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Bob Dylan tour dates 2024

Bob Dylan is currently touring across 1 country and has 25 upcoming concerts.

Their next tour date is at Ameris Bank Amphitheatre in Alpharetta, after that they'll be at PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte.

Currently touring across

Upcoming concerts (25) See nearest concert

Outlaw Music Festival

Empower Fcu Amphitheater at Lakeview

Freedom Mortgage Pavilion

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts

Past concerts

Austin City Limits Live at the Moody Theater

Music Hall At Fair Park

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Recent tour reviews

After following Dylan since the early 60s, I finally got to see him at his age of 78! I was super glad to be able to say I saw him. He sang quite a few songs, one right after another and most of them were done fast. The most popular ones that I could decipher had the words right, but the music part of it was very, very different. He did not do his most popular songs over the years. He did what he wanted to do. I was able to recognize 3 songs that I knew well, the others I had heard, but weren't really my favorites. I was just glad he (talked) sang. He did not interact with the audience, he wasn't announced at the beginning, and when he was done he walked off stage. One encore and off again. He did introduce the individual musicians, but it was so fast, I couldn't keep up. No one I recognized. I love him no matter what he chose to do or not do. The Bren Event Center in Irvine holds about 5500 and it was full. Tickets were expensive for me, but I just had to see him live even if I would have had to sell my first born, lol. I'll be paying off my credit card for the charge in 6 months. Good times.

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Unlike many of the fans at Bob Dylan’s show I haven’t seen him countless times. I think I have been to four or five of his shows over a wide span in his career.

My first live experience was in the early seventies at the Los Angeles Forum. I think he was backed by The Band if I remember correctly. It was a great show, I had great seats that were a result of a ticket lottery I think? He sounded just like he did, more or less, on his records.

I think the next time I saw him was at the LA Greek Theatre. A friend and I took a chance and went without tickets in hand. We were very lucky that night scoring tickets that were released from the band just before the show started. We were down front and center. This show was during the G.E. Smith period. I’m sad to say that I was disappointed in this show. Mr. Dylan and his songs were almost unrecognizable to me as I remember. I wasn’t yet able to appreciate the concept of a performer changing their presentations from how they were originally offered. That concept took me a while to appreciate and now I think that I expect it from great performers. But that night not at all...

My next chance to see him was at a remarkable show at UCLA. It was an extravaganza featuring Mr. Dylan, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell. Three of my musical touchstones. I don’t remember much about this show except we had horrible seats. I think I was mostly affected by the overall show and that I was actually there seeing these three back to back.

Last night seeing him at UCI was very special indeed. My new girlfriend managed to get us very good seats in this small venue, stage right and up above the floor. Due to the security check in we entered the show halfway through the first song, on stage as we searched for our seats was a man playing guitar, we wondered if this was an opening act since we had been led to believe that Mr. Dylan no longer played guitar and this fellow was quite lively on stage as well, belying the stories told to me of his previously aloofness on stage. As we sat we realized that no this was the man. It was a wonderful lead in for me. He played a set that included songs from all of his era’s. Most reinterpreted greatly as far as the music but mostly true to the prose I think. Somewhere in the middle he slowed things down from the energetic pace to give an almost traditional rendition of Girl from the North Country, strikingly beautiful featuring him on the piano primarily. What a night! Mr. Dylan has still got the magic touch in my book, how he continues on the hard life of the road is a testament to his love of what he does I guess. I’m glad he does. Thanks Mr Dylan.

show in Ft. Myers.

First of all, the sound system was terrible. You could understand about every 10th word. Otherwise, it was just a blur and the arrangements were such that they had no relevance to the songs. Maybe a couple of notes. I had to ask my lady, "What song is this?" She answered,"Blowing in the Wind". Weelllll, I have been listening to that song for over 40 years!! I had no idea he was singing that!

Ok, Dylan is Dylan. He will mix up the instruments, but here, along with the vocals on the worst sound system I have heard in years; combined with the worst arrangements, I had no idea what he was singing almost all of the time.

Still, I really liked going. It's probably the last time I will be able to see him in person. He coulda just stood on stage and burped and it would have been worth it. He had long haired women dancing in the iles. Not his women, the audience women(hopefully). Lot of gray hair there in my fellow concert-goers when I looked around but, on the whole, I am really glad I went. I am sure they were too. Whoever reads this; you should go too......Frederick(Rick) H Johnson

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Bob Dylan Plots Fall 2023 North American Tour

By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

Bob Dylan ‘s Rough and Rowdy Ways tour is coming back to North America in the fall. The leg kicks off Oct. 1 at the Midland Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri. An Oct. 30 show at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady, New York is the final confirmed date, but Dylan’s website notes that “more Fall 2023 dates will be announced soon!”

The Rough and Rowdy Ways tour kicked off November 2, 2021 in Milwaukee. Dylan had been off the road for nearly two years at that point due to the pandemic. Prior to that, he hadn’t missed a single year of touring since the Never Ending Tour kicked off in 1988. He made up for lost time by taking the show all over the world, but he hasn’t played the East Coast of the U.S. since the fall of 2021.

The show did take a surprise left turn earlier in the year when he started playing songs from the Grateful Dead catalog, including “Truckin,” “Brokedown Palace,” “Stella Blue,” and “West L.A. Fadeaway.” He even trotted out Bob Weir’s 2016 solo song “Only a River,” Merle Haggard’s 2010 obscurity “Bad Actor,” and Van Morrison’s 1970 classic “Into the Mystic.” Dylan fans were thrilled by the additions since it added a degree of uncertainty to every show.

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Bob Dylan’s Fall 2023 North American Tour Dates

Oct. 1 – Kansas City, MO @The Midland Theatre Oct. 2 – Kansas City, MO @ The Midland Theatre Oct. 4 – St. Louis, MO @ Stifel Theatre Oct. 6 – Chicago, IL @ Cadillac Palace Theatre Oct. 7 – Chicago, IL @ Cadillac Palace Theatre Oct. 8 – Chicago, IL @ Cadillac Palace Theatre Oct. 11 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Riverside Theater Oct. 12 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Riverside Theater Oct. 16 – Indianapolis, IN @ Murat Theatre Oct. 20 – Cincinnati, OH @ The Andrew J. Brady Music Center Oct. 21 – Akron, OH @ Akron Civic Theatre Oct. 23 – Erie, PA @ Warner Theatre Oct. 24 – Rochester, NY @ Auditorium Theatre Oct. 26 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall Oct. 27 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall Oct. 29 – Montreal, QB @ Place des Arts – Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier Oct. 30 – Schenectady, NY @ Proctors Theatre

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Bob Dylan Lets New Material Dominate Dark But Playful SoCal Shows: Concert Review

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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A funny thing happened at Bob Dylan ‘s concert at the Terrace Theatre in Long Beach: It got dark… really dark. But only on stage; out in the auditorium, the house lights stayed up, dimmed just a little, for the whole show. That was a first, for most of us, even with thousands of concerts under our belts. Was it an accommodation for latecomers, as seemed likely at first? (Nowadays, Dylan goes on right at 8:05, and if you’re running over from the merch line, you won’t be seated till the next set break.) No, they never did go down, and when some audience members who considered this a vibe-kill asked ushers what was up, they were told it was at the request of the artist.

Reports indicated the same thing had happened at the prior tour stop in San Diego. Did this have something to do with making sure no one was covertly filming the show, right after some footage had leaked out from a previous date, despite attendees being required to lock phones up in Yondr pouches at every date? Or did Dylan just decide that some of the recent material that dominates the show is so thematically dark that timid crowds could benefit from, you know, a night light? Not for the first time in a 60-year career, some decisions may remain impenetrable.

The irony — and you’d have to think it was an intentional one — was that the stage itself was dimmer than any other spot in the 3,000-seat Terrace. The way this “Rough and Rowdy Ways” tour (which started on the east coast last fall) has been set up, Dylan starts the show completely in the shadows, playing electric guitar alongside his band for the only time all night, before he steps over and stands upright at a barely illuminated piano, where he’ll spend the remainder of the night. At center stage, guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio get the most lighting, while Dylan gets about the same voltage as drummer Charley Drayton, bassist Tony Garnier and pedal steel player Donnie Herron, also off to the side. Every few song breaks, Dylan will step into what passes for a spotlight in the middle of the stage, striking a pose as he takes in the applause, daring you to decide whether he looks more like a lover or a fighter. And then it’s back to his position at the practically candlelit keys.

