Bob Dylan and Band in Kelseyville, California: Best Concert of 2007

If you're going to see Bob Dylan in concert, you kind of have to expect the unexpected. But as I wound my way through the walnut groves and pear orchards of Lake County, California, on my way to Bob Dylan's only northern California appearance, I had no idea that this night would change the way I looked at the world forever.

Riding high on the success of his Modern Times album, which was nominated for three Grammy Awards, Dylan has been meeting an aggressive tour schedule around the nation and the globe. On July 28, the Bob Dylan and Band tour buses pulled up at the Konocti Harbor Resort and Spa, a '50s-era development set beneath a towering dormant volcano, and readied themselves for what turned out to be an unforgettable evening.

I wondered how this remote location ever got on the Dylan tour schedule-how Bob Dylan, arguably our nation's most important artist-had circumvented the San Francisco Bay Area altogether to appear in this tiny hamlet 200 miles north of the City as part of the Dylan "NeverEndingTour." The Konocti Harbor Resort has become something of a rock-and-roll summer camp: It's a place where "new country" thrives and where graying rock stars have found a welcoming group of boomers in black jeans to celebrate their mutual glory days. Summer concerts are offered outdoors at the Konocti Field Amphitheater, a 5,000-seat venue on the shores of California's largest lake, (Clear Lake) which in 2007 has featured such diverse acts as George Jones, Blondie, the Cars, Alan Jackson, Los Lonely Boys and Aerosmith. Concertgoers often spend the night in one of the resort's 250 rooms and arrive early to do a little bass-fishing, waterskiing or sunbathing before show time.

Entering the parking lot, I cut through a thick fog of marijuana smoke to a cozy parking place and found a scene that was completely off-the-hook. Local pot growers, (Lake County is California's most prolific marijuana-cultivating region) and San Francisco hipsters shared the last golden rays of summer sunlight with aging mavericks in 60s' biker garb and a large contingent of Gen-Xers who must have found the Dylan mystique too alluring to resist. BMW car stereos blasting Dylan songs competed for ear space with a symphony of Harley engines as bottles were passed, past concerts remembered and predictions for tonight's festivities revealed. I surrendered my $109 ticket, found my way to the outdoor bar, purchased a weak ten-dollar margarita in a plastic cup and then found a space in the bleachers between a quiet artsy-looking couple and a fifty-ish woman, equipped with bottled water and a bag of carrots, who appeared to have come to the concert alone.

Dylan is constantly re-inventing himself and his concerts have baffled critics and fans since he first took the stage as controversial folksinger in 1961. After leveraging his Woody Guthrie-inspired protest songs to become the "voice of a generation," Dylan then befuddled fans by appearing with an electric band at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. He later enraged every hippie and leftover sixties radical still breathing by re-emerging as a born-again Christian, performing a gospel revival show and refusing to play his most-loved secular songs. This led to a rare (for Dylan) artistic compromise: A "greatest hits" tour that came off as an apology for the fire and brimstone of his born-again period.

Taking the stage at Konocti in 2007 to a somewhat bizarre pre-recorded introduction that touted Dylan as "rock's poet laureate" and mentioned his Jesus years, Dylan and his band played a dazzling hour and forty-five minute set. Dressed in black gambler's hat and suit (his band wore carefully color-coordinated matching outfits with white hats), Dylan spent most of the concert behind an electric keyboard, playing guitar on only the first three songs. It was a show that was long on radically-revamped versions of old hits, and surprisingly short on material from his brilliant new Modern Times release. Some of Dylan's most esteemed songs, originally performed solo with acoustic guitar, found a new meaning as they were interpreted by the five-piece band. He twisted old numbers, like "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and "Desolation Row," into fiery new shapes, and challenged his fans to see these works in a new light. Sandwiched in between the lone three Modern Times numbers was what can only be a characterized as a Dylan fan's dream set list.

Dylan and crew began the show with "Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat," his laconic hymn to 60's super-model Edie Sedgwick. The band worked hard--digging into this twelve-bar blues shuffle like they were playing in a Texas roadhouse. This song, like many others in the Dylan songbook, has more than ten verses, and that; coupled with the band's prolonged, multi-verse solos, made each song a ten-minute anthem. After crashing through a radically reworked "It Ain't Me, Babe," and a dark, sinister and spookily electric version of "Its' Alright Ma, (I'm only Bleeding)" Dylan moved behind an electric keyboard for "Workingman's Blues #2," his most recent lesson on war and economics and one of the standouts from his new album.

The theme of the night was trying to recognize what song Dylan was playing. He interchangeably barked and muttered his lyrics, paying no attention whatsoever to each song's original melody. It was like hearing these songs--many of them over thirty years old--for the very first time. Sometimes halfway into a number, a roar of recognition would arise from the crowd and I would have to look around me to find out which song was being played by watching the other concertgoers mouth the lyrics.

