singing — but instead, he struck out to make another statement, another lasting impression. He could put his feet up and let his legacy do the heavy lifting, after all, who could blame him? Instead, he’s still busy living preoccupied with the search for truth.
Disillusionment and defeatism are sentiments to which are too readily acquiesced. With the atomization of the individual and the political and cultural landscape being what it is, one can be forgiven for believing that anything - if not everything - is beyond one’s influence. What those couple of hours a stone’s throw from the Cumberland River show is that our future is still up for grabs. Man is made in the image of our creator, but the world is shaped by our hands.
As a boy, when I first listened to Highway 61 Revisited in my room on a blue and silver compact stereo, I felt like Bob Dylan was giving me the world. Songs like ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ and the titular track, made it feel as if he were making the secrets of humanity evident to me and no one else.
What Tuesday night reminded me, as my wife walked under my arms back to our car and our little girl slept under the watchful gaze of my parents, is that the world is still for the taking and that there remain secrets to be discovered.
and if my thought-dreams could be seen they'd probably put my head in a guillotine but it's alright, ma, it's life and life only
To a better next week,
Cheers,
~FDA