"The Methuselah of Righteous Cool"

At a Texas show earlier this week, Charlie Sexton rejoined Bob for most of the set list. An excerpt from a nice review, posted at theneverendingpool.com:

Charlie Sexton Has Balls As Big As Texas
A Review of Bob Dylan in Round Rock, TX, 8/4/2009, by Michael Nave

…I had been at the side of the stage looking in the backstage when I spotted Charlie Sexton there 10 minutes or so before Bob’s set. I was hopeful he would join Bob on stage and was excited when he did on the 5th song, Honest With Me.

Charlie immediately took over the stage and began to do something that this current band is incapable of doing. He began challenging Dylan, pushing him, basically saying he was not content to simply sit back and play a show with Dylan, but that he was here to elevate the proceedings, turn the night into something special; and he did. With Charlie on stage it became very apparent what is wrong with the current band. The current band is terrified of Dylan. As Stu, Denny, and Donnie stood looking at Bob with their deer-in-the-headlights stare, Charlie concentrated on playing his axe. Sure, he had to watch Dylan for cues as all of his band members do, but instead of watching in fear, he watched as a co-creator, a co-player, someone there to create art WITH Dylan rather than to just cater to his desires. He seemed to be saying, “ok, old man, get ready, because we are here to rock.”

Charlie’s focus became very apparent during Honest with Me as he frequently danced over near Bob and his keyboard, even kicking his foot up toward the keyboard at one time. Dylan clearly enjoyed this interplay bobbing and weaving behind the keys. Charlie’s solos weren’t up to the level they were when he played full-time in the band, due in part I am sure to the fact that he wasn’t playing night after night as he used to, but also due to the fact that many of the current arrangements of these songs are simply inferior to the types of arrangements during the Sexton-Campbell era. I think that might be another area where the current band is letting Dylan down. I can imagine Charlie and Larry working WITH Dylan on song arrangements in rehearsals while I can imagine the current band simply going along with every Dylan idea and never challenging him or contributing in that area as well.

The rest of the evening’s performance was much better than what I witnessed in Houston, even on songs where Charlie didn’t really contribute with his playing, Dylan seemed more inspired. I was really wanting to hear Forgetful Heart as I had heard the first performance online, and like that one, this performance was very special and heartfelt, with Dylan center stage, no guitar.

Charlie really elevated the rockers including Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, Thunder on the Mountain, and he really smoked on Highway 61. He also got off some nice solos on LARS.

Please don’t interpret this review as simply a slam on this band. In Houston, they got the job done, they are a capable, workmanlike group, but they don’t contribute to taking a show to the next level, that job falls squarely on Bob’s shoulders these days, although last night in Round Rock, Charlie Sexton pushed Bob in ways he hasn’t been in years.

Halfway through AATW, I moved back to my spot beside the stage where I could view the backstage area as Bob and the band walked down from the stage. As they came down the stairs sure enough Bob and Charlie were walking side by side talking. They walked toward centerfield, then stopped and continued to talk for a few moments, as if they were saying goodbyes; about to part. But then they continued walking together talking, all the way out of the Dell Diamond. One could only hope the conversation was something like, “Sure, Bob, I would be glad to do the rest of the Texas dates with you while Stu, Denny, and Donnie take a well deserved few days off. . .”

Ah, those were the days, when Sexton & Campbell simply made Bob better.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111764735

Hmmm…

PS – Great photo, CB. Thanks for posting.

In a word: STUNNING

Sexton back in Dylan’s band
by Michael Corcoran, Austin360.com | Friday, August 21, 2009

Diane Scott of the Continental Club has a scoop in this week’s club newsletter. Charlie Sexton has rejoined Bob Dylan’s band, replacing Denny Freeman. “Well, at least it’s Charlie,” Freeman told Scott. The never-ending tour restarts Oct. 5 on the West Coast.

Sexton played guitar for Dylan from 1999 until 2003. At the Bard’s Aug. 4 set at the Dell Diamond, Sexton jammed with the band for about half the set and lit a fire under Dylan, according to assorted reviews.

First time a former guitarist for BD has rejoined his live band…

Some thoughtful commentary from Peter Stone Brown at theneverendingpool.com…

Whenever Bob Dylan adds new members to his band, everyone (on the internet) hates them at first. Even when Larry Campbell joined, people were putting him down, with the usual he’s just standing there. If you were to search RMD for the beginning of that tour in ’97, you’ll see what I mean. When I first saw Campbell with Dylan a few shows into the tour, I came home and wrote a review along the lines of finally a guitar player who plays country on the country songs, blues on the blues and so on, which often had been missing. Not long after that, people’s opinions started to change, but it took a few months.

With the current band, which certainly had its ups and downs, I don’t think a lot of people understood just what Dylan was going for. Initially the band was much quieter. I remember someone posting to the pool, this band’s really quiet. Then in the same review, but Bob seems to be singing better. In my mind, I went duh!

