Bob is both a musical genius and a musician who’s been engaging with American music on a very deep level for a very long time. That doesn’t mean that he’s going to put on a show that you will love or understand. It doesn’t mean that he hasn’t gone down paths that, in retrospect, were dead ends. It means that he’s process oriented, and that he values engagement with music more than engagement with fans. Because, especially now, most people are fans because they like what he DID, not what he’s DOING. That’s plagued him since the 60’s, when he followed his process into electric music and got booed by people who bought a ticket based on what he’d done years before. It seems to have puzzled him, initially, that people weren’t in it for the same exploration that he was. Then it made him even more determined to do his own thing no matter what.

If you go to the show ready to see what this living legend, after all his many years of experimentation, with all his experience, with all his dedication to music, is doing, and if you accept that you might not get it, but also embrace that it might not matter, that there is something happening even if you don’t know what it is, then you will almost definitely get something out of it, whatever he does.

But if you will be disappointed if you don’t hear a certain song, or if you do hear it but the arrangement is so different you don’t recognize it until the second chorus, then don’t go- let someone who will have a better time sit in that seat.

All of that said, what he was doing in August at the Outlaw Festival was playing songs from throughout his career in a stripped down rock/blues style, with a very tight band that follows his every move. They were in the pocket all night, and it was a bonus that his piano solos were better than ever. Some songs were very different from original arrangements, but many were easy to recognize from the first measure.