Colin Linden Recalls Being Bob Dylan's On-and-Off Guitarist on the 2013 Americanarama Tour
"If anybody has any doubt that he’s one of the greatest singers of my lifetime, if you were in the room when that happened, you would never have that doubt again"
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Four shows into his summer 2013 “Americanarama” all-star tour, Bob Dylan needed a new guitar player—fast. After a difficult few days full of withering looks onstage and tour-bus arguments offstage, his guitarist Duke Robillard abruptly departed the band (he told me the full story for my book). Dylan needed a ringer.
Or two.
For the rest of the summer, Dylan’s lead-guitar slot featured an odd alternating-guitarists arrangement. Some nights it was Charlie Sexton, who had already logged extensive time in Dylan’s band and would rejoin again full-time that fall. Other nights it was Toronto bluesman Colin Linden, who had never played with Dylan before. The rotation was so confusing I had to bullet it out. Here’s who held the lead-guitar chair on the Americanarama tour of Summer 2013 (Stu Kimball was on rhythm guitar throughout):
Robillard—6/26-30 [4 shows]
Sexton—7/2-14 [9 shows]
Linden—7/15-24 [7 shows]
Sexton—7/26-27 [2 shows]
Linden—7/28 [1 show]
Sexton—7/31 [1 show]
Linden—8/1-4 [3 shows]
Ahead of this summer’s Outlaw tour, with a multi-artist bill kinda similar to Americanarama, I spoke to Linden about his run alternating guitar duties with Sexton and just what the hell was going on with Dylan’s band that summer. These days, Linden is touring with T Bone Burnett promoting Burnett’s recent album The Other Side, which Linden co-produced.
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