Tuesday Night Music Club

Dylan Night didn't just happen. It took over two years of planning to do absolutely nothing, two years of big talk about what we would do and small talk diminishing skills to keep pushing the date back, two years of refining the vision, two years of naysayers like me saying that it wouldn't happen. In the end, sheer force of will overwhelmed collective self-doubt. Whose will? Well, Bob Dylan's, of course.

Last Tuesday night, Dylan Night finally happened. Set, due to circumstances, exactly one week after Dylan's 70th birthday, this gathering of stumbling, but intrepid, musical travelers may be best left alone so that it can be embellished by history, but oh, the feelings are too fresh. And good.

I promise you, dear readers, this is not to be some "you really had to be there" or even, "sucks that you weren't there," insider story. Yes, there were a few BOTG regulars there, Trout King providing the main impetus for the event, in fact, but the beauty of the evening depended not on the talents of the three core "musicians," but on the vibe. This is an homage to the glories of live music, a genre made even more glorious when you get to be one of the participants.

If one of the musical "proofs" of my life is that it is always worth it to make the effort to go see live music, then a long-forgotten "corollary" to that proof is that it is worth even more effort to try to play it:

The Band
Steve, guitar and vocals
Bob, guitar and vocals (and harmonica)
Trout, keyboards
Robin, vocals
Susan, vocals
Hank, "Johnny Cash" vocals
John aka "Doaker", vocals and Dylan utterances
Paco, guitar and vocals
John2, tentative guitar
Randy, tentative harmonica
Ann, vocals
Wolf, walking personification of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"

See, here's why the vision for the event needed constant retooling. The original idea was that three of us would get together, figure out a core of songs, each of us chipping in two or three favorites, and put on a show as the highlight of an evening. It was to be a big event for awhile. It was to be a fundraiser for awhile. There was only one problem. Well, two. We aren't very good and we aren't inclined to get together to practice.

And we knew it. So the tension between a) we've really got to get these songs down and b) we're probably not good enough to put on a show proved to be self-cancelling for the longest time. It's only when, very recently, somebody realized, hey, the performance is the party, and the partygoers are the performers, that the idea took off. A smaller group of Dylan aficionados and other hangers-on and everybody part of it. I know it sounds hokey and hippified, but it worked.

I like to think of it as a hootenanny, a concept I've always despised, until I found the photograph at the left.

I'm not sure that I can convey the joy of a bunch of people, average age 44, sitting around singing and playing in front of other people! It just isn't something that happens for the average jane and joe heading deep into the latter stages of adulthood. Too old to rock and roll, too young to die, and all of that. The embarassment! The shame! The what-if-somebody-hears-my-wrong-chord-or-botched-note? All of that fell quickly by the wayside.

What took over was the power of the Dylan songs, enhanced by the "hymnal" Trout put together and the batch of equipment that Steve brought to make us a bit louder, if not better, the low country boil and the pasties (no, not those kind) and the other snacks, but most of all, those songs, songs old enough that everybody has their own journey with them, songs just easy enough that somebody in the group could take charge of each one.

The Songs
"Baby, Let Me Follow You Down"
"Just Like A Woman (rehearsal)"
"Everything' s Broken"
"Positively Fourth Street"
"Girl From The North Country"
"Don't Think Twice It's Alright"
"All Along The Watchtower"
"Knockin' On Heaven's Door"
"Tangled Up In Blue" (encore?)
"Like A Rolling Stone" (encore?)
"Rockin' In The Free World" (abortive segue into the "Neil Night"?)

All I know is that we'll be doing it again. The positive energy was too strong. Neil, Mick, Bruce, Jerry had better look out. The song butchers are headed their way, and we aren't taking prisoners, are we! What? You say you aren't coming? Oh, yes, you will. I've got you on tape. And I've got a blog to post it on.

Just remember: if you can't sing, it doesn't matter what key the song is in.