Bob Dylan‘s June 29 show at the Moody Amphitheater in Austin was supposed to just be a standard stop on a long tour that’s scheduled to run through the end of the year. But after guitarist Doug Lancio left the band two weeks ago, replacement Julian Lage had a prior commitment in Brooklyn that night, and second guitarist Bob Britt suddenly quit the group with a “Sayonara Bobby” Facebook post a couple of days earlier, nobody knew who may be joining Dylan, bassist Tony Garnier, and drummer Anton Fig that night.
In the fan community, speculation ran wild: Might Jimmie Vaughan step into the void? Would Lancio return? Was there any chance that a beloved past member of Dylan’s group like Larry Campbell or G.E. Smith would come back for an encore run? Was there a scenario where Dylan, Garnier, and Fig play as a Ben Folds Five-style trio? Could Britt pull a reverse “sayonara” and come back to help Dylan out of his jam? And would Dylan have just one guitarist in the band for the first time since the John Jackson days of 1991, or might we see the debut of two new members?
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The answer came when the lights dimmed and Chicago-based blues guitarist Joel Paterson walked onto the stage to make his debut with Dylan’s band, and faced the difficult task of handling all of the guitar parts by himself. Paterson is hardly a household name, but he has a long history on the Chicago blues scene and has recorded with Dave “Honey Boy” Edwards, Wanda Jackson, Cactus Blossoms, and JD McPherson.
Up until this week, Paterson played every Monday with his jazz quartet at the historic Green Mill Cocktail Lounge in Chicago, which seats just about 150 people. He last performed there Saturday, June 27, two days before his debut with Dylan. Hours before Paterson made his debut with Dylan, his Joel Paterson Quartet bandmate Natalie Scharf wrote on Facebook that he’d be absent from the Monday gig for the next two or three weeks, and guitarist Andy Brown would take his place. She didn’t mention that he was about to play “All Along the Watchtower” and 15 other songs with Dylan at a 5,000-seat amphitheater in Austin.
According to early fan reports, Paterson did a stellar job with Dylan, and seemed remarkably confident. It’s unclear how much time he had to prepare for the gig, or when he learned that Britt wouldn’t be up there to help him. It’s also unclear how familiar he was with Dylan’s music, but he did play pedal steel on four Dylan songs (“If Not for You,” “To Ramona,” “When to See the Gypsy,” and “Tell Me That It Isn’t True”) on the 2022 Cactus Blossoms EP Bob Dylan Songs Vol. 1.
Not long before showtime, Britt posted a more detailed explanation of his exit from Dylan’s band on Facebook. “Apparently there are quite a few threads out there with people speculating about my departure from the Bob tour,” he wrote. “I’d like to clear it up. I was not fired but left of my own accord for reasons I would prefer to keep private. I will miss my band mates and crew. I am looking forward to getting back to doing sessions (give me a call) and also finishing up [my wife] Etta’s gospel record. As far as any touring goes, we will see what the future holds. Meanwhile, I have some flower beds to weed.”
He hasn’t written anything else, but his wife has revealed slightly more on her Facebook page. “Yes, but not because of Julian [Lage],” Etta wrote when asked if Bob left the band. “Julian has gone back to his tour. He enjoyed playing with him and said he’s a great guy.” Later in the comment thread, she wrote “word is he’s coming back” in reference to Lage.
We have also learned that Lage indeed plans on playing additional dates with Dylan this year when his schedule permits. He couldn’t make the show in Austin because he was booked at National Sawdust in Brooklyn for an hourlong Q&A with The New Yorker’s Alec Wilkinson, followed by an acoustic performance. Throughout the entire event, Dylan’s name was never uttered once. It seemed to take place in an alternate universe where Lage didn’t just wrap up a surprise stint with one of the most important artists of the century. (I was in the front row and put my hand high into the air during the Q&A portion. I was going to ask a multipart question that went something like, “You just spent a couple of weeks on tour with Bob Dylan. How did that come about, what was the experience like, and do you plan on going back?” But they never called on me. I felt like Tracy Flick in Election, desperately trying to get the attention of the teacher and failing miserably.)
Dylan’s tour resumes Tuesday night in New Braunfels, Texas. The U.S. leg wraps up Aug. 1 in Nashville. Lage’s schedule makes it possible for him to make every show besides the July 4 gig in Kansas City, Missouri. Things get trickier when Dylan goes to Europe in October, since Lage is booked up solid that month in America.
Nobody knows exactly how this will play out. Paterson could be a temporary replacement and will soon be back to his Monday-night gig at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge. He might stick around as the sole guitarist. Dylan might hire a replacement for Britt, keep Paterson on a permanent basis, and return to the standard two-guitar lineup. Lage might parachute in and out when his schedule allows, leaving Paterson to handle the show by himself some nights.
We simply have no idea. What we can say is that the Never Ending Tour hasn’t seen this much drama in a very long time.
Courtesy of Martin Garrix
Louis Van Baar*
Courtesy Photo
Courtesy Photo
Liam Payne (left) and Harry Styles of One Direction onstage during the 2013 American Music Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on Nov. 24, 2013
Harry Styles Finds the Right Words on Liam Payne Tribute Song
For the past seven weeks, Harry Styles has reserved two minutes at each of his Madison Square Garden shows to reflect on the last time he gathered this many people in this room. Four years have passed since he performed 15 record-breaking nights at the venue during his Love on Tour. Now, every night at the new Together, Together shows, which span 30 nights at MSG, he acknowledges that “a lot of life happened to me and landed on me in ways that maybe it hadn’t before.”
