Tyler
Bob Dylan, Jimmie Vaughn & The Tilt-A-Whirl Band, Brittney Spencer
The Mann Center for the Performing Arts
5201 Parkside Ave.
Philadelphia
July 14, 2026
It feels silly to say, but launching into the task of writing about Bob Dylan, in any capacity or context, one might feel – I feel – like one needs to justify upfront – again, me talking here – the framework they’re choosing. That he inspires, or demands, a moment of pause, and caution before proceeding, is a testament to the fact that Dylan-as-subject is a behemoth, a titan, a gargantuan problem for anyone hoping to somehow grapple with the 20th century; he’s also a true song-and-dance man, and a notable one. (People writing about Bob Dylan love to tell you what he is.)
I’ve been thinking about the idea that we’re always unconsciously telling a story, that we have our own distinct ways of choosing how to view or interpret reality. Walking out of the Mann Center last night toward the minivan I shared with seven friends to carpool to the concert was a perfect five-minute case study in the subjectivity we all carry into an event: One friend took to describing feeling that the show was great with an air of the entire weight of Western civilization bearing down on the significance of Bob Dylan in a feedback loop of power. A 72-year-old man we spoke to who overheard us said he’d seen Bob live in the ’60s and ’70s and missed the old stuff. Hs wife said, in effect, “This is my husband’s thing, but I liked it, and I really liked Jimmie Vaughn.”
Basically, Dylan has written, I’m guessing, a million songs, and that’s a million stories, and it all collides with his countless audiences in so many ways that it’s impossible for me to tell any story other than one: my own.
So where to actually begin? Usually, for me, it’s the music. Dylan and his band –right-hand man Tony Garnier on electric and upright bass, Anton Fig on Drums, Joel Paterson on hollow-body electric, and Julian Lage on telecaster – took the stage right around sunset, and right away, it was a thrill. Sure, part of that was the joy of confirmed suspicion and expectation; Lage is one of my favorite jazz guitarists, and was rumored to be rejoining the band after surprisingly landing the gig only to depart for a spell. On the surface this guy is vastly overqualified for the task of rhythm guitar in a bluesy roots-music five-piece, but this is no ordinary band and no ordinary songbook.
If you’re a Dylan fan you already know that he basically lives on stage, which is a cliché of course but needs to be expressed to explain that these musicians, Dylan especially, play this music like it’s as natural as breathing. I felt at times like I was receiving the full lightness of generations of experience of listening to and playing, not to mention shaping, these deep American styles, like watching the Pyramids being built before your eyes with not-even-breaking-a-sweat casualness bordering on extreme.
Which is to say that the music seemed to contain not just blues and jazz – no surprise given thepedigree and expertise of the ensemble – but classical and chamber music and pop-with-an-ancient-throughline.
Just as a listener, I had my breath taken away frequently by little details and musical turns, all borne of a sense of gravity and depth meeting a sense of joy and freedom. “Living tradition” might summarize it, dustless and vivid.
I could go on a tear talking about big, medium or little details: drummer Anton Fig doing an unexpected beat switch for four bars in the middle of a song, or a well-placed kick-single syncopated drum beat that seemed to jolt the song up a flight; or incandescent guitar solo after incandescent guitar solo, mostly from Paterson, miniature dramas unfolding within the songs; or Dylan’s piano playing straight-up blowing me away at times, beautiful little melodic figures and movements weaving between wiry filigrees from the electrics; their arrangement of “Crossing the Rubicon,” with Dylan insisting on a #11 in the upper structure whenever they hit the IV chord, always striking a gorgeously forlorn note.
The band never stopped playing like there was no time to waste: one song bled warmly and gently into another, the downtempo bluesy shuffles and laments like “The Man in the Long Black Coat” setting up a sweet, light-filled and fluffy arrangement of “It Ain’t Me, Babe” that had everyone on our blanket in eyes-wide awe. Dylan sang that one with so much sass and so much character – naaaaa-nn-no-no-naaaah, it-ain’t-ME, babe! – that we didn’t know what to do but smile and laugh and woo-woo-woo!! like the picture of pleasure.
By the time, an hour in, that he finally played some harmonica it felt like, Oh yeah, I almost forgot he does that, and he does that BEAUTIFULLY, the fuck?
You could feel the musicians really dwelling in these songs, navigating these chord changes, these buzzy waltzes and blues-jazz shuffles, like expert, indefatigable sherpas leading us to epic snow-blinding summits, all leading to a magisterial peak vision.
They closed with “I Shall Be Released”, Dylan on harmonica once again, his vocal phrasing having almost nothing to do with familiar versions to the point that I’d notice people singing along in completely different places, almost to the point of hocketing. And as I watched the band play it (I mosied on down closer to the stage for this one) I thought about those words, springing out of this man at that moment: “Any day now, any day now, I shall be released.” The only reasonable story I could project on it all, for a moment anyway, was ain’t that the truth, for all of us; and gratitude at Dylan, in his ninth decade, that day still coming, but thank goodness, not today.
