It was a last-minute freewheelin’ decision.
Bob Dylan had been booked months ago to play two nights at the Orpheum on Easter weekend in Memphis. I wanted to go, but life’s a bit too busy to be planning concert road trips weeks and months in advance.
Last Tuesday, I was batting around the idea of driving up for the Friday night show when my pastor, Duncan Hoopes, said, “If you decide to go, I’ll go with you.”
That pretty much sealed the deal. We bought the tickets on Thursday night.
I had seen Dylan many times before when I was in college. Duncan had never seen the legendary lyricist in concert prior to last weekend. For Duncan, it was a bucket list concert. For me, it was like going to visit an old friend, knowing this might be the last interaction.
Dylan will be 83 in May.
He seemed somewhat spry but aloof at 82, pounding away on a Baby Grand piano all night, never uttering a word outside of the boundaries of his songs.
Few go to see Dylan these days for the vocals or the melodies.
In a sense, Duncan and I, along with a couple of thousand others at the Orpheum, were facing his mortality on his behalf.
In honor of catching my first Dylan concert since 2006, I thought I would offer some local commentary with the help of Bob’s words of wisdom.
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
The title song from Dylan’s third album in 1964, The Times They Are A Changin’, features these lyrics in the opening verse.
And this aptly applies to a request that was made this past Monday at the Sunflower County Board of Supervisors meeting by Economic Development Director Steve Rosenthal.
Rosenthal asked the board to create a fund setting aside a portion of the property tax revenue from green energy projects like solar and wind farms for industrial development sites.
This is a no-brainer for the county, and it is economic development 101.
Everybody says they want jobs, and there is a method to the madness that leads to eco/devo wins.
Site development is key to recruiting future industry. The county’s existing older buildings are good for warehouse and distribution, but there are currently zero developed sites for new builds in the county.
Without knowing where this real estate might be optioned for future development, the county does not have the ability to ready critical infrastructure for new industry like water, sewer, electricity, gas and more.
All of this requires money, and if the county is going to entertain more offers from low-job-yield prospects like wind and solar, it should parlay the tax money from those projects into industrial development. Otherwise, the population will continue to dwindle, along with the county’s tax base.
If the county doesn’t move on this, it might be facing something from another Dylan song, North Country Blues, from the same album above.
The summer is gone, the ground's turning cold
The stores one by one they're all folding
My children will go as soon as they grow
Well, there ain't nothing here now to hold them
We hope the county’s delay this past Monday is very temporary. If the board moves on this, it could be transformational for the county.
Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties, broken vows
Broken pipes, broken tools
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking
Everything is broken
Perhaps Dylan’s best song from his 1989 album Oh Mercy, Everything is Broken speaks to both physical and spiritual brokenness.
Our county does need a spiritual healing, and it needs operational equipment for the well-being of its citizens.
We hope that the City of
Indianola, in particular, will put aside the petty differences causing so much upheaval in recent weeks to work together to try and fix the brokenness under the streets, under the hoods of public works vehicles and in our hearts.
Well, there ain’t no goin’ back
When your foot of pride come down
Ain’t no goin’ back
Drawing from a verse in the book of Psalms, this outtake from Dylan’s 1983 recording sessions for the album Infidels is another hard-hitter, full of allegory about the state of man in a fallen world.
Our leaders dig in with their positions on so many issues.
The American system was not designed for everyone to always get their way.
It lends itself to compromise, with the hope that both sides come away from a spirited debate feeling like they got something out of the deal.
For that to happen, both sides have to pocket their pride and figure out what is the most important thing, and in the case of our local government, what is most beneficial to the people?
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one more great line from this song.
You know what they say about bein’ nice to the right people on the way up
Sooner or later you gonna meet them comin’ down
Moving on:
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Only Dylan could take a verse from the New Testament and end up winning a Grammy for Best Male Rock Performance out of it.
Gotta Serve Somebody was perhaps the hit of the night at the Orpheum last Friday.
After suffering through soundcheck issues the first four or five songs, it was hard for Dylan to get into a rhythm. At one point, he left the stage for about two minutes, one can only assume to yell at somebody about the sound issues.
When he returned to the Baby Grand, things seemed to level out.
Things came together with this tune, which always hits home.
You can serve the devil, or you can serve the Lord, but you have to serve somebody.
Doctor, can you hear me? I need some Medicaid
I seen the kingdoms of the world and it’s makin’ me feel afraid
What I got ain’t painful, it’s just bound to kill me dead
Like the men that followed Jesus when they put a price upon His head
I had to throw this one in.
Dylan was singing about Medicaid in 1981. This, the title track of his third “Gospel” album Shot of Love is one of the lost classics.
In fact, Dylan has called Shot of Love his favorite album. He ended last week’s show with the album’s final song, Every Grain of Sand.
Medicaid is a hot-button issue in state government right now, but Dylan isn’t talking about the uninsured working poor.
This mention of health care policy was in the context of his spiritual view of the world in 1981.
There are pastors who are imploring state leaders to pass Medicaid expansion.
Dylan, at least in the early 1980s, might have said that’s all well and good, but health care for the soul is more important.
Dylan is planning an upcoming tour with Willie Nelson and some other big-name acts this summer.
Perhaps this won’t be the last go-round for the troubadour, and maybe he has an album’s worth of wisdom left in him as well.
