Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan on tour together.

What, you may ask, do these two men have in common? Well, neither can sing a lick.

Don't worry. I come to praise this tour of minor league baseball parks, not bury it.

Willie did what was basically a greatest hits set, and the crowd loved it. He sounded pretty good for a seventy-two year old. After more than fifty years and 2,500 songs, he'a allowed to take it a bit easy.

The highlight of Mr. Nelson's performance (for me at least) was his cover of the Jimmy Cliff classic "The Harder They Come". Apparently, Willie has a reggae (!) album coming out. (Due in stores August 2.)

Hold your horses. I checked. Unfortunately, there are no Eek-A-Mouse songs on the album. (More on The Eekster below.)

This got me thinking. Maybe ol' Willie gets sick of playing the same 2,500 songs every day and would like to bust out a rousing rendition of "Funky Town" or something similar once in a while. Just to wake folks up.


Mr. Dylan was something else altogether.

I haven't bought a Bob Dylan album in ten or fifteen years and so help me, I could not understand a word he said. I recognized one song in his set, "Lay Lady Lay", although it did sound as if he had brought it into the twenty-first century by trying to sing the words "lay across my bad ass bed". A friend said he sounded like Tina Turner at times. Remembering Willie's reggae foray, I suggested Eek-A-Mouse with a sore throat.

The crowd of hippies, ex-hippies, and their hippie wannabe grandkids were dazed and confused. (No, it wasn't that. No smoking is allowed in the shiny family ballpark.) They wanted War Protester Dylan, the Poet Laureate of Rock 'n' Roll. After his 60 Minutes interview, I should have known that guy never really existed.

(I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to keep doing the same things I came up with forty years earlier, just because they made me famous. Of course, it did work for Einstein.)

What they got was much better. They got a real muscian and a great band.

The music was mostly bluesy. Sometimes defiantly so. There was also a little bit of country mixed in. There was also something else...

I hesitate to type it for fear of driving hippies to suicide all around the world. The ones in the ballpark infield looked panicky and restless.

With Mr. Dylan on keyboard, his band belted out a song to which, if one were so inclined, dance the jive. And a few couples were so inclined.

The Bob Dylan Dance Band? It was so cool, I could hardly take it. It didn't matter to me if I could not make out the words (except one song that might be entitled "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" ?) because the music was that good.

Bob put away his '60s icon persona and started to play. I'm not sure how long ago he did this, but I am impressed.

(Disclaimer: It is entirely possible he was cheesegratershoutwhining "Bush sucks!" and "Burn your bras and draft cards" throughout the whole show. He could have been reading from his grocery list and nobody would have been the wiser. Actually, that would have been pretty cool: "Some pinto beans, Velveeta cheese. Butterfly pork chops, Mr. Clean".)

And to top it off, for his oncore, he sang "The Times They Are A-Changing" and "All Along The Watchtower", both practically unrecognizable. This "All Along The Watchtower" was the coolest version since XTC covered it in the late 1970's.


All in all, it was a grat night of music. Regardless of what you think of their personal lives, reputed politics, or less than dulcet vocal stylings, Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan proved to be members of an increasingly rare species, that of the entertainer who is also a musician.