Bob Dylan ft. Wilco, My Morning Jacket, and More Surprises
2013-08-03, Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, Irvine, CA
Programming note ICYMI: Our second daughter, Maya Rose Padgett, was born a few days ago! (I wanted to name her “Big Jim” but my wife wouldn’t let me for some reason.) So I’m taking some paternity leave this month. You can probably guess what Street-Legal song will be playing in my head while I’m away.What does that mean for the newsletter? Not much honestly. I’ve pre-written a full month’s worth of posts so they’ll still be hitting your inbox at the usual cadence—some free, some paid—even without me there to press the button. Some good ones scheduled too, including new interviews. I might be slower to respond to emails and comments, but otherwise you shouldn’t notice anything amiss.
Okay, on to today’s newsletter!
In 2013, Dylan went on the road for the awkwardly-named Americanarama tour alongside Wilco, My Morning Jacket, and more (at different dates: Bob Weir, Richard Thompson, Beck, and Ryan Bingham).
A few months after the tour ended, My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James complained to Rolling Stone about it. “The whole concept of the tour was supposed to be super collaborative,” he said. “We were expecting to be sitting around the campfire with Dylan at two a.m. and go, ‘Let’s cover all of Desire tomorrow!’ We had all these pipe dreams.”
That didn’t happen. “Bob really wasn’t around,” James continued. “We never talked to him once. He does not hang, which is fine and understandable…or it’s kind of understandable. I don’t know.”
James came in for some grief from Dylan fans for his naiveté. No, obviously a 72-year-old Bob is not going to sit around a campfire with the opening acts jamming on Desire. It seemed ridiculous to expect he might. (Lest this reminder trigger another round of annoyance, later on in the interview, James did add, “The whole tour was a huge honor and I’ll never forget it.”)
The real surprise: At times, the tour actually did get pretty close to living up to Jim James’ vision. Especially during today’s subscriber-requested show in Irvine, California, which featured a whole host of surprise guests.
The catch is, most of those surprise guests did not come during Dylan’s set (most but not all—we’ll get there). I was able to track down recordings of all four sets that night in Irvine (thanks soomlos) and, throughout the four-and-a-half hours of music, surprises abound. So, today, I thought I’d highlight all those surprise guests, set by set, with audio/video clips of each.
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