Bob Dylan’s summer US tour, winding up this weekend in Nashville, has its own title, after 30 years of being the Never Ending Tour and another five years of the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour to coincide with the 2020 album of the same name that’s dominated shows ever since.
The 2026 two-month swing, which stopped last weekend at Wolf Trap in Virginia, is titled “The Long Hot Summer Tour” and has been both. But it’s been more notable for its sudden, largely unexplained change of guitarists. Bob Britt, who has been playing with Dylan since 2019, disappeared after a June 26 show in Albuquerque (he wasn’t fired, he said, but he hasn’t said much more). Second guitarist Doug Lancio, who has been part of Dylan’s band since 2021, left even earlier, after a pair of shows in Berkeley the second week in June.
These are not unimportant roles, since Dylan himself inexplicably gave up guitar for keyboards on tour about 2002 (because of arthritis? To better orchestrate the band? I’m thinking it’s also been easier for him to refer to lyrics when they’re sitting on his console rather than on the floor).
Of the newbies, Chicagoan Joel Paterson, a lanky, respected player whose most regular gig has been Mondays at the Green Mill there, took over solo for a week at the end of June, before being joined by a New York-based jazz player Julian Lage, who was on a half dozen dates through mid-July, but apparently had his own quartet gigs booked already, some of them internationally. So the latest addition to the guitarist lineup has been Memphis-based Jad Tariq, for whom the July 24 Wolf Trap gig was only his fifth appearance.
Like their predecessors, the two were tasty but unflashy accompanists, who worked as well together on their hollow-body guitars as they did with their demanding bandleader, providing elegant enhancement all evening, filling in on the edges with solos, soulful riffs, inspired interplay, or ready twangs as needed.
As much as they contributed, neither took the spotlight, figuratively or literally, as there were hardly any spotlights at all. In the new configuration, Dylan’s piano work seemed more prominent than in the recent past, with inventive variations on the melody occasionally shifting to the repetitive triangular patterns he favored on guitars in the ’80s tours.
Overall, the sound was sharp enough to hear all of these things, with Dylan’s vocals discernible on top of it. Holding it together with authority was longtime (since 1989) mainstay Tony Garnier on electric and occasional standup bass, which he’d sometimes bow to add a dramatic undertow. (On drums, repeating last year’s stint, it was great to see Anton Fig, familiar from his nearly 30 years in David Letterman’s band. Wearing his trademark tam, Fig’s set was placed to extreme stage left—leaving Dylan, or at least his shadow, precisely in the middle of the perpetually dim-lit stage.
I had always suspected the sound at amphitheaters, particularly at Wolf Trap, was better on the lawn than under the roof of the barn. And there was no reason to be in the seats anyway, since seeing the band is not the point of these shows at all, with low-watt klieg lights, some of them pointing out into the audience, purposely obscuring the musicians. Phone use was verboten (but not locked up). The visuals were not the point.
And the sound was indeed pristine on the lawn, washing over the summer night’s crowd on their blankets and coolers. Video screens that usually brought closeups to the farflug were working, though there was some agreement that the fixed picture wouldn’t be any closer up than what you could see from the back of the barn. Thanks to the mechanics of video cameras, however, the screens were a tad brighter such that you could actually tell, for example, which guitarist was taking the solo.
While he doesn’t vary the set as much as he once did (and it would be tough to do with new hires trying to learn 700 songs), Dylan still tells a story with his setlist. For the first of the two Wolf Trap nights, he began with “Watching the River Flow” (and not because of its opening question, “What’s the matter with me?”). Rather, he’s presenting himself as kicking back, which he seemed to be doing, enjoying regularly playing music on summer nights.
He’s still trying to shake off those that would put him on a pedestal as a kind of generational seer, declaring “It Ain’t Me Babe” in one of just two selections from his enviable 1960s catalog; stating “I ain’t no false prophet” in “False Prophet”; and assuring his own humble aims (“Tryin’ to Get to Heaven”).
That he didn’t reach deep into his own catalog didn’t mean he didn’t dig deeper into musical history, like the crate-digging DJ he briefly was. This summer’s oldie obscurities were all delightful additions—Bo Diddley’s 1962 blues standard “I Can Tell,” Jerry Lee Lewis country ballad B-side “I’ll Make It All Up to You,” written by Charlie Rich; and particularly the melodic Bobby “Blue” Bland 1964 lament “Share Your Love With Me,” better known from Aretha Franklin’s 1969 cover. Even the Dylan songs you recognized were often given radical remakes, none more than the sly rhumba that “When I Paint My Masterpiece” has become.
Whatever you think of his voice, Dylan still has a way with phrasing and a knack for melody or counter-melody he spontaneously produces. He had his own melodic obscurity to share, the title track from his 1990 album, Under the Red Sky, during which, as in all of these, the band conjured a quietly rollicking mood.
Also from that era, early in the set was the nuanced menace of “The Man in the Long Black Coat.” And what of this man in his own long white hoodie? Why was he returning to the garment that marked his ’80s shows, further shielding his head from scrutiny on a night that didn’t require such covering? Because it was about the music. Not about the presentation, or the patter (there was none, not even band introductions, which were actually needed). But the music.
And it was all that one would expect from an 85-year legend, never resting on or even hinting at his laurels. I couldn’t tell what the crowd felt about it. They applauded, apparently pleased, but never stood, and some quietly began to leave long before the final “I Shall Be Released,” when he also accompanied himself with harmonica for the first time. But the crowd both seemed to know what they were in for, and dug it accordingly.
The Wolf Trap shows also benefited from short, but solid seven-song sets from a pair of openers. One, Lucinda Williams, could probably command her own usual headlining show (and indeed will do so again in the area in the fall), but was glad to be on the bill if only to be allied with such a musical hero.
It was a strong set from a woman still recovering from a 2020 stroke. She’s still not playing guitar, but she’s standing tall, holding on to the microphone stand for dear life as she stayed glued to her teleprompter of lyrics. Her voice sounded good and she had an abundance of great guitarists as usual—both mainstay Doug Pettibone and ex-Black Crowe Marc Ford.
Williams had the political situation on her mind, performing the title song to her topical World’s Gone Wrong and songs like “You Can’t Rule Me” and a concluding cover of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” that allowed a flashy workout for the guitarists whose styles were almost the opposite of the restrained players of the headliner.
A fine guitarist on his own, Jimmie Vaughan (who has played on Under the Red Sky) opened with his band The Tilt-a-Whirls, augmented by the Texas horns. A big sound, announcing this would be a party. In addition to his own sly blues tunes, he brought back the “Texas Flood,” his brother made his own, and showcased his own guitar-playing talents even further by playing solos for “The Crawl” with his instrument behind his head. He grimaced, not because it was hard for him to play, but maybe because it was getting hard to stretch that way at 75.
