You, In Weird Cities: Bob Dylan in Youngstown

A travelogue and review

Every place I've ever lived, every third person you meet is from Ohio. Ohio is where America is from. I've found that everyone there either high-tails it out as fast as their little legs can carry them, or else they stay firmly in place and insist that the restaurants in Sweet Apple are just as good as the ones in New York. The state is positively replete with the sort of towns this Dylan tour is hitting; it's amazing that the only towns in the state on the agenda are Toledo and Youngstown. Like John Denver, I spent a week in Toledo one night, and it was that night that led me to judge a city by whether, on a Saturday night, one has to watch both ways before crossing the street. Most towns I've been to on this tour, you don't. In Youngstown, you might have to wait at a light now and then. It was kind of like Davenport, but with more allergens and fewer hotels.

As I drove my rental car from Cleveland, I looked up all the songs about Youngstown. None of them were promising. The best known, of course, is Springsteen's, which portrays it as less desirable than Hell. Even the Peoria songs were more positive than that. Even John Denver's Toledo song is more positive, in fact. I ran out of Youngstown songs pretty quickly and ended up listening to a country station where every song was about small towns and/or alcohol (really, all of them), but the signal got into Youngstown proper. It was fairly typical of the towns this tour - the sort of place with a lower-level minor league baseball team and a college, and a downtown with a good block or two of cool places.

I met up with Britt Eisnor, whom I'd known on social media for a while (where she's one of the most entertaining new Bob obsessives), and we wandered around looking for adventure and coffee - like most towns this tour, finding coffee after 3pm is a trick. After this tour (and the UK, where nobody has regular coffee), I honestly think that every time I buy tickets for a show the local chamber of commerce gets together and makes sure every place that sells coffee closes a minute before I get roll in, just to mock me and my snobby city slicker ways. Tour after tour, all occasions inform against me.

We finally found some at a restaurant in downtown Youngstown's lone hotel, which had a bust of the Godfather Brando right near a picture of the Scarface Pacino. It was a cool old building, with art deco "S" symbols on the elevators which show it wasn't always a Doubletree. No one in the place seemed to know what it used to be, but a big historical marker outside identified it as the Stambaugh Building.

Nearly every place we passed in town was closed (even Acme Bonding, which certainly sounds like a front), but there was still some adventure to be had: outside of the courthouse a crowd of a few hundred had gathered for an anti-fascism rally. It was full of great people and a lot of Bob fans - between speakers they were playing Dylan's greatest hits. It was a fine way to spend the day of a Bob show. A woman named Daphne and I swapped stories of the 90s NYC goth scene, and a woman named Kathy pointed out the motto engraved on a tablet of stone on the courthouse: "A nation cannot outlive justice. Where law ends tyranny begins."

Here in this historical mining town, where James and Danny Easton found the ore that was lining Yellow Creek in 1803 (per Bruce), people sure seem to dislike the rich clown who wants everyone to get out of the office and back into productive careers mining and refining materials, but without unions, so we can make him rich enough to forget our names. The size of the protest here warmed my heart almost as much as when i took a busload of Michigan teenagers around New York a couple of weeks ago and they booed every Cybertruck we passed.

Elsewhere, Britt and I tracked down a couple of possible record shops (both closed), tried a couple of places that looked like they might have restrooms (all closed), and had syrupy cocktails with Kait and her husband at a wine bar.

Outside the venue (which had a charming marquee that reminded me of an 80s high school scoreboard), Sue told us that our tickets could all be upgraded - it seems the venue had held back a number of the best seats and had just released them. My guess is that they were reserved for local dignitaries, but there aren't very many of those in Youngstown, so not many were claimed. For no extra fee, Britt, Henry and I all ended up in the second row on the Bob Britt side, with an empty row in front of us and perfect profile view of Bob Dylan that let us see his various gestures; we could see him doing a little flex before "that immortal spirit," or shaking his hand dismissively on "I don't play with dice."

The more shows you go to, the more they become parties before they even begin. Before the show we wandered a bit, meeting back up with Liz C, who I hadn't seen since last spring. Sue and Magdalene were near us, Gary and Maddy were on the other end of row 2, near Graham. Henry had driven all the way from Chicago (a process that probably went quicker than my flying to Cleveland, waiting in a rental car line longer than the flight, and driving to the sketchiest Days Inn north of the delta), and Britt had spent a couple of days making a slow crawl from Massachusetts. Youngstown's own "Boom Boom" Mancini, the boxer Warren Zevon wrote about (in a song Bob covered in 02), was in the middle of the second row, chatting amiably with admirers.

The show opened with Bob on guitar, playing an intro to "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," which, lacking the usual piano opener, felt like a whole new arrangement. A strong "It Ain't Me Babe" kept up the guitar.For the most part this tour has been a bit static - the arrangements and the setlist have stayed largely the same. But if you miss a show, you miss a lot. "False Prophet" had some start-stop bits that seemed like they'd been added in since the last show I caught. "Masterpiece" was about the same arrangement, but, as it has occasionally this tour, dropped the "Constantinople" guitar lick.