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Eventually, maybe, with the house lights up, there may be some kind of metaphor to embrace here: Bob Dylan can see us better than we can see him.

Heavy, right? Go ahead, take a moment to soak the profundity in.

Even if the wattage varies when Dylan comes to your town, the music itself could be described as impressionistic, with band arrangements that rarely draw attention to any one player at a time, and all of them improvising to the extent that 12-bar blues allow it, except for maybe standup bassist Garnier (the longest-standing member of Dylan’s touring unit, having put in 30-plus years), who more than anyone is the anchor of the whole thing. Of course the improviser-in-chief is Dylan, whose piano parts can can straddle the fine line between being a little oddball and deeply lovely, and who is not likely to sing the same line the same way twice in back to back shows, but who seems to reinvent his own language on a nightly basis out of craving exploration, not curing boredom, treating his voice like the fine jazz instrument it is.

Dylan is emphasizing a new album on tour for maybe the first time since his gospel era of 1979-80 (when, of course, for a period he played only new material, having fleetingly forsaken the secular). “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” released two years ago, makes up slightly more than 50% of the set, accounting for nine out of 17 selections. And by and large those picks haven’t changed from night to night, which is another difference from almost all previous Dylan touring, when the idea of a setlist set in stone would have seemed like anathema to the Deadhead-like fans following him from show to show. Anecdotal evidence picked up by talking to folks at the Terrace indicates that he still has a bunch of those nightly followers — and that, surprisingly, they don’t even seem let down that the rundown of songs is unvarying each night. They were overjoyed in the last couple of weeks when, for a few shows starting in San Francisco, Dylan replaced this tour’s usual show-closer, “Every Grain of Sand,” with a less heavenly cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil.” But by Long Beach, “Grain” had been restored, and the show was locked in again. No matter. If these repeat customers are guaranteed not to get a wild-card song selection most nights, they have the sense that every moment feels like a wild card.

“Rough and Rowdy Ways” itself is a deeply impressionistic — read: mysterious — album despite being jam-packed with more specific lyrical details than have ever been crammed into a single Dylan record in his career, it’s still a puzzle to figure out how (or if) they all fit together. So if you want to go beyond just enjoying the mere melodic playfulness of Dylan’s line readings, you can entertain yourself during the show by wondering if the different spin he puts on thing imparts any additional clues about where he’s coming from, given that the songs can even seem self-contradictory. When he’s performing something like “Crossing the Rubicon” live, does he mean to present himself as the seeker who sings something as gentle as “I feel the Holy Spirit inside / See the light that freedom gives”? Or the violent miscreant who moments earlier was threatening to “cut you up with a crooked knife”? (In Dylan’s multiverse, maybe even the Holy Spirit has a penchant for murder most foul.)

Of the eight oldies that fill out the current setlist, only “Gotta Serve Somebody” is a man-on-the-street-famous “hit,” although picks like “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece” are enough to send the patron with even a passing knowledge of catalog favorites home happy. It has been supposed by some writers covering earlier gigs on the tour that he has avoided galvanizing barn-burners like “Highway 61” because he doesn’t want them to overshadow the new material. If that’s true — and it probably is — it’s not necessarily paramount to dialing the energy on the oldies down so as to falsely elevate the mostly mellow newbies. It’s more that there’s a brilliant quality to the way this set has been designed for the songs to loosely be of a piece, a throughline that would be spoiled if “Subterranean Homesick Blues” suddenly popped in.

There, I said it: “Like a Rolling Stone” would have been an absolute buzz-kill in this show. Thank you, Bob, for denying it to us.

It’s almost comical to compare what Dylan is doing at 81 with what Paul McCartney has been doing in stadium shows just on the cusp of 80. One’s a people-pleaser, and the other is a walking Rorschach test, or hall of mirrors. But they’re putting on what may be the two most reliably great shows of 2022, despite flying or bussing in from opposite ends of the solar system. You don’t want McCartney to act his age, but to defy it. On the other hand, it’s fantastic that Dylan is putting on what absolutely amounts to a rock ‘n’ roll show where nonetheless you can believe how old he is, because the depth of his performance is heightened by our awareness of the years he’s logged, which add to the palpable mythos that’s already there in the music. The barely death-defying danger of “Crossing the Rubicon,” or the fountain-of-youth giddiness of “Coming Up” — listen, it’s OK to want both from our favorite octogenarians.

You’re wondering how well he’s singing these days? Well, about as wonderfully as he has in the 21st century, as long as you’re not expecting to hear his “Lay Lady Lay” or even “Slow Train” voice. It’s the voice of ravaged experience — but he sounds pretty , at times, too. (Credit, if you will, the three albums he devoted to covering Frank Sinatra-era standards, one of which, “Melancholy Mood,” shows up late in this setlist.) His voice spins on a time from gentle coddling to the suggestion of fury — and good humor, too. This is a tour where he may actually catch him laughing, as he did in Long Beach at the end of “Masterpiece,” as if he or the band had just told a good joke. There’s enough clarity in his singing these days that the Long Beach audience was there with audible responses to certain lines, like applause during “I Contain Multitudes” for the mention of “them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones.” (Even “The size of your cock will get you nowhere,” from the otherwise doom-laden “Black Rider,” got a murmuring chuckle.)

The most recent material was mostly rendered somewhat faithfully to the “Rough and Rowdy” album versions — with the exception of “Key West,” which from all accounts has gotten a few different arrangements on the tour, and which was getting yet another completely different one Monday, faithful fans reported. Of the old stuff… yeah, it’s not going to sound like the record, but you knew that. In true “Never Ending Tour” fashion, “Gotta Serve Somebody” didn’t get a big round of applause till the chorus kicked in, so unfamiliar did it sound, with the first verse rendered practically a cappella as the two guitarists added a few stingers for good set-up measure. (Lyric changes were to be had there, not all of them easy to make out.) “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” had what amounted to a new — and satisfying! — melody and rhythm, even before its fast pace slowed to a crawl for a half-time finale. “Every Grain of Sand” didn’t depart greatly from its waltz tempo in closing the show, but Dylan added a new piano riff as counterpoint midway through.

The big takeaway from this show, and likely every one on the tour: At 81, Dylan is acting his somber age, and yet, in his fashion, deep at play in the fields of the Lord. As far as these gigs are concerned, even with the near-blackout on stage allowing Dylan to let the mystery be, it’s not dark yet. It’s not even getting there.

Bob Dylan’s “Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour” setlist:

1. Watching The River Flow 2. Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine) 3. I Contain Multitudes 4. False Prophet 5. When I Paint My Masterpiece 6. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight 7. Black Rider 8. My Own Version of You 9. Crossing The Rubicon 10. To Be Alone With You 11. Key West (Philosopher Pirate) 12. Gotta Serve Somebody 13. I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You 14. Melancholy Mood 15. Mother of Muses 16. Goodbye Jimmy Reed 17. Every Grain of Sand

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Set List: Bob Dylan's Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour

Listen to the hits performed on the blockbuster tour.

17 Songs, 1 hour, 23 minutes

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Africa, middle east, and india.

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Asia Pacific

• Indonesia (English)
• Lao People's Democratic Republic
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Latin America and the Caribbean

• Antigua and Barbuda
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• March 26, 2024 Setlist

Bob Dylan Setlist at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, Nashville, TN, USA

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Tour: Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour statistics Add setlist

• Watching the River Flow Play Video
• Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine Play Video
• I Contain Multitudes Play Video
• False Prophet Play Video
• When I Paint My Masterpiece Play Video
• Black Rider Play Video
• My Own Version of You Play Video
• I'll Be Your Baby Tonight Play Video
• Crossing the Rubicon Play Video
• To Be Alone With You Play Video
• Key West (Philosopher Pirate) Play Video
• Gotta Serve Somebody Play Video
• I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You Play Video
• Big River ( Johnny Cash  cover) Play Video
• Mother of Muses Play Video
• Goodbye Jimmy Reed Play Video
• Every Grain of Sand Play Video

Edits and Comments

13 activities (last edit by allenz , 27 Mar 2024, 19:31 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• Black Rider
• Crossing the Rubicon
• False Prophet
• Goodbye Jimmy Reed
• I Contain Multitudes
• I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You
• Key West (Philosopher Pirate)
• Mother of Muses
• My Own Version of You
• Watching the River Flow
• When I Paint My Masterpiece
• Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine
• I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
• To Be Alone With You
• Every Grain of Sand
• Gotta Serve Somebody
• Big River by Johnny Cash

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Bob dylan gig timeline.