Styles doesn’t usually go into much more detail; he typically just describes those in-between years as “a great reminder for me of just how wonderful and beautiful, difficult and inspiring, and also how fragile a life can be.” He encourages the audience to look around at each other and celebrate the community they’ve built together. Then he dives into “Sign of the Times.” It happens every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday like clockwork. But when he delivered this speech on Friday, Oct. 16, there was a shift. It didn’t conclude in its usual way.
Instead, Styles turned his attention to the banner commemorating his 15 consecutive nights at the Garden in 2022. “It means a lot to be able to look up there at my name up there from the last tour,” he said. “There are so many people, friends and people that I’ve worked with, that I would’ve never been able to do this without.” Two years ago, he continued, he lost one of those pillars. Friday’s show fell on the same day as the second anniversary of the death of Liam Payne, a loss that time has not made it easier to acknowledge. “I’m sure a lot of you have been through something similar,” Styles said. “I hope you haven’t.”
A frequent assessment of Styles, both among his fans and those who’ve only encountered him at a distance, is that he often talks at length before getting to the point. He recognizes it himself on the Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally song “Coming Up Roses,” where he sings about fumbling his words. But recently, comments about his long-winded way of speaking have started to feel like purposeful misreadings. There are clear and carefully considered thoughts present between his starts and stops. Anyone truly listening will pick up on those threads.
Styles cut himself off a few times during his speech on Friday. He tried to talk for a second about looking after each other, and repeated his point about the banner and the people who’ve supported him. He never mentions Payne by name, instead referring to him as a friend, which somehow became a point of criticism from some fans. The context is clear enough. Still, he seems to know it’s a gamble to expect understanding, especially when the conversation grows more complex and personal.
After about a minute and a half, Styles figured it best to show us what he means rather than tell us. “I’m gonna sing a song I wrote two years ago for my friend,” he said before premiering “Wise Enough.” The sullen tribute to Payne settled the room into a cool near-silence, punctured by quiet gasps and muffled crying. It was beautiful, devastating, and deeply exposing to watch Styles share his grief with 20,000 people in the best, and maybe only, way he knows how.
Earlier this year, Styles told Zane Lowe about the acute dread surrounding the expected performance of his mourning. “Full transparency, even the idea of talking about it, I struggle with that a little bit. There was a period when he passed away where I really struggled with acknowledging how strange it is to have people own part of your grief, in a way,” he said. “I have such strong feelings around my friend passing away. And then suddenly being aware there’s maybe a desire from other people of you to convey that in some way, or it means you’re not feeling what you’re feeling.”
Artists often describe the act of sharing new music as a change in ownership, something that is no longer their own once it has been handed over to an audience. “Wise Enough” feels protected from this. It would be confounding to see Styles ever record and release it in any official capacity. The song is openhearted in a way that exposes deep scars, anxious in a way that worries and fidgets about time and how it passes, and inconsolable in a way that doesn’t make the futile attempt to fight through anger, regret, or sadness.
“I can tell you what it’s like to bury friends on Wednesday nights/Gather in a garden around the fire,” Styles sings in a particularly cutting verse on the song, which concludes with an honest admission: “I’m not wise enough to call for a conversation/And then back it up, right?/Like you’re in the sky.”
Celebrity doesn’t obscure grief. It doesn’t come with a script for what to say when someone is sorry for your loss, or when they recollect their own version of the person you knew. No one really has the right words for these moments. Over the weekend, fans debated whether “Wise Enough” is actually titled “What Is Enough?” Styles introduced the record so briskly it was hard to decipher. The question of adequacy feels similarly impossible to answer.
Grief is so plain in how universal it is, but so complex in how and when it chooses to present itself. It can be policed only as much as it can be predicted, which is to say barely at all. That Styles let us into his now yearslong search for some semblance of understanding — knowing how his words have been picked apart before for far lesser things — shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Styles never acknowledges that banner at MSG. It’s not for lack of gratitude — he cried when it was unveiled. But the point he has reiterated every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday since the end of August is that the achievement is something that must be shared because he couldn’t have done it alone. He talks about being on stage as if what happens in that room exists far beyond and outside of himself, something that endures even in his absence.
It’s true in a way. There’s muscle memory tied to the music. It’s in the spinning, dizzying way fans dance to “Satellite,” or the way they wildly kick their feet and make the building shake during “Kiwi,” a song he brought back to the set just for New York. It’s just like before, but still so different.
Friday night continued as usual after “Wise Enough.” Styles belted out “Sign of the Times” in the sobering way he always does, then “Aperture” let in a cathartic flood of strobing lights and pulsating beats. The emotional whiplash took physical form as fans consoled one another, holding out their hands to help up friends and strangers who crumbled to the floor at the conclusion of the tribute. Some were crushed by their memories of loving One Direction, and the care they hold in their hearts for Styles. Some were just as wrecked by their own personal losses.
A lot of life and loss can happen in four years, as Styles says each night. For some people who were at MSG on Friday, there are friends present in their memories from the last tour who are missing from the new ones they’re making. The lyric “You dance until you’re tired/No, you don’t, and now you never will/Will you?” surfaces their own devastation completely separate from what inspired Styles to sprawl those words on a page. How do you dance to “Aperture” — the beating heart of this show in its declaration that “we belong together” — after hearing something like that?
You take the hand of the friend or the stranger who pulled you from the ground and use it to lead each other back to the dance floor. When Styles talks about community and stresses the importance of caring for one another each night, he reminds everyone of the fragility of a moment, and urges them to cherish every second they get. To dance wildly and sing loudly and wrap their arms around each other. To hold tight to what’s here right now.
It’s all any of us have, so it has to be enough.