Early Friday night, about an hour earlier than showtime, a squall rolled in off the Atlantic and up Las Olas Boulevard to the patio of the sold-out Au-Rene Theater on the Broward Middle for the Performing Arts. The skies opened up, briefly chasing early arrivals sipping their rum-and-Cokes and Pommery Pink Pops off the patio.
That symbolic ten-minute downpour was the one introduction the night time’s star attraction required or obtained earlier than the home lights dimmed at little previous 8 and the large curtain rose to disclose the Voice of His Technology, who — the great Lord keen and the creek do not rise — will flip 83 in Might.
Having laid off his Tough and Rowdy Methods Tour since early December, Bob Dylan is spending spring break working in Florida this 12 months, starting with a two-show parlay in Fort Lauderdale March 1-2.
On opening night time, together with his six-piece band arrayed throughout the in any other case naked stage, Dylan launched right into a pair of his Nineteen Sixties classics, “Watching the River Stream” and “Most Seemingly You Go Your Approach (and I will Go Mine).” Most definitely, that bluesy opening one-two punch would ring acquainted to audiences who’ve attended earlier dates on this tour, which started in late 2021. So would almost all the 90-minute, no-intermission, no-encore set — save for one shock about two-thirds of the best way by means of.
The band was clad principally in black, Dylan himself uncharacteristically hatless and showing exceptionally diminutive, with all however his head framed by the glowing nimbus of his frizzy hair, all however hid by a closed child grand piano entrance and heart, behind which he perched.
True to kind, he carried out each monitor from 2020’s Tough and Rowdy Methods save for, understandably, the 17-minute epic “Homicide Most Foul.” Interspersed between these 9 preparations have been six entries from the artist’s prodigious again catalogue and the aforementioned Easter egg: a boogie-woogie-style cowl of “Strolling by Myself,” a minor hit in 1956 for the sadly obscure bluesman Jimmy Rogers (to not be confused with famed “Father of Nation Music” Jimmie Rodgers).
He rose from the piano bench for elements or all of only some numbers, together with “Crossing the Rubicon,” one of many night time’s a number of highlights, which propelled the previous grasp to his toes, the place he stood, knock-kneed, pounding away on the keyboard like some geriatric Little Richard, as if he have been again within the Hibbing Excessive Faculty auditorium making an attempt to wow the bobby soxers within the Eisenhower Period.
After all, he does not must attempt to impress anybody today. And the setlist however, a Bob Dylan present is and at all times has been an train in improvisation. By no means identified for his musicianship, he is no virtuoso on the piano — extra like an summary expressionist, leaving it to his band to are likely to the melody whereas he follows his personal peculiar muse.
So it was final night time in Fort Lauderdale, particularly on Tough and Rowdy‘s a number of jazz-inflected tracks, all of which suffered from the acoustics within the hovering live performance corridor, which muddled the overamplified proceedings and worn out any semblance of subtlety in Dylan’s famously less-than-enunciated supply.
Usually, the night was a matter of the rowdier, the higher, peaking with “Gotta Serve Any person,” a music from Dylan’s Christian interval that gained him a Grammy in 1980. Right here it bought a rollicking gospel therapy that was enough to encourage one retiree sitting near the entrance, who’d clapped her fingers and rocked with nothing in need of ecstasy to all of the blues tunes, to bust out the full-on air guitar.
“Goodbye Jimmy Reed” (which, amongst a number of nice double entendres, accommodates the good “I can not play the file ‘trigger my needle bought caught” ) impressed extra of the identical earlier than Dylan, briefly and with out ceremony, launched his band and closed with “Each Grain of Sand,” disappointingly delivered at his piano-poundingest, robbing the music of its core spirituality however bringing the group to its toes, which stomped for a time with adoration and the useless hope for an encore that will not materialize.
Rome to Brussels, Salt Lake Metropolis to Birmingham, Fort Lauderdale to Key West, throughout the Rubicon, for 90 minutes Dylan has come to take you with him in the event you select to go.
Notice: Many devotees are already conscious of the drill, and the venue made it clear in emails despatched to ticketholders within the days main as much as the present: Dylan now prohibits the usage of cellphones throughout his exhibits and enforces the ban through an outfit referred to as Yondr that locks your telephone, stock control-style, in a pouch once you enter, fingers it again to you, and frees it once you depart (or in an emergency). However not everybody’s a devotee, and Yondr staff needed to do lots of well mannered explaining on the door. (Not all the crew members are devotees, both; in an try and make dialog, one inquired, “He wrote ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ proper?”)
Setlist: – “Watching the River Stream” – “Most Seemingly You Go Your Approach (and I will Go Mine)” – “I Include Multitudes” – “False Prophet” – “Once I Paint My Masterpiece” – “Black Rider” – “My Personal Model of You” – “Crossing the Rubicon” – “To Be Alone With You” – “Key West (Thinker Pirate)” – “Gotta Serve Any person” – “I’ve Made Up My Thoughts to Give Myself to You” – “Mom of Muses” – “Strolling by Myself” (music by Jimmy Rogers) – “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” – “Each Grain of Sand”
Personnel: Bob Dylan – piano Tony Garnier – electrical and standup bass Jerry Pentecost – drums Bob Britt – acoustic and electrical guitar Doug Lancio – acoustic and electrical guitar Donnie Herron – pedal metal, lap metal, electrical mandolin, violin