• Mar 23 2024 Louisville Palace Theatre Louisville, KY, USA Start time: 8:00 PM 8:00 PM
• Mar 24 2024 Louisville Palace Theatre Louisville, KY, USA Start time: 8:00 PM 8:00 PM
• Mar 26 2024 Brooklyn Bowl Nashville This Setlist Nashville, TN, USA Start time: 8:00 PM 8:00 PM
• Mar 27 2024 Brooklyn Bowl Nashville Nashville, TN, USA Start time: 8:00 PM 8:00 PM
• Mar 29 2024 Orpheum Theatre Memphis, TN, USA Add time Add time

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• All I Really Want to Do
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The Story Behind “All I Really Want to Do” by Bob Dylan and Why He No Longer Wanted to Write Songs in Other’s Voices

by Jay McDowell May 26, 2024, 3:45 pm

In 2016, it was announced Bob Dylan would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” During his acceptance speech, he noted, “Songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record, or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says, ‘Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.'”

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Who are we to disagree with Bob Dylan? The written word, be it poetry or prose, can deliver messages that change the world or simply bring out emotions. Dylan’s songwriting has done both, from singing about social injustice to songs about friendship. Let’s take a look at the story behind “All I Really Want to Do” by Bob Dylan.

I ain’t lookin’ to compete with you Beat or cheat or mistreat you Simplify you, classify you Deny, defy, or crucify you All I really want to do Is, baby, be friends with you

Internal Rhymes

Dylan’s recorded output started with a collection of songs primarily written by others. His sophomore effort featured songs written mainly by himself. The biggest success came from others recording his compositions. Peter, Paul, and Mary released “Blowin’ in the Wind” to great effect. As Dylan continued to find his own voice, he released another album of original songs exploring universal themes of social injustice and protest. By his fourth album Another Side of Bob Dylan , the singer was exploring more personal territory. A song like “All I Really Want to Do” was not trying to change the world. It was simply about a relationship between two people. The structure is nothing groundbreaking. Each verse begins with something the singer doesn’t want to do and ends with the thing he desires—to “be friends with you.” The internal rhymes are plentiful and change from verse to verse as the song progresses.

No, and I ain’t lookin’ to fight with you Frighten you or uptighten you Drag you down or drain you down Chain you down or bring you down All I really want to do Is, baby, be friends with you

When Columbia Records released Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964, the singer talked at length with Nat Hentoff for The New Yorker magazine, “There aren’t any finger-pointing songs in here, either. Those records I’ve already made, I’ll stand behind them, but some of that was jumping into the scene to be heard, and a lot of it was because I didn’t see anybody else doing that kind of thing. Now, a lot of people are doing finger-pointing songs. You know—pointing to all the things that are wrong. Me, I don’t want to write for people anymore. You know—be a spokesman. Like I once wrote about Emmett Till in the first person, pretending I was him. From now on, I want to write from inside me and to do that.

“I’m going to have to get back to writing like I used to when I was 10—having everything come out naturally. The way I like to write is for it to come out the way I walk or talk. Not that I even walk or talk yet like I’d like to. I don’t carry myself yet the way Woody [Guthrie], Big Joe Williams, and Lightnin’ Hopkins have carried themselves. I hope to someday, but they’re older. They got to where music was a tool for them, a way to live more, a way to make themselves feel better. Sometimes I can make myself feel better with music, but other times it’s still hard to go to sleep at night.”

I ain’t lookin’ to block you up Shock or knock or lock you up Analyze you, categorize you Finalize you or advertise you All I really want to do Is, baby, be friends with you

Other Versions

Many people have recorded “All I Really Want to Do” through the years, including The Byrds, Cher, The Four Seasons, The Surfaris, The Fleetwoods, The Hollies, Sebastian Cabot, World Party, The Hooters, We Five, and Bryan Ferry. The Byrds and Cher had the most success in the charts—The Byrds peaked at No. 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, while Cher went all the way to No. 15, releasing the song as her first solo single without Sonny Bono. In the UK, Cher took it to No. 9, while The Byrds climbed all the way to No. 4. The Byrds had their first No. 1 song with a version of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and Sonny & Cher had their biggest success with “I Got You Babe,” an answer song to Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe.”

I don’t want to straight-face you Race or chase you, track or trace you Or disgrace you or displace you Or define you or confine you All I really want to do Is, baby, be friends with you

Dylan summed it up best in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, “If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important. I don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs. And I’m not going to worry about it—what it all means. When [Herman] Melville put all his Old Testament, biblical references, scientific theories, Protestant doctrines, and all that knowledge of the sea and sailing ships and whales into one story, I don’t think he would have worried about it either—what it all means.”

I don’t want to meet your kind Make you spin, or do you in Or select you or dissect you Or inspect you or reject you All I really want to do Is, baby, be friends with you

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Chart Check-In: 5 Super-Cool Songs that Were in the Top 40 This Week in 1980

© 2024 American Songwriter

Famous birthdays list for today, May 24, 2024 includes celebrities Bob Dylan, John C. Reilly

• Published: May. 24, 2024, 5:00 a.m.

Bob Dylan and John C. Reilly celebrate birthdays on May 24, 2024. AP

• Mike Rose, cleveland.com

Birthday wishes go out to Bob Dylan, John C. Reilly and all the other celebrities with birthdays today. Check out our slideshow below to see photos of famous people turning a year older on May 24th and learn an interesting fact about each of them.

Top celebrity birthdays on May 24, 2024

NOBLESVILLE, INDIANA - SEPTEMBER 23: Bob Dylan performs as a surprise guest during Farm Aid at Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center on September 23, 2023 in Noblesville, Indiana. (Photo by Gary Miller/Getty Images) Getty Images

Singer Bob Dylan turns 83

Fun fact: Originally from Duluth, Minnesota

Tanya Tucker, from left, Patti LaBelle, and Billie Jean King appear during CMT Smashing Glass on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. The pre-taped show airs Nov. 15. (AP Photo/George Walker IV) George Walker IV/Invision/AP

Singer Patti LaBelle turns 80

Fun fact: Appeared in a pair of ‘The Wonder Years’ episodes last year

Riley Keough, left, and Priscilla Presley arrive at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis) AP

Actress Priscilla Presley turns 79

Fun fact: In spite of rumors, Tom Jones stated in a 2021 interview that he and Priscilla were “just friends.”

Actor Jim Broadbent poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'The Duke' during the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Friday, Sept. 4, 2020. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP) Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP

Actor Jim Broadbent turns 75

Fun fact: Appeared in multiple episodes of ‘Game of Thrones’ as an archmaester

Actors Steve Carell, from left, William Jackson Harper, Mia Katigbak, Anika Noni Rose, Alison Pill, Jonathan Hadary, Jayne Houdyshell, Spencer Donovan Jones and Alfred Molina pose together during the "Uncle Vanya" Broadway cast photo call at the Lincoln Center Theater on Tuesday, March 5, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP) Andy Kropa/Invision/AP

Actor Alfred Molina turns 71

Fun fact: Voiced a professor in the animated film ‘Monsters University’

Kristin Scott Thomas poses for photographers upon arrival at the The Fashion Awards in London Monday, Nov. 29, 2021. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP) Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP

Actress Kristin Scott Thomas turns 64

Fun fact: Appeared as an agent in the first ‘Mission: Impossible’ film with Tom Cruise

Hirokazu Koreeda, right, accepts the award for best screenplay for 'Monster,' on behalf of Yuji Sakamoto, which was presented by John C. Reilly, left, during the awards ceremony of the 76th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 27, 2023 (AP Photo/Daniel Cole) AP

Actor John C. Reilly turns 59

Fun fact: Met his future wife while she was working as an assistant for Sean Penn.

