Bob Dylan put on a moving performance in Lafayette tonight that rivaled
the other show I have seen on this tour (the Davenport show from earlier
this week). While the set list was exactly the same, it felt like a fresh
show based on the shifts in performances and emphasis. This show was a
vocal showcase for Dylan and is the perfect argument against the
perception that he's unintelligible. Often backed by extremely sparse
arrangements, Bob's voice rang out clearly across all of the songs,
whether he was crooning (which he particularly did during "Goodbye Jimmy
Reed", an inspired choice), shouting (the "No No No"s on "It
Ain't Me Babe" were a highlight), or conversing with the audience
("Key West").

The Elliott Hall of Music on the Purdue campus holds just over 6,000
people, and getting that many people into their seats delayed the show by
about 15 minutes. The crowd only got one Dylan guitar part ("“It Ain't
Me Babe") but got great harmonica solos on "When I Paint My
Masterpiece", "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", and "Every Grain
of Sand." I felt like Bob's piano parts were a little toned down from
his usual fare, but that may have been a conscious choice to show off his
voice. At least some of "Black Rider", "My Own Version of You",
"To Be Alone With You", "Key West", and "Baby Blue" were
delivered with extremely minimal instrumentation to the point that you
could close your eyes and imagine it was a solo Dylan show. To be clear,
the band did a wonderful job, but it is a great throwback to hear Dylan
take a verse or more all by himself, just like in the early days.

One of the most notable aspects of this show were a couple bits of
BobTalk. After a rhythmic "Watching the River Flow", Bob declared that
they were "playing all hits tonight!" Additionally, Dylan introduced
"Goodbye Jimmy Reed" by saying "Anyone hear of Jimmy Reed? Maybe
look him up."

Some random notes: I enjoyed the little bits of funk that came through in
the bass of "False Prophet" and the drums of "Masterpiece" (which
still reminds me strongly of "Man Gave Names"), among my favorite
piano solos were the vaguely boogie woogie solo from "To Be Alone" and
the "Desolation Row" solos, and Anton threw in a military drum beat
for the part of "Mother of Muses" where Bob namechecks famous
generals.

This tour continues to astound, as Dylan is crushing it and the band is
doing an exceptional job of providing the right backing to his
performances. Bob's relentless touring of the Rough and Rowdy Ways album
has solidified its importance in his discography and every song on this
tour works. In particular, the new versions of "Desolation Row" and
"Baby Blue" (which once again brought a tear to my eye) are triumphs
that successfully breathe new life into those classic songs. If you care
enough to read reviews of Dylan shows, you owe it to yourself to catch
this tour at some point.

The adventure continues! I picked Maddy and Gary up in Chicago, where
they'd gotten to spend at least one night in a major city during this tour
of High-A and Double A minor league towns. Gary was amused to drive
through Gary, Indiana. It's been amusing to see their reaction to
buildings that vanish into clouds, farmland so flat you can probably see
Key West if you strain your neck a little, and towns name Roanoke and El
Paso that aren't the ones they'd heard of. And, of course, I had to
introduce them to Casey's General Store pizza. And, of course, it's simply
fun to explore new places and ramble around the country with other people
hear what I hear in these shows. To randomly run into people I last saw in
Nottingham, or back in Evansville. 

I have only been to Lafayette on brief stops to check out the cemetery
(where a famous long jumper is buried), drive past Axl Rose's boyhood
home, and grab a slice of pizza on the way to some other Indiana town. I'd
had the impression that it was like a much smaller version of the part of
Des Moines that needs to a new coat of paint. But that's all regular
Lafayette. West Lafayette, on the banks of the Wabash, is home to Purdue
University, a bustling downtown nightlife scene, an ungodly amount of
traffic, and a music hall that seems all out of proportion.   Elliott
Music Hall holds over 6000 people, a fraction more than Radio City Music
Hall and about three times the capacity of the venue in Peoria. It's a
mid-century place in an architectural style I believe I'd call "Indiana
Streamline Moderne," and seems about like a regular-sized theater until
you realize the other end of the aisle appears to be six miles away.  The
acoustics were great, but the crowd was very sedate. There was little
standing between songs, or even when the band came onstage (to a new
classic intro and the same lighting reveal from Peoria). There was about
the same amount of crowd reaction as an average show, but it was swallowed
up by the vast proscenium of the Elliott Music Hall.  It may be that Dylan
was bugged by the seemingly-muted response. After playing the first piano
run of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," he said "We're playing allll hits
tonight... Sure we are."

Before "Jimmy Reed," he asked "Anyone here ever heard of Jimmy Reed? Maybe
you can look him up."

