Flagging Down The Double E Newsletter Sept 17 | RAY PADGETT

 

I'm listening to Annie Lennox, I gotta turn up the sound

2000-09-17, Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre, Glasgow, Scotland

RAY PADGETT SEP 17

Photo by John Hume

During this tour, Dylan rotated between four opening numbers. All were covers, all were acoustic, all came from the bluegrass tradition, all featured hearty backing vocals from Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton. Three of the four were bluegrass-gospel tunes the Stanley Brothers sang. The fourth was a murder ballad the Stanley Brothers didn’t sing, but, sonically, it fits right in with the rest.

Today, on our fourth show, Dylan plays the fourth and final of those opening numbers: “Somebody Touched Me.” It follows “Duncan and Brady” (Night 1), “I Am the Man Thomas” (Night 2), and “Hallelujah I’m Ready to Go” (Night 3). He’d continue rotating through all four all tour.

That wouldn’t be the only bluegrass-cover representation at most shows either. In the sixth slot, the final of the opening acoustic set, he would draw from the songbook of the country-bluegrass duo Johnnie and Jack. He played either "Searching for a Soldier's Grave” (recently revived on the Outlaw Tour) or “This World Can’t Stand Long.” He’d soon begin doing a third Johnnie and Jack song too, “Humming Bird.” I guess both The Stanley Brothers and the lesser-known Johnnie and Jack were getting a lot of play on the tour bus.

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The setlist songs switched a lot this tour as we’ll see (one reason it’s fun to do a deep-dive series like this), but the setlist structure remained pretty standard. Here’s how the shows generally went:

• Six-song acoustic set

  • Bluegrass-gospel cover (Stanley Brothers songs mostly)

  • Three '60s chestnuts

  • “Tangled Up in Blue”

  • Another bluegrass cover (Johnnie and Jack song)

• Six-song electric set

  • “Country Pie” *

  • Four (occasionally five) rotating songs—wide variety here

  • “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”

• First Encore

  • “Things Have Changed”/“Love Sick”

  • “Like A Rolling Stone”

  • Acoustic '60s chestnut

  • Electric song (wide variety)

  • “Blowin’ in the Wind”/“Forever Young” (acoustic)

• Second Encore

  • Electric song (often “Highway 61”)

  • “Forever Young”/“Blowin’ in the Wind” (acoustic)

* Side note: Having listened to a lot of these tapes, it strikes me as very funny that, in the most-common pairing, “Searching for a Soldier’s Grave” went straight into “Country Pie.” What a wild transition. It’s thematic whiplash.

Some nights he’d slot a bonus song into the first encore, but otherwise this framework remained pretty rigid. That isn’t to imply these shows were static. In only 18 shows, he managed to play 74 different songs. (Compare that to last year, where in 78 shows he only played 53 different songs.)

New additions in Glasgow include aforementioned bluegrass covers “Somebody Touched Me” and “This World Can’t Stand Long” (both standouts with the backing vocals), “It's All Over Now Baby Blue,” “Most Likely You Go Your Way,” “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “To Be Alone with You,” and the one I previewed yesterday: “Highlands.” The song he didn’t play the night before in the actual Highlands. He saved it for the following night, here in the Lowlands.