More celebrities with birthdays today

Musician John Madden of The Serendipity Singers is 87. Jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp is 87. Actor Gary Burghoff (“”M.A.S.H.”) is 81. Country singer-songwriter Mike Reid is 77. Singer Rosanne Cash is 69. Actor Cliff Parisi (“Call the Midwife”) is 64. Actor Dana Ashbrook (“Twin Peaks”) is 57. Actor Eric Close (“Nashville,” ″Without a Trace”) is 57. Actor Carl Payne (“Martin,” ″The Cosby Show”) is 55. Guitarist Rich Robinson of The Black Crowes is 55. Actor Dash Mihok (“Silver Linings Playbook”) is 50. Actor Bryan Greenberg (film’s “Bride Wars,” TV’s “One Tree Hill”) is 46. Actor Billy L. Sullivan (“Something So Right”) is 44. Actor-rapper Big Tyme is 43. Drummer Cody Hanson of Hinder is 42. Dancer Mark Ballas (“Dancing with the Stars”) is 38. Country singer Billy Gilman is 36. Rapper G-Eazy is 35. Actor Cayden Boyd (“The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl”) is 30.

Other popular or historical birthdays on May 24th

Germanicus Julius Caesar, Roman general and father of Caligula

Charles Lucien Bonaparte, ornithologist and nephew of Napoleon

Queen Victoria, British monarch

Tommy Chong, comedian (86)

with The Associated Press

Celebrity fun facts

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Check out our full list of more than 40 celebrity fun facts .

Movie and TV fun facts & more

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Recent Celebrity birthdays

• Famous birthdays list for today, May 25, 2024 includes celebrities Octavia Spencer, Ian McKellen
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Want to see more celebrity birthdays as well as additional fun facts posts? Follow me on Facebook for the latest by clicking the “like” button below.

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Business Journal Daily | The Youngstown Publishing Company

Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan: Valley Rockers Plan Tribute Concert

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Valley-based rockers Rick Blair and Demos Papadimas will salute Bob Dylan on his 83rd birthday Friday, May 24, with a tribute concert at Westside Bowl.

The lifelong Dylan devotees have put together a show they’ve dubbed “Forever Young,” after the Dylan song. It will include guest appearances by Jackie Popovec and Rick Deak of The Vindys, Rob and Adrienne Berry of The Berrys, Chris Rutushin of Radio Lark, Nick Aducci and Kari Ann Rutushin.

The backing band for the entire show will feature Michael Estok and Angelo LaMarca, who, along with Blair, are members of Rolling Boxcar International; and Andre Ptichkin and Dylan Kollat of JD Eicher’s band, who perform with Papadimas.

Tickets are $10, with all proceeds benefiting Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley. The show will start at 8 p.m.

Dylan birthday concerts take place every year in many cities. The Westside Bowl show will be a first for the Mahoning Valley, but for Blair it’s nothing new.

“In one way or another, I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said. “On May 24, the only thing we’re listening to around my house is always Dylan.”

Blair’s own musical career was precipitated by his love of Dylan. “I learned to play guitar so I could sing Dylan songs,” he said.

The idea for the tribute concert stemmed from the respect Blair and Papadimas have for the legendary artist.

On May 24 of last year, Blair messaged Papadimas with the idea of doing a birthday tribute show in Youngstown. “Within 30 minutes, Demos texted me back and said he reserved that date at Westside Bowl,” Blair recalled. “With his enthusiasm, it was easy to go forward.”

Papadimas, it turns out, had also been thinking of doing such a show.

An Interesting Task

Blair and Papadimas both cite Dylan as their primary musical influence, although they differ in their musical approach.

Between the two, the tribute show is in good hands.

“We’re going to do it justice,” Papadimas said.

The two started by compiling a list of at least 60 songs and then paring it down.

“We wanted to touch on every period of Dylan’s career, and the list we made was so long that it would have been like a three-day festival,” Papadimas said. “But that’s the great thing about Dylan. There is so much to choose from, so many directions we could go in.”

The guiding principle was to play the songs that define Dylan, even if it means forgoing some of his hits.

“We’re not going to play ‘Lay Lady Lay,’” Papadimas said. “It was one of Dylan’s highest-charting songs, but it just doesn’t define him like, say, “Tangled Up in Blue.’”

The concert will intentionally leave out Dylan’s modern-era output, stopping after the “Time Out of Mind” (1997) album.

“We decided against the last few albums, just to trim it down,” Papadimas said.

Over the past 50 years, dozens of artists have recorded songs written by Dylan. Many turned them into bigger hits than the original by using fuller arrangements and punching up the vocals and production.

It’s a hallmark of a great songwriter, Papadimas said, noting that Dylan songs can be adapted to any musical genre or vocalist style.

“There’s a melody and a lyric, and not a whole lot of riffs,” he said. “You can do his songs so many ways.”

The Westside Bowl show will be broken into two sets, each ranging from 60 to 75 minutes. Blair, Papadimas and LaMarca will take turns singing lead vocals.

Dylan himself rarely plays his own songs the same way twice, often changing them so radically that they become unrecognizable. That won’t be the case at the May 24 show.

“We’re not trying to replicate the records, but the melody and structure of the songs will be the same,” Blair said.

Pictured at top: Rick Blair, right, and Angelo LaMarca rehearse for the Bob Dylan tribute concert at Canfield Christian Church. (Photo by Chris Rutushin)

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.

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San Diego summer concert guide: 42 shows you won’t want to miss

Our picks range from such hometown heroes as Jewel, Gregory Porter, blink-182, Charles McPherson and Alison Brown to legends like Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson to Lainey Wilson, Tinariwen, Los Lobos and Soft Machine, which will perform in San Diego for the first time since 1968.

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Year in and year out, the advent of summer in San Diego is predictable for music fans in at least two key ways.

Some of the highest-profile concert tours of the season will bypass us, so you’ll have to go to Los Angeles to catch performances by the Rolling Stones, Usher, Olivia Rodrigo, Kenny Chesney, Megan Thee Stallion, The Black Keys, Laufey or Childish Gambino.

Happily, several major tours have already come here this year, including those by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Chris Stapleton and the Billy Joel/Sting double-header at Petco Park.

Review: Neil Young & Crazy Horse strike heart of gold at tour-opening San Diego concert

The concert began with an epic, 15-minute version of ‘Cortez The Killer’ that featured extra lyrics recently unearthed by Young. Guitarist-singer Micah Nelson, Willie’s son, very ably assumed the role in Crazy Horse of Nils Lofgren, now on tour with Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band.

April 25, 2024

Moreover, so many tours are headed this way this summer — to stadiums, clubs, concert halls and amphitheaters — that there’s no need to travel past the county line to be overwhelmed by the number of options. Or by the potential expense of attending.

Average concert ticket prices in 2023 rose to $130, up from $90 in 2018 and $111 in 2022. Service fees can add as much as 32 percent to the face value of a ticket. Of course, VIP ticket packages cost much more (up to $600 per person, plus fees, for blink-182’s June 30 Petco Park show, and up to $870, plus fees, for Santana’s Aug. 30 concert at North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre).

Another factor is “dynamic pricing” — based on real-time customer demand when tickets go on sale — which can see prices double or triple between the few minutes it takes to select a ticket online and to complete the purchase.

On Thursday, the Justice Department sued Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster. The suit seeks a judicial ruling to break up the company, which the DOJ alleges has illegally maintained a monopoly in the live entertainment industry — an industry long dominated by Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

Soaring prices inspired the Transparency In Charges for Key Events Ticketing (TICKET) Act, which on May 15 was passed 388-24 by the House of Representatives. It would require event ticket-sellers to disclose the total cost of tickets upfront to consumers, including such so-called “hidden fees” as service charges.

“After years of bipartisan work, we will now be able to enhance the customer experience of buying event tickets online. We look forward to continuing to work together to urge quick Senate passage so that we can send it to the President’s desk to be signed into law,” reads a joint statement from Republicans and Democrats on the House Energy & Commerce Committee and the Innovation, Data & Commerce Subcommittee.

With or without such a welcome law, the volume of live-music events here and across the nation appears set to grow ever larger.

To help you choose, these are our picks for some of the likely highlights in this summer’s San Diego concert season. Upcoming shows at the San Diego County Fair and The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park will be previewed in upcoming issues of the Union-Tribune’s Friday Night & Day section.

For the sake of expediency, our 42 choices do not include performances that are already sold out. So, take a bow, Bonnie Raitt, Foo Fighters, Vampire Weekend, Chris Thile, Natalie Merchant, Kamasi Washington, Fuerza Regida, The Decemberists, Hozier, Jessica Pratt, Cowboy Junkies, Buddha Trizie, Imagine Dragons, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, et al.