The one-two knockout of "Black Rider" and "My Own Version of You" was in full effect tonight; "My Own Version" was done almost as a monologue; back in fall 21 I sometimes felt like he was performing the song like a great Shakespearean tragedian of a bygone era doing his signature soliloquy, and that vibe was back tonight. As he performed I realized that the recent between-song cacophony (in which the band sounds like they're tuning only they're not tuning, just forming a sort of primordial ooze out of which the songs can emerge), was largely missing between the songs tonight. Instead, a softer version of it became a sort of soundscape under "My Own Version of You" and "Key West. Though parts of the song were just about a capella, other parts had a soft-but-chaotic sort of background - a sort of analog synth pad - that would have seemed downright avant garde if it had been louder, not just laying out a bed for the vocals. It was during this song that I became truly glad that I made this trip for one more show.

Things took a surprising turn with "To Be Alone With You." After one verse, Bob reached for the guitar and jammed a bit. Then, when he turned back to sing, he had switched to "Watching the River Flow!" He kept up as if nothing had happened, creating a medley or a mashup or one of those Grateful Dead things where they segue from one song into another. I turned to Britt and Henry and remarked that this was going to mess with databases for years!

(Turns out I was right; the various setlists are all describing it differently, with the official page currently not listing anything unusual, and Bobserve calling it a medly. For the record, most of the song was "Watching the River Flow." The band adapted so seamlessly that it took us all a minute to realize it).

But one reason to go to these small market shows is that often the best shows are in the most unlike place. Similarly, often it's those shows that don't run as smoothly that become the most memorable. The night in Memphis last year when the in-ear monitor wasn't working right ("Shit, that's worse!) lives in my memory far more than the flawless show the next night. On that first Memphis night Bob seemed to have to lock in to save the show.

Now, I've seen the opposite happen as well. On the second night of the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, in Chicago 2021, he messed up the lyrics to Black Rider and it seemed to shake his confidence, and the rest of the show was a bit mistake-prone. But that was early in the tour (and when he was trying to do new songs center stage without the lyric book). Now the show is a better-oiled machine. Once Bob realized his mistake tonight, he seemed a bit annoyed with himself; there were no more attempts at guitar, and very little harp (just the shortest of all solos at the end of "Grain of Sand." But instead of letting it get to him, he sang his ass off on every song. He had already been "on" tonight, and now seemed to focus just a bit more. He sang his heart out on "Rubicon. "Desolation Row" has been a frequent highlight lately, and tonight more than one person in my row was weeping.

"Key West" elicited loud cheers on the "Gulf of Mexico" line once again (a practice I heard tapered off in Michigan). This is one of my favorite things in the show these days. At the protest this afternoon a person told me that they wished Bob was still doing protest songs, and I used that old 66 line: "These are ALL protest songs." Bob may not be up there singing "Masters of War" this tour, but it's all there in these songs, this setlist, in ways even he couldn't have planned for. "People disappearing everywhere you look," people who don't seem to have a soul… no one would have predicted in 2020 that just saying "Gulf of Mexico" could be perceived as defiant. These songs contain multitudes.

Tony came over to see what Bob planned to do instead of "Watching the River Flow," pointing to the lyrics on the piano, presumably noting that he'd already played most of it, and seeming just a bit nervous. But Bob launched right "To Be Alone With You," with Tony making a hasty retreat back to the bass, and Bob howling out the vocals like he was determined to do it properly this time. And, in one of those happy accidents, singing about "my mortal bliss" right after the song about looking for immortality made for a cool juxtaposition, narrative-wise.

For whatever reason, "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" was dropped, which is a shame, but no draconian figure advertised the setlist. "I've Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You" featured an almost baroque piano bit, and heartfelt vocals. But perhaps the biggest highlight for me (outside of the cant-miss trio of "Masterpiece" "Black Rider" and "My Own Version of You.") was “Mother of Muses”, a forceful rendition that was less of a request than a demand.

Drama and lack of "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" aside, this was a marvelous show. Of course one has to factor in things like my sitting with equally enthusiastic friends, in a perfect seat, but this show felt special. The buzz was strong outside, among both the newbies and the long-time people who've been following Bob tours far longer than I have. There were hugs all around in the bar.

Now, Henry and I had a bit of a discussion beforehand: would you rather have a good seat, or sit with friends? Tonight we didn't have to pick - the three of us had absolutely ideal seats, and it was a blast sitting next to Britt, who squealed and shook in her seat with infectious enthusiasm (the yiddish word here is "plotzed.") Musicologist Rob Bowman came up to us post-show and said he enjoyed watching Henry, Britt, and I bopping to the music; it reminded him of when he was in his 20s. Twenty was long enough ago for me that I took this as quite a compliment!

Right across the street was Draught House, a dive bar that i'd spotted earlier. When i walked past, there were old people fighting outside and a guy who looked like he used to be a wrestler walking in. Pints of PBR were $2.50. It was perfect. Before and after the show I had a chance to hang out with Graham, Daryl, Gary, Maddy, Kait, Henry, Britt, Robin (my Charlotte road buddy from last year!), and all the other good people traveling to these wicked little towns. I told Graham I'd queued up "Handy Dandy" on the jukebox but I really picked "Wiggle Wiggle." It was a mood of pure joy.

Back at my sketchy Days Inn, a smoker on the porch tried to set me up with his sister. He told me things about her body that most people don't know about their sisters. I just went on up to my room and slept without pulling back the covers. The occasionally sketchy crash pad is part of the adventure, right?

Tired as I was, it was hard to tear myself away from the Draught House. I might not see many of these people on the Outlaw tour; who knows when I'll see them again? I keep going back to a Jeff Rosenstock song: "But when I listen to your records… it's like I'm hanging out with you, in weird cities."