About halfway through the show Dylan finally picked up a harmonica (to thunderous applause) and began "Desolation Row." It started with some whimsical instrumental interplay between Dylan, bassist Tony Garnier and guitarist Denny Freeman. Multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron (who also played violin, viola and pedal steel) punctuated Dylan's vocal phrases with corresponding expressions on electric mandolin; forcing the song into uncomfortable surroundings, but also revealing some rewarding new facets. Dylan and Band then brought the crowd to their feet with a hard-rocking version of "Highway 61 Revisited" and many fans began to dance in the aisles and in front of the beer and hot dog stands. Bob then picked up the harmonica again and unleashed a full fifteen minutes worth of "Stuck Inside Of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," while the scene in the amphitheater neared hysteria.

After a couple of new tunes, the band set in motion a placid, calypso-sounding rhythm--unrecognizable in the Dylan catalogue--and I speculated as to whether Bob had decided to start playing reggae music. The dancers switched from frenetic lurching to gentle swaying and as I wondered what this was all about, the melody and words took shape:

"How many roads must a man walk down,

Before they call him a man..."

The crowd went chillingly quiet. Beer orders were abandoned mid-sentence as all eyes turned to the stage and all hearts looked inward. We all came together at that point--band, audience and employees; the stoned and the un-stoned; the old and the new. We could feel a new energy with us there under the stars, and we all recognized that something beyond our control was happening... Dylan, who had been growling his song lyrics almost unintelligibly up to now, gently coaxed the old familiar "Blowin' in the Wind" melody from his pipes and I was overcome.

I turned to the people next to me-maybe to ground myself: the couple to my right was locked close together, staring into each other's eyes and the middle-aged woman on the other side of me was quietly weeping. I thought of reaching over to comfort her as the tears rolled down her cheek, but couldn't think of anything to say.

"Blowin' in the Wind" conjured up visions of my childhood: Walter Cronkite narrating the Vietnam War; protestors shouting "The whole world's watching...the whole world's watching..." while the Chicago Police blasted them with fire hoses and beat them with billy-clubs. Dylan had summoned the ghosts of Martin Luther King and the Kennedys; of Greenwich Village, Saigon and Selma, Alabama; the hippies and the Beats, the Hawks and the Doves, the lifeless legions of the counter-culture and the dead progenitors of change...They were all with us there, bearing witness to this timeless anthem of America.

I had a crystal-clear revelation that everything that I believed to be true was in fact not true; that reality was only perception, and different for everyone. Just as Dylan had re-shaped this song, I re-shaped my understanding of my life experience, and I changed in that instant into a wiser, but weaker, man. I've had several life-altering moments like this over the years--moments after which nothing is ever the same again, and the universe looks different from that point forward--but never a collective moment, one that was shared with 5,000 other people....

When it was over the crowd stood up and roared like a giant human sound machine, and Dylan left the stage.

After five minutes of pandemonium he came back and played "All Along the Watchtower"; all wild and electric like the Hendrix version. The crowd wanted more, but by that time the tour buses had driven up close to the stage. I left my seat and stood near a fence by the edge of the amphitheater, where Dylan would walk down a cement ramp to his tour bus. While the crowd screamed for more, Dylan sauntered down the ramp with a raven-haired woman who was dressed like a gypsy fortune-teller. Behind him, in a flying wedge, walked his band and a coterie of beefy security guards. He was only about ten feet away when a woman near me shouted "We love you! We love you!" but Dylan didn't look over. He and the fortune-teller entered one bus and the band filed into another. In five minutes they were gone.

I'm still trying to figure out what happened that night. I still don't know if Dylan actually summoned the ghosts of yesteryear or if it was just the collective will of 5,000 people yearning to have their life explained to them--to find some order in the chaos. The questions that Dylan put forth in Blowin' in the Wind some forty-five years ago are still unanswered, and may remain so....

I know that I had been in the company of rock royalty-a living piece of artistic history, and that somehow, inexplicably, I had become part of that history. I had experienced magic--a spiritual experience like no other...and I know that this was undoubtedly the best concert of 2007.

Set List

1.Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob on electric guitar)

2.It Ain't Me, Babe (Bob on electric guitar)

3.I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (Bob on electric guitar)

4.It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
(Bob on electric guitar, Donnie on violin)

5.Workingman's Blues #2 (Bob on keyboard)

6.Rollin' And Tumblin' (Bob on keyboard, Donnie on electric mandolin)

7.Boots Of Spanish Leather (Bob on keyboard and harp, Donnie on violin)

8.Lonesome Day Blues (Bob on keyboard)

9.Desolation Row (Bob on keyboard and harp, Donnie on electric mandolin)

10.Highway 61 Revisited (Bob on keyboard)

11.Spirit On The Water (Bob on keyboard and harp)

12.Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
(Bob on keyboard and harp)

13.Ain't Talkin' (Bob on keyboard, Donnie on violin)

14.Summer Days (Bob on keyboard)

15.Blowin' In The Wind (Bob on keyboard, Donnie on violin)

(encore)

16. Thunder On The Mountain (Bob on keyboard)

17. All Along The Watchtower (Bob on keyboard)