Mon Laferte

The best-selling Chilean artist of the 21st century, Mon Laferte is a devoted social activist and a borders-leaping musician. Her work over the years has ranged from pop, folk-rock, trip-hop, electronica and reggaeton to cumbia, ranchera, mariachi, bolero and banda. “Mon Laferte, Te Amo” — a documentary of her 2021-22 world tour — will debut on Netflix in August. As a follow-up to her March 10 concert in Tijuana, Laferte performs an outdoor show tonight in the shadow of San Diego’s Petco Park. 7 p.m. today. Gallagher Square at Petco Park, 100 Park Blvd., downtown. $66-$166. ticketmaster.com

North Park Music Fest

Back for its third year, this two-day, three outdoor-stage festival will showcase more than 20 bands and solo artists on Friday and Saturday. The Friday lineup is headlined by Particle Kid (the periodic stage name of Willie Nelson’s son, Micah) and 2017 Grammy-winner Fantastic Negrito (born: Xavier Dphrepaulezz), who at times suggests the offspring of Prince, Howlin’ Wolf and D’Angelo rolled into one. Saturday’s bill will be topped by a reunion by the popular San Diego band Louis XIV and a solo acoustic set by Ty Segall. 4 to 10 p.m. Friday; noon to 10 p.m. Saturday . North Park Mini Park, 3812 29th St., North Park. $50 per day, $60 for two days. northparkmusicfest.org

Also recommended

Friday: Jordan Davis, Gallagher Square at Petco Park

Friday: Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, The Music Box

Tedeschi Trucks Band, with Little Feat

Co-led by singer-guitarist Susan Tedeschi and her husband, former Allman Brothers six-string dynamo Derek Trucks, the Tedeschi Trucks Band audaciously mines a rich vein of blues, rock, soul, funk, country and other homegrown American styles.

Little Feat ace Sam Clayton, a Fallbrook resident, discusses storied band’s 50 years

The legendary band, a favorite of Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page, is now on its 50th anniversary tour and still willin’ to be on its way

May 21, 2019

Their similarly rootsy opening act, the pioneering Little Feat, was formed in 1969 before either Tedeschi or Trucks were born. Little Feat this month released its first new album in 12 years, “Sam’s Place,” named after Sam Clayton, the group’s Fallbrook-based percussionist and singer. 7 p.m. June 8. Cal Coast Credit Union Amphitheater, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego State University. $39.50-$99. ticketmaster.com

Alison Brown

Grammy Award-winning banjo master, composer and band leader Alison Brown grew up in La Jolla, just a few miles from the site of her June 12 concert at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center. Her June homecoming show is a benefit for the Rotary Club of La Jolla, whose president is Brown’s mother, Barbara.

Alison Brown, banjo star and MBA-holder, is on tour to promote her new album featuring Steve Martin, Kronos Quartet

The Grammy Award-winning La Jolla High School alum will perform June 22 at UC San Diego’s downtown Park & Market. She is featured in the new film documentary, ‘Recordially Yours, Lou Curtiss,’ which premieres June 23 at Digital Gym

June 11, 2023

The first 100 ticket buyers can attend a pre-show Q&A, hosted by Jamie Deering, the CEO of Lemon Grove’s Deering Banjos. Brown and her bluegrass-to-jazz band’s concert will include her song,” Banjo Homecoming Rag,” which will be accompanied by projections of vintage images of San Diego. 7 p.m. June 12. Baker-Baum Concert Hall, Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, 7600 Fay Ave., La Jolla. $100-$250. theconrad.org/events/23-24-rotary-club

Soft Machine

Is this a record? Since making its San Diego debut at Balboa Stadium in 1968, the pioneering English psychedelic jazz-rock band Soft Machine has performed here, well, never.

Now led by guitar wizard John Etheridge — who replaced former Vista guitarist Allan Holdsworth in Soft Machine in 1975 — the group’s latest iteration is on tour to promote its absorbing 2023 album, “Other Doors.” The 13-track collection includes a fresh take on the moody “Joy of a Toy,” a standout track from Soft Machine’s self-titled 1968 debut album. With former Stephane Grappelli guitarist Etheridge at the fore, Soft Machine’s return here — after 56 years — seems as improbable as it is welcome. 8 p.m. June 15. TERI Campus of Life, 555 Deer Springs Road, San Marcos. $25-$45. (858) 356-4546, tericommongroundscafe.com

Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band

One of the most accomplished and versatile musicians anywhere, Brian Blade has been the drummer of choice for Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones and for such jazz giants as Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Charles Lloyd and Joshua Redman. His Fellowship Band, which he has led since 1998, has created a singular blend of jazz, gospel, country, folk-rock, soul and more.

There is a spiritual undercurrent to Blade’s music and an emotional intensity in even its softest moments. That his Fellowship Band’s long-overdue area debut includes not one, but two concerts on Juneteenth seems like a doubly fortuitous way to kick off the Athenaeum’s 2024 summer jazz concert series. 6 and 8:30 p.m., June 19. Joan & Irwin Jacobs Music Room, Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla. $40 and $45. (858) 454-5872, ljathenaeum.org

Gregory Porter at the 6th annual San Diego Smooth Jazz Festival

At 6 feet 4 inches tall, Gregory Porter is a towering presence on and off stage. The Bakersfield native earned a full scholarship to San Diego State University as a football player. A 1990 pre-season practice injury, which ended his college gridiron days, led him to focus on singing here at jazz clubs and a leading role in San Diego Repertory Theatre’s 1998 production of “It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues.”

Gregory Porter rises up on stirring new album: ‘We need things to elevate us’

Music transformed the Grammy-winning vocal star after an injury abruptly ended his college football career at San Diego State University

Aug. 30, 2020

One of the finest jazz, soul and blues singers of his generation, Porter performs with fire, finesse and impeccable taste. He makes every word count without ever showing off. His combination of vocal passion and sophistication places him heads and shoulders above the other performers at this year’s San Diego Smooth Jazz Festival, where he’ll co-headline on June 23. 3:30 p.m. June 22 and June 23. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222 Marina Park Way, San Diego. $70-$260. sandiegosmoothjazzfestival.com

Java Joe’s Reunion Show

Jewel and Jason Mraz are just two of the many then-unknown young troubadours who launched their careers performing at Java Joe’s, a cafe that occupied nine different San Diego locations between 1991 and 2018. The high regard in which its founder, Java Joe Flammini, is held by so many area musicians is demonstrated by the talent-packed lineup that will celebrate his legacy at San Diego Folk Heritage’s second annual Java Joe’s Reunion Show.

Java Joe’s Reunion Show to celebrate storied San Diego venue where Jewel and Jason Mraz got their starts

Lisa Sanders, Gregory Page, Berkley Hart and Tim Flannery will perform at the Sunday concert, which is being presented by San Diego Folk Heritage

Jan. 4, 2023

The concert will includes five duos — Gregory Page and Jack Tempchin, Page and Frank Lee Drennen, Jeff Berkley and Calman Hart, Lisa Sanders and Brown Sugar, and Bug Guts, which teams Scott Ireland and his wife, Rosebud — along with solo performances by Carlos Olmeda, Lindsay White, Shawn Rohlf, John Katchur, former San Diego Padres’ infielder Tim Flannery. Flammini will be in attendance for the show, which will be hosted by veteran musical satirist Jose Sinatra. 4 p.m. June 30. San Diego Oasis, 17170 Bernardo Center Drive, Rancho Bernardo. $25-$30. (858) 613-0858, sdfolkheritage.org

blink-182, Pierce The Veil

Triple play! After performing two rapturously received concerts here last year at Pechanga Arena, the Poway-bred pop-punk band blink-182’s reunion tour with guitarist, vocalist and group co-founder Tom DeLonge is headed to Petco Park.

