Bob Dylan in Indiana
A long-lost sketch from a memorable show
It’s time to share another Bob Dylan adventure, and although this one is brief, it was a fun discovery for me. You see, all these old comics I wrote in the late 90s - early 2000s were recorded in a series of sketchbooks called “The Drawing Book.” But at the time of this particular Bob Dylan show (late 2001), I was between books. I didn’t have a drawing book! I just had a little looseleaf notebook that I brought along and sketched these two pictures in. For some reason, those two pages got ripped out and lost among many old sketchbook pages stored in my basement. I only rediscovered them a while ago, when I was digging through old boxes. I remembered this trip - I stayed in an old wooden house in a field full of flowers. But I hadn’t remembered the drawings I made.
I don’t have a vivid memory of this show, but I remember that the band played Rank Strangers To Me, a cover tune that’s surely one of the highlights of Dylan’s album Down in the Groove. Looking at the Bobserve website, it looks like this was one of only 27 performances of that song (and this one was the last one).
And I also remember that Dylan played John Brown, the only time I heard him sing that song. (I don’t see a recording of that performance online, but here’s one from another show around the same time.) But if you don’t know that song, you probably want to start with an older version from the 1960s like this one. It’s a powerful anti-war story, and I actually just played it for my ten-year-old son the other day, because he was reading a historical novel about the first world war. (He liked the song!)
You can see the whole set list of that 2001 Terre Haute show here. But here’s the picture that I discovered in my old box of papers. I really like the way it says a lot about the band at that time. The band members are all watching Bob, and Bob is just doing his thing. The Charlie Sexton/Larry Campbell harmonies on Rank Strangers to Me are what I remember about that show.
I noticed that it says “Bob Dylan” in messy handwriting along the neck of Dylan’s guitar - I wonder if that was really written there, or why I wrote it?
Terre Haute in 1978
Back in those days, Dylan was well known for playing lots of shows in small or midsized cities all over the place. After looking at these old pictures, I wondered how often he’d played in Terre Haute. Thanks to the Bobserve website, I see that Dylan only ever played one other show in Terre Haute, way back in 1978. I just took a look at the set list and… wow! Not only did he play 27 songs (!), there are some really great ones. First of all, Stepchild, a song I was hardly aware of (the link goes to an article on the Untold Dylan website that talks a little bit about the song), but also one of those very rare performances of Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat), which was only ever performed in 1978! Back in January when I had the pleasure of talking about Where Are You Tonight on the late, great podcast Pod Dylan, I didn’t even know that any of those 1978 renditions were out there, but I’ve since discovered that they are (here’s one)!
Oh, and the closing number of that 1978 Terre Haute show: Changing of the Guards. An incredible, mysterious, magical tune. That’s one I would have really liked to hear live. You see, there was this movie I seen [sic] one time, and it was called Last Night. (A good old Canadian movie.) In the movie, the end of the world is nigh, and everyone is scrambling to figure out what they should do during those last few hours. On an earlier page of The Drawing Book, I wrote down a few suggestions for what I’d do. Here was one of them:
Yeah, any of those song choices would be good ones. What do you think?
The world might not be ending, but these days, it sure feels like there is a lot of bad news. Rediscovering old Bob Dylan comics and sharing them with you, is one of the things that’s bringing me joy in these times. Thanks for reading!