Had to deal with some rain, but I've stood in plenty of worse weather at shows, and I'll take rain over heat any day. This was a very pleasant GA show - sometimes the outdoor GA, in particular, can bring out the animal in people, but we managed to be in a friendly section where no one was fighting, wolf-whistling, shoulder-sitting, or outrageously drunk, all of which were welcome changes from the last ballpark show I saw.

It was my friend Ronni's first show, and an excellent first show. In fact, I can only think of a few that I've seen that would make a better first show for someone. Bob was on all night, and if the show lacked anything surprising, or anything that will really distinguish the show in years to come, well, that's the kind of thing you only could have noticed if you'd seen a lot of shows before. The setlist was as ho-hum as any show I've ever seen, and none of the songs really scaled the kind of heights you sometimes get, but there were no train wrecks, either, and most songs were excellent. Hell, even Tweedles was outstanding. Very little upsinging, and it tended to be buried when it showed up at all.

Depending on how the show changes in the Fall, this may be my last show with this sort of arrangement - after about three years in which very little in the show has changed. Like most shows in the past few years, it suffered a bit from the lack of pacing; only a couple of quiet moments in the show.

Most interesting, though, was the band. Denny, in particular, has never sounded played such dirty, gutteral guitar; I'd go so far as to say that I haven't seen such a guitar-heavy show since at least the days of Freddy. Band-wise, Denny stole the show.

All right, into the song by song:

Cat's in the Well - right away, the band is sounding a bit dirty and rougher here. I'd almost compare it to a Rolling Stones type sound.

You Ain't Goin' Nowhere had a fantastic harp solo.

Now, as Nowhere wound down, I told myself "it's probably time for the inevitable Tweedles, but, hey, I may never see it again if it gets replaced with Rollin and Tumblin next month. May as well enjoy it." And there have been a few nights when I thought the song really did cook before (that period with the two drummers comes to mind), but I was not prepared for this. Denny was clearly the culprit in playing this one dirty, the organ helped hoist it up, and Dylan sang the HELL out of it, leaning into the lyrics and howling them out.

Girl From the North Country wasn't a knock-out, but it covered the spread. There were moments early on when I feared that it was crash into an upsung mess, but it managed to stay on target and solid.

Watching the River Flow isn't my favorite song, but the singing was superlative here.

Mobile following River was a bit much, in terms of pacing. Could have used a slower one in the middle, but it was a solid version.

Masters cooked, as it usually does in this arrangement. Again we had just a hint of upsinging here, but people who weren't on the lookout for it probably wouldn't have noticed.

Leopard Skin was a lot of fun.

Tangled - man, I can't believe how long it'd been since I've seen this one. Like visiting an old friend who's been away for a while.

Highway 61 is one of those songs that I just never get tired of. It rocks every time I see it.

My Back Pages is nice to see. One day soon, there will be a version of this that is just transcendant. A version like Tambourine Man in Towson or Hard Rain in New Orleans 2003. It wasn't quite there in Fort Wayne, but it's coming. Mark my words.

Bob was especially animated during Summer Days, and Like a Rolling Stone was a very solid version - this band does a fine job on that song. Watchtower ROCKED. The organ on that song adds that one extra element of spookiness that really gets it off the ground and gets my head a-banging.

In the end, I felt like I had seen a find send-off for the post-L&T, pre-MT touring era, all wrapped up in a neat, well-done package, brought out one more time and given a proper farewell. No particular moments that made me say "I must get that mp3 at once," but I don't when I last saw a full show that was this strong overall. Things are looking good for fall.

One side note - if there's one thing Mike and I will really remember about this, it's the really weird drive home. The fog was sometimes so thick that we could see all of twenty feet in front of us, and construction sometimes necessitating driving half on the right lane, half off the road for long stretches - it was really a bit terrifying. Stranger still was the complete lack of tollbooths, given how many we encountered on the way there. That, in particular, had us wondering if we'd somehow been travelling on a highway that was caught in some time warp, and we'd been in 1962 for a hundred miles or so, of if we'd actually died in a wreck someplace in downtown Ft. Wayne, like in that episode of the Twilight Zone where the woman keeps seeing the hitchhiker. But, as far as I can tell, I'm still flesh and blood this morning. See you guys in November!