Blink-182’s San Diego homecoming was a sensitive, profanity-free concert rich in introspection

Blink-182 is back on the road with its classic lineup and potty-mouthed humor intact. Its Monday San Diego-homecoming concert included one unexpectedly tender moment

June 20, 2023

Expect some snarky onstage comments about the San Diego Padres, along with such blink favorites as “Rock Show,” “What’s My Age Again?” and “Stay Together for the Kids.” The lineup also includes the San Diego band Pierce the Veil, making this a double homecoming. 7 p.m. June 30. Petco Park, 100 Park Blvd., downtown. $80-$220; VIP packages are $450-$600. ticketmaster.com

Also recommended:

June 1: A Tribute to The Zeros, Casbah

June 6: The Coronas, Casbah

June 8: Cafe Tacuba, Caifanes, North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre

June 11: Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls, Soma Live

June 11/12: Rachel Z, Omar Hakim & Jonathan Toscano

June 12: Parliament-Funkadelic, featuring George Clinton, with Blu Eye Extinction, Belmont Park Beach House

June 12: Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, Observatory North Park

June 17: Elvin Bishop’s Big Fun Trio, Belly Up

The Aristocrats

Dazzling musicianship, pinpoint dynamic control and quirky humor have long been the hallmarks of The Aristocrats, whose concerts often elicit both smiles and awe. Featuring English guitarist Guthrie Govan, American bassist Bryan Beller and German drum wiz Marco Minnemann, this rock-and-way-beyond power trio achieves musical velocity and nuance in equal measure.

The Aristocrats soar with new album, tour, and rubber pig solos

The members of The Aristocrats have worked with everyone from Joe Satriani and Lil Wayne to the Buddy Rich Big Band and Oscar-winning film composer Hans Zimmer

Aug. 29, 2019

Their latest release, “Duck,” is a concept album about “a web-footed Antarctic Island native fleeing a penguin policeman all the way to New York City.” The fact that The Aristocrats are an all-instrumental band makes this concept — possibly inspired in part by Frank Zappa’s “Penguin in Bondage” — all the more intriguing. 7 p.m. July 11. Ramona Mainstage, 626 Main Street, Ramona. $28. (760) 789-7008, ramonamainstage.com

Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives

A five-time Grammy Award-winner and a 2022 Tennessee Musicians Hall of Fame inductee, Marty Stuart was all of 14 when he became the mandolinist in bluegrass legend Lester Flatt’s band in 1972. He further burnished his reputation as the guitarist in Johnny Cash’s band — San Diego’s Jim Soldi replaced him five years later — and through his subsequent work with violinist Vassar Clements and acoustic guitarist Doc Watson.

Stuart launched his solo career in the mid-1980s. For fans of honky-tonk, gospel and country-rock, he and his aptly named band, The Fabulous Superlatives, are as good as they come. 8 p.m. July 12. Sycuan Live & Up Close Theater, Sycuan Casino Resort, 5469 Casino Way, El Cajon. $69-$79. (619) 445-6002, sycuan.com

Lake Street Dive, with Celisse

It’s been 12 years since the Boston-bred Lake Street Dive made its San Diego debut at Queen Bee’s, and the band has lost one member and added two more in the interim.

But its blend of vintage pop and rock, classic Motown soul, country, jazz and more remains as inviting as ever. Ditto the group’s polished ensemble work and captivating vocal harmonies, which are fueled by lead singer Rachael Price and bassist/singer Bridget Kearney. Expect to hear some new songs from Lake Street Dive’s new album, “Good Together,” which will be released June 21. 8 p.m. July 26. Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre at SDSU, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego. $40.50-$70.50; VIP packages are $211. ticketmaster.com

Charles McPherson 85th birthday celebration

A San Diego resident since the 1970s, Charles McPherson has been one of the jazz world’s most highly regarded alto saxophonists for more than 50 years, first as a member of bass giant Charles Mingus’ band, then as a solo artist and band leader in his own right. Bebop remains his greatest musical passion, but McPherson isn’t resting on his laurels.

Fall arts 2019 | Music: Jazz legend Charles McPherson eager to keep growing

The sax great, who turned 80 in July, is busier than ever with tours, new albums and more

Sept. 15, 2019

His arresting new album, “Reverence,” was recorded live in New York last year and finds McPherson injecting every note he plays with deep feeling and an unmistakable degree of conviction. It comes as no surprise that his two May and two June concerts at La Jolla’s Conrad Prebys Performing Art Center sold out well in advance.

Fortunately, he has two more performances coming up here at Lou Lou’s Jungle Room, just three days after he turns 85 — and nine days after his birthday concert at New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center. 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. July 27. Lou Lou’s Jungle Room at the Lafayette Hotel, 2223 El Cajon Blvd., North Park. $75. loulous.turtabletickets.com

Outlaw Music Festival, with Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp

Willie Nelson is 91. Bob Dylan turned 83 on Friday. They are now on the road with John Mellencamp, 72, for the first concert tour the three founders of the annual Farm Aid benefit shows have done together since 2009. The opportunity to see either Nelson or Dylan in the autumn of their years is a welcome one.

Review: Willie Nelson’s San Diego concert defined, not defied, the passing of time. He turns 91 on April 29.

The American music-master and his band warmed up a damp, cool evening at The Shell. David Sanger, the drummer in opening act Asleep At The Wheel, took the ferry back to his family’s home in Coronado after the show.

April 23, 2024

The opportunity to see these two American music icons share a stage with their respective bands, and join voices for a song or two, seems just about priceless. 5 p.m. July 29. North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre, 2050 Entertainment Circle, Chula Vista. $53.45-$167.50; platinum and VIP prices range from $223.20 to $523.20. livenation.com

July 6: Curtis Taylor Quintet, Museum of Making Music

July 11: Dark Star Orchestra, Humphreys Concerts by the Bay

July 11: The Church, Afghan Whigs, Observatory North Park

July 12: Clive Carroll, Dizzy’s

July 14: Alejandro Escovedo, Belly Up

July 16-20: Joshua White, The Jazz Lounge

July 29: Sara Gazarek, The Jazz Lounge

Dweezil Zappa ‘The Rox (Postroph) y Tour’

The eldest son of the late music legend (and former La Mesa resident) Frank Zappa, ace guitarist and band leader Dweezil Zappa has devoted himself to performing his father’s wildly adventurous music on concert stages around the world.

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For his first tour with his band since March 2020, Dweezil will focus on music from two of Frank Zappa’s most popular albums — both released in 1974 — the double-live disc “Roxy & Elsewhere” and the studio outing “Apostrophe (‘).”

The set list is likely to include “Penguin in Bondage” and “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow,” an edited version of which gave Frank Zappa his first Billboard Top 100 hit. Dweezil’s new band includes 27-year-old guitar virtuoso Zach Tabori and young keyboardist Bobby Victor. 8 p.m., Aug. 2. The Magnolia, 210 East Main St., El Cajon. $45-$97. VIP and platinum packages are priced from $185.85 to $329.20. (619) 651-2004, livenation.com

Carlos Santana and TV On The Radio’s Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe are just a few of the admirers and collaborators of Mail’s Tinariwen, the guitar-driven desert blues band from Mail that in 2012 won the Grammy Award for Best World Music.

The group’s founding members are Berber nomads who met more than 40 years ago at a refugee camp in Algeria. After waging a guerrilla war against the Malian government, which had taken possession of their tribal territories, they turned to music as a full-time vehicle for their revolutionary zeal and quest for peace. In concert, Tinariwen crafts music that is foreign and familiar, hypnotic and cathartic. 8 p.m. Aug. 11. The Music Box, 1337 India St., downtown. $37-$77. ticketweb.com

Lainey Wilson

A standout performer at the 2022 edition of San Diego’s Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival, Lainey Wilson has seen her star rise ever higher since then. On May 16, she won Entertainer of the Year and Female Artist of the Year honors at the annual Academy of Country Music Awards — a year after earning five trophies at the 2023 edition of the ACMs. In February she won her first Grammy for “Bell Bottom Country,” which was voted Best Country Album.

A Louisiana native, Wilson is a potent live performer and an accomplished songwriter who has co-written hits for Luke Combs, Ashley McBryde and others. She is likely the only country artist whose concerts have included spirited covers of Jean Knight’s “Mr Big Stuff” and 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?” 7 p.m. Aug. 23: North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre, 2050 Entertainment Circle, Chula Vista. $43 to $327. VIP packages are $360. livenation.com

Tower of Power

Tower of Power is on a roll. Two years after teaming up with the San Diego Symphony for the first orchestral concert in its six-decade history, the Oakland-bred funk and soul band is returning with what — depending on whose counting — is either the 50th or 51st lineup of its career.

Tower of Power set to become first funk/soul band to play with San Diego Symphony: ‘We’re really excited!’

