There was a rare cosmic convergence early Tuesday morning when the Southern Delta Aquariids and Alpha Capricornids meteor showers overlapped. It occurred a few hours after a far more earthly but equally heady musical convergence took place Monday evening at Chula Vista’s North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre in the form of Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan.
The two American music giants are co-headlining the 2024 edition of Outlaw Music Festival, the annual summer tour Nelson launched in 2016. Monday’s wonderfully life-affirming concert also featured opening sets by Brittney Spencer and John Mellencamp. Monday’s concert kicked off the second leg of this year’s tour, which resumes Wednesday at the Hollywood Bowl.
For longtime Nelson and Dylan fans, their joyous performances with their respective bands were by turns stirring and celebratory, playful and poignant. It was a visceral testament to their ability to craft and perform songs that define and eclipse their times and genres. It was also a welcome testament to the durability of these two icons.
At 91 and 83, respectively, Nelson and Dylan are older than any of the Rolling Stones, the tireless English rock band whose recent SoFi Stadium gig in Los Angeles was an unqualified, age-defying triumph.
Of course, neither of them moves like Mick Jagger, the Stones’ tireless lead singer and front man. But showmanship has never been Nelson or Dylan’s game. Their glitz-free Monday performances focused entirely on their remarkably sturdy and flexible music, be it Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” and “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” (which, respectively, opened and closed his 15-song set), or Nelson’s “Angel Flying to Close to the Ground” and “On the Road Again” (which provided two mid-concert highlights in his 20-song set).
Nelson missed the first seven June and July dates on this summer’s Outlaw tour because of an unspecified illness. Yet, while he coughed and blew his nose a few times during Monday’s concert, his supple voice never faltered and his mellifluous, exquisitely nuanced reading of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia On My Mind” was a master class in phrasing and delivery.
In contrast with his hit-and-miss San Diego concert at The Shell in April, Nelson hit his stride with the first notes of “Whiskey River,” his traditional opening number. He sounded fresh and fully engaged from start to finish.
The audience, which appeared to fill about two-thirds of the nearly 20,000-capacity venue, happily sang along on such favorites as “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys,” “Good Hearted Woman” and “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.”
Some numbers, including “Still is Still Moving to Me” and “Bloody Mary Morning,” clocked in at barely three minutes but were still a treat. When Nelson dug into the deeply moving, 5-minute-long ballad “The Border,” the Rodney Crowell-penned title track of his new album, the pathos in his finely textured singing was breathtaking.
Dylan’s performance was perhaps even more revelatory.
The storied troubadour, who is being portrayed in the biopic “A Complete Unknown” by Oscar-winning actor Timothée Chalamet, has long been criticized for his frequently gruff voice and mumbled vocal delivery. On Monday, he sang with exceptional warmth and clarity throughout, so much so that he sounded almost transformed.
His four-man band included drum legend Jim Keltner, who last toured with Dylan in 2002 and first recorded with him in 1971. It was anchored by bassist Tony Garnier, the one constant in Dylan’s many band lineups since 1989. Guitar duties were shared by Bob Britt and Doug Lancio. The instrumentation was fluid and never too precise, a quality that has long anathema to Dylan, who played piano with palpable enthusiasm.
Dressed in white, Dylan — who, as usual, did not allow professional photographers to shoot his performance — sang while playing a baby grand piano that he crouched at for all but one selection. As has long been his habit, rather than deliver rote, note-for-note performances, he breathed new life into each song by changing their moods, tempos and styles at will. (This did not sit well with at least one disgruntled attendee, who — after Dylan’s set — asked this reviewer: “Why didn’t he play any songs we know?” When told Dylan had done exactly that, starting with “Highway 61 Revisited,” the attendee looked incredulous, and retorted: “No, he didn’t!”)
The country-drenched ballad “Soon After Midnight” was recast by Dylan as a doo-wop-styled street corner ode. His Oscar-winning “Things Have Changed” was done as a blues shuffle, while the previously desolate “Can’t Wait” was slower, gentler and boasted a vocal delivery that suggested an homage to horror-film star Vincent Price, by way of cowboy film star Lash LaRue. Dylan sounded similarly committed whether romping through Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie” and the 1963 Dave Dudley country-music hit, “Six Days on the Road,” or tenderly essaying the Grateful Dead’s aching ballad, “Stella Blue.”
He said “thank you” to the audience at least five times, which for Dylan almost qualifies as a gab fest. He and Nelson both made good-natured references to their age during their back-to-back sets.
“You should have seen me back in 1958!” Dylan sang during his stunning rendition of “Simple Twist of Fate,” a gem from his landmark 1975 album, “Blood on the Tracks.” Not to be outdone, Nelson slyly proclaimed: “They say people my age are expected to fade, well, I’m afraid I’ve let you down” during “Die When I’m High (Halfway to Heaven),” which was written by his son and band mate, Micah Nelson, as a tribute to his legendary dad.
Mellencamp, 72, introduced his nostalgia-infused 1987 hit, “Cherry Bomb,” by telling the audience: “The only problem with talking about old times being old is you’ve got to be old to talk about it.”
On Monday, Nelson and Dylan — two prime candidates for a new Mount Rushmore — embraced and transcended their age. The results verged on the celestial.