This band is one of the tightest Dylan’s had on the N.E.T. When Receli first joined the previous incarnation, I thought he was way too busy, often wondering when I saw them live if he was going to end the fill on time. As some arrangements changed, with often more intricate stops and rhythm changes, he was more in the pocket, and what he did made sense. At the same time, being tight doesn’t necessarily mean exciting. Now some of this had to do not only with Bob switching to keyboard, but also where the keyboard was way back on the stage. See the band from a distance, it’s a bunch of guys in a semicircle looking at each other.

Now also for whatever reason, until recently Denny Freeman was the lead guitarist for everything. A lot of people never understood or cared who Denny Freeman was. But to some people and especially in Texas, he’s a legendary guitarist. He happens to be the guy both Stevie Ray Vaughn and Charlie Sexton learned from.

All lead guitar in rock and roll (and related forms) comes largely from blues, and Freeman is a blues player. However, all of Dylan’s previous guitarists were coming from Chicago blues which is more blistering, more in your face. At the time Freeman was hired, Dylan was clearly moving to a more swing and also a more western swing direction. Freeman was not coming from Chicago blues, but both Texas and western blues which is more jazz oriented, more sophisticated, more laid back. And the way he constructed his solos was not typical. All guitar players steal or borrow from other players. And there’s certain certified guitar legends from Chuck Berry to James Burton to Buddy Guy to Steve Cropper to Jimi Hendrix to Clarence White and Roy Nichols and tons more they borrow from. All the people I just mentioned got their styles from guys who came before them and also contemporaries. It was obvious to me that Larry Campbell had seriously studied every great guitar player he possibly could and Sexton as well. When guitar players construct solos, they’re always putting together other licks and riffs, but usually, while of course putting in their own thing, quote maybe two guitar players. When Freeman put together solos, he would often quote from several guitar players and put it all together. He might start with his most obvious influence T-Bone Walker, then throw in something from Hubert Sumlin, something from somewhere else and wind it up with a Cropper lick. Sometimes he’d take a lick and invert it. But as someone recently pointed out on this forum, he never played the same thing twice. But it could be very cerebral. It didn’t necessarily hit you in the gut or crack like a whip the way Robbie Robertson, Mike Bloomfield and sometimes Sexton could. But if you actually watched him and saw what he was doing, it could be fascinating.

The same thing goes for another member of this band people occasionally like to put down, Donnie Herron. The usual complaint is all he does is watch Bob. Well, he has to watch Bob. The way this band works for whatever mysterious Dylan reason is Dylan will find some riff on the keyboard he gets into and wants the band to pick it up. It is clearly Herron’s JOB to pick up that riff, and then pass it on to the rest of the band, so the entire band then takes that riff and turns it into something. Now I’m not saying this always works. Nor am I saying Freeman is necessarily the right guitar player. Sometimes he is, sometimes he isn’t. Herron also serves another function in the band that also isn’t obvious and again you have to watch what the musicians are doing. There will be times when you’re seeing the band and this is way more noticeable at a show than hearing an audience recording, when you realize there’s another sound happening, a more ambient sound filling out the band. You watch the guitar players, they’re not playing what you’re hearing. You look at Bob, he’s not playing what you’re hearing. It’s Donnie Herron using the steel to create an ambient sound. Where Bucky Baxter used his steel to basically play organ licks, Donnie’s taken it further and in a sense it’s similar to what Garth Hudson sometimes did in the later version of The Band, when he stopped playing the organ and switched to synthesizer. You’d be wondering where are those Garth organ licks and then realize, oh, he’s the guy providing the sound.

A lot of people obviously wanted a rock band at a time Dylan was moving away from anything called rock, not to mention he’s never been a rock artist, and in saying that I am differentiating between rock and rock ‘n’ roll. And that’s not to say this band can’t rock. Check out “The Levee’s Gonna Break” from Stateline.

With this band, Dylan clearly decided he wanted a certain kind of musician who would do what he wanted, and who could play a certain kind of music he wanted to explore. Again, I’m not saying it always worked. Sometimes an arrangement of a song would be great. Sometimes a new arrangement of the same song would be a disaster. Sometimes on a new arrangement you’d be wondering what the fuck is he doing, but then a couple of shows down the line they’d nail it and it would come together.

But, to say, as many have, these guys can’t play is ridiculous. Whereas, Larry Campbell played a fine if somewhat standard banjo on “Highwater,” Donnie Herron took it into jazzgrass and sometimes even further out into Bela Fleck territory. For all the complaints about him sitting there and watching Bob, with B549, he could be a total maniac onstage. There are videos on Youtube that show this. And for those who bitched about Kimball, he’s playing (on acoustic) Bob’s guitar parts. Not the ’90s guitar parts, but closer to the ’60s guitar parts.

I remember onetime by total coincidence the same song came up in a row on my computer mp3 player. One was by the early ’90s band with Jackson and one was with this band. When it came to overall tightness as a band in playing the song, and by tightness I mean the way The Band was tight, the way Booker T and the MG’s were tight, the way Van Morrison’s band is tight, the way the man who had the tightest band in history, James Brown was tight, it was this band, no contest.