The brassy Oakland band, now in its 53rd year, performs Thursday at The Shell on a double-bill with the jazzy jam band Lettuce

July 1, 2022

Now on board is new drummer Pete Antunes and new singer Jordan John, who was all of 16 when he played a jam session with Prince. Antunes has especially big shoes to fill. He replaces Tower of Power co-founder David Garibaldi, whose propulsive funk chops and jazzy syncopations set a very high bar. 7:30 Aug. 30. Humphreys Concerts by the Bay, 2241 Shelter Island Drive, Shelter Island. $70. ticketmaster.com

Santana, with Counting Crows

Former Tijuana guitar-slinger Carlos Santana will turn 77 in July, but he shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. The pioneering Latin-rock band he leads — featuring his wife, Cindy Blackman Santana, on drums — continues to tour regularly. And its leader has released new recordings over the past year with Run DMC’s Darryl McDaniels, producer and drum great Narada Michael Walden, as well as with Santana’s son and nephew, Salvador and Jose Santana.

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The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and Kennedy Center Honors Award hopes to raise $7 billion to feed and educate poor children in his native Mexico and other countries.

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For good measure, at his most recent residency at Las Vegas’ House of Blues this month, the mustachioed guitarist has been mixing his classic songs with some choice cover versions, including Michael Jackson’s “Whatever Happens,” The Voices Of East Harlem’s “Right On, Be Free” and The Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues.” 7 p.m. Aug. 30. North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre, 2050 Entertainment Circle, Chula Vista. $67.20-$354. VIP packages are priced from $374 to $870. livenation.com

Aug. 6: Pokey LaFarge, Belly Up

Aug. 8: Junior Brown, Ramona Mainstage

Aug. 9-11: Baja Beach Fest, Rosarito Beach

Aug. 14: Summer Dean, Casbah

Aug. 17: Talib Kweli, The Music Box

Aug. 23: Adama Bilorou, Dizzy’s

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John Koerner, Bluesman Who Inspired a Young Bob Dylan, Dies at 85

A spindly guitarist nicknamed Spider, Mr. Koerner was Mr. Dylan’s first friend in the scruffy world of Minneapolis bohemia where he learned about folk music.

By Alex Traub

Spider John Koerner, a blues and folk singer whose work drew praise from the Doors and the Beatles (if not the general public) and who, in 1960, taught his friend Bobby Zimmerman about traditional American music, then watched as the young man metamorphosed into Bob Dylan, died on Saturday at his home in Minneapolis. He was 85.

The cause was cancer, his son Chris Kalmbach said.

On a self-made seven-string guitar and also on a 12-string — like his idol, Lead Belly — Mr. Koerner (pronounced KER-ner) yowled and foot-stomped his way through songs about gold miners and frogs who went a-courtin’. He played the bars and coffeehouses of the nation’s university towns, and he performed both standards and his own original songs, which came out, as one critic put it , “pre-antiquated.”

Musically, he was best known as a member of Koerner, Ray & Glover, along with Dave “Snaker” Ray , another guitarist and vocalist, and Tony “Little Sun” Glover , who played harmonica. Their debut album, “Blues, Rags & Hollers,” released in 1963, was an early attempt by young middle-class white men to imitate Black blues musicians whose hard-to-find recordings they had obsessively collected.

“Demolishing the puny vocalizations of ‘folk’ trios like the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Whatsit, Koerner and company showed how it should be done,” David Bowie wrote in a 2003 article in Vanity Fair in which he included “Blues, Rags & Hollers” on a list of his 25 favorite albums.

The Doors decided to sign with Elektra Records in part because it had issued that album. The founder and chief executive of Elektra, Jac Holzman, often said the Beatles authorized him to issue an album of baroque interpretations of their work after John Lennon told him, “Anyone who records Koerner, Ray & Glover is OK with me.”

Mr. Koerner’s other Elektra releases included “Running, Jumping, Standing Still” (1969), which he recorded with the pianist Willie Murphy. In 1997, The International Herald Tribune called it “one of the most important early folk-rock records”; in 2016, Billboard wrote that it was “a slab of ragtime psychedelia and a high-water mark of the artistic freedom that characterized the time.”

For all that, Mr. Koerner entered the annals of history less for his own music than for his role in the musical development of someone else.

In 1959, Bobby Zimmerman moved from Hibbing, the little city in Minnesota’s northern reaches where he had grown up, to Minneapolis. As an incoming freshman at the University of Minnesota, his new home was Dinkytown, the neighborhood around the university and a provincial capital of America’s counterculture. His new neighbors were beatniks, tweedy anarchists and assorted other young people on holiday from families and careers. It was hip to quote Allen Ginsberg and Lenny Bruce.

In this milieu, rock ’n’ roll was pop — worse, it was square. Authenticity lay in the roots of American music, then being cataloged for the first time by folklorists like Alan Lomax and Chris Strachwitz . Flannel-wearing hipsters blared newly discovered classics on their harmonicas at places like the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a narrow room with uncomfortable stools and a tiny stage.

“The first guy I met in Minneapolis like me was sitting around in there,” Mr. Dylan wrote in his memoir, “Chronicles: Volume One” (2004). That guy was John Koerner.

The two of them knew some of the same standards, like “Wabash Cannonball,” but Mr. Koerner was older — he had entered the University of Minnesota in 1956 — and he had been studying folk music longer. He owned old 78s of Delta blues and spirituals, and he knew about mythical figures like Robert Johnson.

“Authentic folk records were as scarce as hens’ teeth,” Mr. Dylan wrote. “Koerner and some others had them, but the group was very small.”

He was drawn to Mr. Koerner in part for the “look of perpetual amusement on his face,” Mr. Dylan wrote. “When he spoke he was soft-spoken, but when he sang he became a field holler shouter.”

The two young men lived together briefly and began performing as a duo, at the Ten O’Clock Scholar and elsewhere. Bobby Zimmerman began using the surname Dylan and, like Mr. Koerner, dropped out of college. Singing harmony with Mr. Koerner, he learned new material.

“I was beginning to feel like a character from within these songs, even beginning to think like one,” Mr. Dylan wrote.

Mr. Koerner got glimpses of his friend’s artistic ambition. Dave Matheny, another local folky, once took a break during a concert. Mr. Dylan whipped out his guitar and harmonica and began playing from the audience. From the stage, Mr. Matheny begged him to stop. Mr. Dylan refused — and held the spellbound attention of the audience for about an hour, literally stealing the show.

“Dylan wanted an audience and just took it away from Dave,” Mr. Koerner was quoted as saying in Bob Spitz’s biography, “Dylan” (1991). “That was his way in the early days; he took what he wanted.”

Back then, Mr. Dylan’s voice was soft and sweet. “He always knew that you’d fall in love with that shyness,” Mr. Koerner told Mr. Spitz, “yet he knew how to rattle people’s cages.”

Mr. Dylan experienced an “epiphany,” he wrote, when he heard the music of Woody Guthrie and read Guthrie’s memoir, “Bound for Glory.” He soon hitchhiked east to find Guthrie and make a name for himself in Greenwich Village, the national center of the folk revival.

Mr. Koerner saw him again in 1965, when Koerner, Ray & Glover were on the bill at the same Newport Folk Festival at which Mr. Dylan infamously “went electric.” At the same time, the once-obscure Black blues musicians Mr. Koerner and others had revered were touring and gaining more widespread fame.

“It made us a little bit obsolete,” Tony Glover told The Star Tribune in 2012.

A lapsed aeronautical engineering student, Mr. Koerner briefly retired from music in the 1970s and spent his time tinkering with inventions and building telescopes.

“I wouldn’t want the kind of success that Bob Dylan has,” he told The Star Tribune in 2005. “He’s got people picking through his garbage.”

John Allan Koerner was born on Aug. 31, 1938, in Rochester, N.Y. His father, Allan, was an executive at Kodak, and his mother, Marion (Fenske) Koerner, managed the home.

John got the nickname Spider when he climbed around the bottom of a bridge one night while out with friends, who noticed his long-limbed physique.

His marriages to Jeanie Buranen, Lisbet Gerlach Madsen and Laura Cavanaugh ended in divorce. His son Chris Kalmbach was mainly raised by his mother, Bonnie Kalmbach, and uses her surname. In addition to Mr. Kalmbach, Mr. Koerner is survived by a son, Matt Koerner, from his first marriage; a daughter, Mia Koerner, from his second marriage; and five grandchildren.