Both of these lines could make it sound like Bob was annoyed, but that
didn't come through in the performance at all. In fact, he seemed both
playful and forceful all night long. It was the most consistently strong
of the past four shows, to me, if not quite as exciting as the
guitar-heavy Davenport.  Often Dylan performances of the same song will
seem to me to be telling different stories from night to night, and these
days the big ones are the back-to-back pair of "My Own Version of You" and
"To Be Alone With You."  One night in London it suddenly seemed to be that
in "To Be Alone With You" he might be singing to creature he created in
the previous song. In Peoria "To Be Alone With You" sounded like he was
taunting the "you" who'd been replaced by Bob's own version, and the "did
I kill somebody?" bit was a clear foreshadowing of what was about to
happen. Tonight in West Lafayette, he was back to singing it to the new
creation, a forceful love song. Rather than a threat, it was a brag, as
in, "Did I kill somebody? Well, sure, I had to kill a few people to get
the necessary body parts, but it's a small matter to get to be alone with
you..."

There were some new lyrics to my ears in TBAWY: "Night time is the right
time to hold each other neat / (right there down south?) / right there in
the street!"  

It was a full night of great, creative vocals, locking into new grooves
and bouncing back. Nearly every song would have been a highlight if it had
been a mostly-average show. As it was, though, it's hard to pick one
specific thing to point out, other than the Bob talk.  But there were lots
of little things to note, such as:

Bob noodling on the electric piano a bit before "Watching the River Flow."
No bonus guitar. No hat on Bob Britt.  New classical walk-on music that
sounded like a movie theme. Several songs had piano intros or outtros that
sounded like they'd been rehearsed. "Rubicon" had an extended piano intro,
"Key West" had something like an outro (and, again, some crowd reaction to
the line about the Gulf of Mexico). There was more echo effect on "Black
Rider" than I've heard in a while.  

This was a particularly strong show; the young agriculture students behind
me thought it was absolutely amazing. Some people will certainly go into
these shows expecting the hits, or something totally different than what
they're going to get, but the ones who are willing to let it roll and
judge it on its own terms will have a much better experience. Tonight,
with the great acoustics and Bob simply on fire from song to song, a
person who could just let it wash over them would probably have picked the
perfect show to to try out.  

After dropping off Maddy and Gary I met up for a pre-show with Mike and
Henry, joined by Duncan, Andy, and the famous Caroline & Kait  at a bar
that had a parking lot worse than the average Trader Joe's. Afterwards I
saw Sue, Kevin, Peter, Duncan, and Andy, and we had some adventures in
West Lafayette. Which, it turns out, is something you can do. Who knew?
The Neon Cactus looked like a good spot for a drink on the phone, but
turned out to be a massive nightclub with a mile-long line and a restless
riot squad. The Knickerbocker Saloon was more our speed - said to be the
oldest bar in Indiana. . People could have come here after Dylan played
the same venue in 1981.  Going back to the database I see that Bobtalk
that night included Dylan saying "I almost didn't recognize that myself"
after Tambourine Man, and "I murdered that song" after "It's All Right
Ma."  At other points that night he asked "Everything's all right? You
sure?" and closed with "We'll get out of here now. Remember, don't buy
nothing you can't pay for." 

I'm fascinated to see how well this 1981 Bobtalk matches the tone of talk
last night. Must be something about this cavernous hall - great acoustics,
but you can never quite tell how you're coming across from the stage. But
if that led him to push himself to get the audience to react, we all
benefited. 

Adam Selzer

Just down the road from the birthplace of Cole Porter in Peru, Indiana,
Dylan rolled into Indiana for a festive Friday night college crowd on
April 11. The sun shone brightly as the largely college aged crowd cued up
to enter the historic, 6000 seat proscenium theater. The line for the
merch table extended the width of the lower level, before and after the
show. I couldn't help but think the younger than normal audience was not
just because the venue is on the campus of Purdue University, but more
because of the success of Timothy Chalamet's performance in A Complete
Unknown. The audience was respectful throughout, but a fair amount
dribbled out in the second hour of the show, having seemingly checked the
"I've seen Dylan" box. Dylan's vocals were shaky and the sound was
thin and reedy for I'll Be Your Baby and It Ain't Me Babe, but
adjustments were made and Dylan settled in comfortably as he went into I
Contain Multitudes and False Prophet. The sound in the hall was clear,
balanced and warm throughout the rest of the show. I have to say I was
disappointed with Anton Fig's overly restrained drum work throughout the
evening. No Jerry Pentecost like flourishes or fancy drumstick twirls on
False Prophet, a personal favorite of mine in the catalog of RARW tour
staples. Every Grain of Sand was a beautiful, memorable, closer, with a
lovely extended Bob harmonica solo followed by the band's line assembly
alongside Dylan, his left hand resting on his hip, elbow out, silhouetted
in the dim stage lights. The next morning at breakfast in my nearby hotel,
overheard at the coffee station, an older man explained to his older
female companion, who appeared not as pleased as he was with last
night's performance: "he likes to play his newer material." For this
older fan, the evening was a treasure, and the RARW songs are a masterful,
perhaps final, legacy of the Shakespeare of our age. 

Peter Smith