| Last Night in Troutdale (by Dave Depper) 2026-06-04, McMenamins Edgefield, Troutdale, OR |
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Last night, Bob Dylan kicked off what is officially called—according to a t-shirt on sale in the merch booth at least—the Long Hot Summer Tour. He played alongside openers Lucinda Williams and John Doe (who I interviewed last year) in an outdoor venue in Troutdale, Oregon, near Portland. The setlist featured a number of songs returning from last summer’s setlist as well as, for the first time, a few Rough and Rowdy Ways songs played at a non-“Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour” show.
The big news though was the debut of an extremely deep Basement Tapes cut: “Baby Won’t You Be My Baby.” I crunched the numbers and this is the longest gap ever between Dylan recording a song and playing it live. 59 years! That easily tops the previous record-holder, “Outlaw Blues” at 42 years (I did a whole list if you wanna see more).
Dave Depper was on hand to report in for us. Depper is a member of the iconic indie-rock band Death Cab for Cutie, who have a new album out today, I Built You a Tower. (I also highly recommend his solo album covering the entirety of Air’s landmark electronic record Moon Safari.) Since he had a million other things on his album release day to-do list, Depper called me on the phone a couple hours ago, and I pulled his remarks together into this piece.
(This will be the first of many show reviews from this summer’s tour, including a few by me when the tour heads east. Most go out only to paid subscribers. Sign up here if you want to get them all.)
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