Bob Dylan Night
Lyric Theatre, QPAC
07.07.2012
For legendary American troubadour Bob Dylan, 2012 marks 50 years since Columbia Records issued his self-debut back in 1962. In the interceding years, of course, he has gone on to release a further astonishing 34 studio albums, 13 live albums, 14 compilation albums and the 9 stellar live ‘bootleg’ recordings that have been much lauded.
The first time I really listened to Dylan was sometime in the early 90s. I happened across a reissue of his seminal second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and was drawn to its now iconic cover image: Dylan and his then-girlfriend Suze Rotolo striding arm-in-arm down a snowy New York City street. I took it home and played it over and over again, transfixed by the poetry of Dylan’s lyrics and a singing voice unlike anything I’d ever heard before.
Dylan is, unquestionably, the most important songwriter of his generation and one of the greatest of all-time. His songs veer between communicating an almost childlike sense of vulnerability or glee to torrid anger, vehement rage, inconsolable heartbreak, heartache, longing and desire. They encapsulate an array of emotions and experiences so extraordinarily complex and multifaceted that one can often do little other than marvel at his sheer metamorphic genius.
In celebration of Dylan’s 50th anniversary as a recording artist, Bob Dylan Night brought together a number of Australia’s best-known contemporary singer/songwriters to pay homage to Dylan’s capacious back-catalogue of songs. Brisbane’s Josh Pyke and The Grates frontwoman Patience Hodgson joined Holly Throsby, Kevin Mitchell (of Jebediah and Bob Evans fame) and Eskimo Joe frontman Kav Temperley to spend two hours offering up finely wrought interpretations of songs that were either personal favourites or chosen, via an online poll, as the songs concertgoers most wanted to hear performed live.
The resulting setlist was one heavy on many of Dylan’s better-known songs as well as a couple of his rarities. The evening kicked off with Josh Pyke’s solo rendition of ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,’ replete with acoustic guitar and harmonica, before Holly Throsby slipped onstage to offer up a devastatingly beautiful bare bones interpretation of ‘Girl Of The North Country,’ a song that is one of Dylan’s most affecting, aching lamentations on lost love.
For this reviewer, Throsby was one of the evening’s undeniable highlights. Whether she was performing solo, as she did again on the rarely heard ‘Tomorrow Is A Long Time’ or performing duets (with Hodgson on a sublime ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ and Pyke on a similarly wonderful ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’) her hushed, emotive vocals and acoustic guitar playing were never anything other than impeccably timed, emotive and movingly, delicately resonant.
Really, though, this was a performance during which there were no missteps, be they minor or major. Each and every performer excelled whether they were singing solo or collaborating for duets or group renditions. Temperley’s powerful rock voice, with all its hard and soft edges, was especially well suited to the songs he performed – ‘It Ain’t Me Babe,’ a blistering ‘Hurricane’ and a passionate rendition of ‘All Along The Watchtower’ that was perfectly complimented by the noise distortions he coaxed from his guitar.
His performance of ‘Rainy Day Women #12 &35’ was given added life when Hodgson and Mitchell joined him onstage, brandishing tambourines and dancing exuberantly. So exuberantly, in fact, that they both eventually leapt off the stage and made their way around the theatre, dancing and banging their tambourines against their thighs the entire time. As anyone who has seen Hodgson perform will attest, she’s an absolute livewire onstage – she rarely stands still, instead preferring to dance, flailing her limbs wildly, or to jump up-and-down in time with the music.
Hodgson and Mitchell joining Temperley onstage was an example of the sort of unity and collaboration that so often made the night the success it was. Though all of the duet or trio performances were near perfectly wrought, especially memorable were the songs where Mitchell, Pyke and Temperley, who have recorded together as Basement Birds, tackled ‘I Shall Be Released’ and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man,’ simply because their vocal harmonies were so perfectly in sync as to be transcendent.
Similarly memorable was Hodgson’s aforementioned unbridled enthusiasm. More than anyone else, she surrendered herself to the music, body and soul. Whether she was singing ‘Visions of Johanna’ or ‘Positively 4th Street,’ she moved around the stage like a whirling dervish, at one point kicking off her high heels in order to “feel the bass through the stage.” Her grittier vocals were the perfect compliment to Throsby’s stunning quietude on their duet and also during her collaboration with Mitchell on ‘If Not For You.’
The evening ended with the entire group singing a rousing ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and it was a fittingly upbeat, raucous conclusion to a well conceived and brilliantly executed performance. Arguably, of course, one couldn’t go wrong with such talented musicians interpreting the songbook of somebody as phenomenally gifted and constantly evolving as Bob Dylan.
But the structure of Dylan’s songs nonetheless relies upon the people performing them uniquely understanding both the words and the melodies of which they’re comprised. Asked once to describe how he say himself, Dylan was typically non-specific and vaguely evasive: “I see myself as it all: poet, singer, songwriter, custodian, gatekeeper, all of it. I feel confined when I have to choose one or the other.”
Evans, Hodgson, Mitchell, Pyke, Throsby and Temperley, it transpired, not only intimately understood that, they turned in performances that wholly embodied that understanding and were, in their own unique ways, both representations of and homage to Dylan in every guise: poet, singer, songwriter, custodian and gatekeeper of one of the greatest musical legacies popular music will surely ever see.
Heidi Maier
