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1999-11-20, University of Delaware, Newark, DE
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Another request today, from Andrew. On November 20, 1999, Bob Dylan played the 1,165th concert of the Never Ending Tour. That is a fairly meaningless statistic. Here’s a more interesting one: It was also his final show of the millennium. Though I’d never count Bob out, the odds are pretty good it will be his only millennium-ending show ever.
Not that he acknowledged it from the stage, of course. No Y2K jokes, even in an era where he was joking regularly. (During the band intros tonight: “On the drums, the only drummer who never lies unless he’s in bed, David Kemper!”)
There were a couple of surprises though. The first: The final live debut of the millennium! It’s another bluegrass-gospel cover with the Larry-Charlie backing vocals, “This World Can’t Stand Long.” Was that song choice Dylan’s subtle way of acknowledging Y2K? It would go into regular rotation the next year when the world—spoiler alert—didn’t end. It’s at 17:30 here:
The second surprise was a guest: Blues-guitar great Susan Tedeschi. It’s surprisingly the only time she’s played with Dylan. The following year, in a profile of her, Rolling Stone reported:
Last fall, Bob Dylan heard her singing with Phil Lesh on her birthday (her boyfriend was in Lesh’s touring band) and invited her to open a show for him. “He called me out for ‘Highway 61 Revisited,’” she remembers, “and he wanted me to play guitar. We did three songs together and soloed for, like, five minutes. I felt really honored.”
I wonder who that random unnamed boyfriend was. Oh wait—it was Derek Trucks!
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