In 2011, The Boston Globe reported that Mr. Koerner “finally looks like he’s always sounded”: “a grizzled sage who has lived the hard times he sings about.” He played in bars “where you’ve got to punch it out or people will go to sleep on you,” he told The Globe. In 2012, he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival for the first time in decades. Now he was the geezer with a storied but forgotten career who had been dug up for folk fans.

He was often asked about his youthful friendship with Mr. Dylan.

“People have told me I influenced Dylan,” he told Billboard in 2016. “I wouldn’t put it that way. What’s the quote? ‘A great artist doesn’t copy … they steal.’ You take something and make it your own and it’s fair enough.”

Alex Traub works on the Obituaries desk and occasionally reports on New York City for other sections of the paper. More about Alex Traub

Book Tour: At home with Amor Towles

The author of “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway” guides us through his personal library.

Photographs by Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post

The library in Amor Towles’s beautifully appointed home not far from Gramercy Park in Manhattan looks and feels like the Platonic ideal of the concept: tall windows, tasteful art on the walls, many comfortable seating options and well-ordered shelves filled with classic literature. Perfect for reading in, of course, but when I visited in March, Towles first wanted to talk about writing. This is the room where he composed, among other books, his acclaimed bestsellers “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway.” (His newest, “Table for Two,” a collection of stories and a novella, was published last month.)

Towles first brought out a few of what he calls the “design books” for his novels — notebooks that he fills with details for about four years before he starts officially writing. “I’m just trying to imagine: What happens? Who are the people?” he said. “Where are they from, what’s their personality? What are the settings? Who says what, and why? What are the tones?”

Some of the notes he scribbles are longer and more fully realized than others, but Towles estimates that he writes 80 percent of what ends up in his fiction on a computer, once the handwritten design books have done their duty.

Guides from the past

To conjure all those details and tones, Towles partly and very happily relies on documents dating from the eras he writes about. His shelves still include classic travel guides to Moscow, including one published by Intourist in 1932 and a Baedeker guide from 1914. “Intourist was the Politburo-owned tourist agency of Russia,” Towles said, “and at one time its offices were in the Metropol Hotel [the primary setting of ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’]. I had street maps from the ’30s that I could look at. Part of it was to see how they described for the Westerner something that they were trying to impress them with, et cetera.”

A framed picture of Ewan McGregor, in character, used in the production of the recently released adaptation of “A Gentleman in Moscow,” sits on a shelf nearby. Towles said it appeared as part of a secret police file in the show: “You don’t even notice it on screen, but it’s tucked under a paper clip on top of the file.”

A full encyclopedia set from 1931 is another treasure that combines pleasure and work for Towles. “I think it was 48 cents per book. My first novel, ‘Rules of Civility,’ happened to be set in 1938, and I thought: ‘This is great, I can check the population of New York City right there.’ I love old, weird reference.”

A treasured checklist

Towles majored in literature as an undergraduate at Yale and took the few creative-writing courses the school offered at the time. When he was a sophomore, the experimental-fiction writer Walter Abish was a visiting professor.

“At the end of the class,” Towles remembered, “he said to us: ‘All this has been great. I liked your work. I hope my comments have been helpful. But probably the most valuable thing I can do is give you a hundred books that I like.’ So he gave us this list. And because he was an avant-gardist, it was a lot of people who, at the age of 19, I had never heard of: Andre Breton, Barthelme, Beckett, Heinrich Böll … international writers, but all playing with form, that’s what he was interested in.”

Towles immediately started checking for the recommended titles anytime he visited a used-book store. “I’d stack them up, and I’d read a novel a day off of his list,” he said. “That was a totally different kind of experience than studying Henry James or Shakespeare or Chaucer in the academy. A lot of these books [on Abish’s list] were not perfectly made. A lot of them are stabs at something.”

Matthiessen, mentor and friend

The year after Abish taught at the school, Peter Matthiessen arrived for a semester. Matthiessen was already a celebrated writer of both nonfiction (“The Snow Leopard”) and fiction (“At Play in the Fields of the Lord”). He singled out Towles’s work for praise and told the young writer, “I’m going to take your time here very seriously, and I hope that you’re going to take your time with me very seriously, too.” The encouragement was “a gift,” Towles said. The next year, Towles worked with him again, and the two struck up a long friendship.

Towles laughed remembering Matthiessen’s underwhelmed reaction to the draft manuscript of “Rules of Civility” (“He didn’t know why I was writing a book set in 1938”), but when the book became a bestseller, the mentor wrote him a note of congratulations, saying that his sister had loved it and was thrilled to find her brother’s name in its acknowledgments.

New ideas, new language

In addition to his fond remembrances of his formal education, Towles referred to himself more than once during the tour as a “reader-writer,” someone who is constantly refining each of those skills in a conscious conversation between them. He stopped at a shelf of books — the “big ideas” collection, kept together — by Augustine, Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud and others. “What these things have in common for me is that [their authors] had to invent a new language to express their discovery. They weren’t doing the new version of something or doing a ‘spin’ on so and so. [Freud’s] ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ is a totally radical, weird book.”

“Marx and the group around him, they invented that whole thing of, ‘There is no more time! Now is the time to make a decision!’ This sweeping, bold things in single-sentence paragraphs: ‘ All people must …’ That’s electric. And you realize that you can apply that language in your novel. It’s doing something very different. I get very interested in how non-narrativists turn on language in the pursuit of a particular outcome, that I can then sort of use in some weird way.”

“Now you’re in the first-edition zone,” Towles said, opening the glass doors directly behind his writing desk. “And now you’re really into heroes: Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Conrad, Emily Dickinson.” (Towles also listed the Transcendentalists in this league; he was born and raised in the Boston area and said that “a lot of the personality aspects of Emerson and Thoreau are second nature to me.”)

“This is kind of crazy, just time coming around the corner,” he said, pulling one modest-size blue book off the shelf. “This is a first edition of ‘The Great Gatsby.’ It was owned by Dorothy Ann Scarritt,” he noted, pointing to her signature inside the book. “This is August 1925. She later becomes famous because she is Oppenheimer’s secretary at Los Alamos. She’s like the second employee at Los Alamos; she’s there the entire time and she organizes his entire life. She’s involved with bringing everyone in, getting them set up.”

Scarritt’s signature has a lot of company among Towles’s books. A signed copy of Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize lecture — a small book nestled inside a larger case — was a gift from his wife. Towles is a longtime fan of Dylan’s and mentioned him in the same sentence as Rimbaud and T.S. Eliot, so when the singer received the Nobel in literature in 2016 to divided opinion, Towles was ecstatic. “It was not controversial for me at all .”

Going back a century further, Towles took down a copy of Proust signed by its translator, C.K. Scott Moncrieff, to Joseph Conrad in 1922.

On a shelf across the room, Towles has another edition of Proust’s work, as well as several books about what he calls “Proust-y stuff” — “different things about Proust — Proust’s letters, paintings in Proust, the music of Proust …”

A long-running book club

Proust also holds a place of honor in an intense book club that Towles has been in with three close friends for just over two decades. “We basically read a novel a month, and we do projects. And we do almost explicitly dead authors; occasionally we veer from that, but mostly it’s dead. We started with Proust. Twenty years ago, we read it as a team. That took longer. We didn’t do it over seven dinners [one per book], more like 14 — over a year and a half.”

The club’s creation was inspired by Harold Bloom’s “Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?,” in which the literary scholar and critic pondered which writers he’d learned more from about the human condition: Plato or Homer? Freud or Proust?

“I was turning 40 in like two months,” Towles said, recalling when he read Bloom’s book. “I thought, if I live to 80 and read a book carefully a month, that means I have 480 books left. And if that’s true, I better focus on books that you could reread at 20, 40 and 60 and learn something new. I was ranting about this to my friend Ann Brashares at a cocktail party, and she said, ‘I’m in.’ And we’ve been going ever since.”

Given the size and ambitions of the books they normally choose, one of the friends recently suggested a “palate cleanser,” which led to “a dinner we called the Fitzgerald-Salinger Death Match. We realized that we’d all read ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ as children . So the question was: Which was better? We would reread both in a week and then come back and debate.” I later realized I had left Towles’s home without asking who won.

An earlier version of this article misidentified the person who sent Peter Matthiessen a note after reading "Rules of Civility." It was Matthiessen's sister, not his daughter.

About this story

Editing by John Williams. Photography by Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post. Design and development by Beth Broadwater. Photo editing by Annaliese Nurnberg. Copy editing by Jennifer Morehead.