“Sorry,” the email read, “the Outlaw Music Festival isn’t giving out press passes.”
That press pass was the only thing forcing me to attend the show, headlined by Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson on June 21. I didn’t really feel like going. Blossom Music Center is a bit of a drive from my house, and sometimes it’s a pain to get in and out. The forecast read 90 degrees, and my wife is six months pregnant. We’d traveled a lot recently — not to mention feeling constantly strung out from chasing around a two-year-old. We really could’ve used a night at home.
Yet, I really wanted to see Willie Nelson. I’ve just missed him a dozen times since high school, when he and Bob Dylan brought their tour of minor league baseball stadiums in 2009 to Eastlake’s Classic Park, home of the Lake County Captains. I remember the regret I felt hearing “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” as I drove past the stadium, off to some party or football practice or something I’ve since forgotten. Since then, vacations or parties or nights of being simply too tired prevented me from pulling the trigger. But the dude’s 92 years old. How many more chances would I get?
Last year, I saw another hero, Neil Young, for the first time at Pine Knob Music Center outside Detroit, Michigan. The Wednesday-night show seemed like a hassle. I struggled to convince someone to go with me. After all, we had to burn two half-days of vacation time. But this wasn’t just seeing Neil Young. It was Neil Young with Crazy Horse. The hard rock, garage band, proto-grunge era that includes Rust Never Sleeps and Ragged Old Glory is objectively, in my opinion, the best era of Young’s music. So, my buddy (who I may have guilted into going) and I hopped in the car and blasted those albums all the way to Detroit. We checked into the hotel, ditched our stuff and headed to the show. A Deadhead in the hotel parking lot saw my stealie shirt and tossed me a Grateful Dead button and a beer for the road. We walked about a mile along the highway and then through trees to the venue. The entrance of Pine Knob looks like a garden foyer. Bars on wooden decks, a full-fledged marijuana dispensary and mobile merch sellers (so clutch) dot the tree-covered path to the amphitheater. Just an epic venue.
The show was just as legendary. The band emitted a roaring, supersonic sound that hit you like a damned jetliner as it rolled through “Cinnamon Girl” and “Down by the River.” Despite my love of distorted Neil, hearing his warm harmonica emulate through the valley during an acoustic portion that included “Heart of Gold” nearly brought me to tears. Throughout the show, my buddy and I high fived, like we were in a John Hughes movie. Afterward, my mouth hurt from smiling. I’ll remember those 24 hours forever.
Then a week later, Young shared a post on his website.
"When a couple of us got sick after Detroit's Pine Knob, we had to stop. We are still not fully recovered, so sadly our great tour will have a big unplanned break," the statement read. "We will try to play some of the dates we miss as time passes when we are ready to rock again!"
But the high-octane group did not return that year, and this year Neil has announced a pared-back, subdued tour with the Chrome Hearts as his backing band, which comes to Cleveland on Aug. 15. I’ll inevitably go and enjoy the show, but it’s not Crazy Horse. There is a very good chance I saw the last Crazy Horse show ever that night in Michigan.
Later, he said, “My body was telling me, ‘You gotta stop.’ And so I listened to my body.”
A 32-year-old getting this worked up over 70- and 80-year-old men might be a little strange. But I was raised on the Stones, Springsteen, Neil Young and so many others. I’m not a get-off-my lawn guy. There is cool, new stuff out there, and I listen to that stuff and go to those shows, too. Occasionally generational talents — Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Kendrick Lamar — pop up and change my life innumerably. But these older artists are my preference, with those exceptions aside, because they have soundtracked my entire life. It’s the reason I’ve seen Dead and Co. — the Grateful Dead revival featuring original members of the band — two times, despite John Mayer not being my favorite stand-in for Jerry Garcia (a conversation for a different time). So while I didn’t get to see Jerry, I can say I saw Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart.
While the records may live on, our chances to see these artists perform music in the flesh, the way music is intended to be heard, are finite. At some point, like Neil found out, their bodies are going to tell them, “You gotta stop.”
So, for the next few days, I watched the cost of Outlaw Music Festival tickets on the secondhand market. I just couldn’t justify more than $120 for pavilion seats on a whim. The lawn was hovering around $40 all week. Finally, on Saturday morning, I pulled the trigger, getting the tickets for $33 each thanks to a podcast promo code. A few hours later, my wife and I packed the blanket in the car, filled up our 20-ounce, venue-compliant water bottles, dropped off the kid at grandma’s, went through the Swenson’s drive-through (ordering the Cordelia collaboration, of course), filled up the gas and, in the words of Wille, “like a band of gypsys, we go down the highway,” ready to make some music with 20,000 friends.
Photo Credit: Rob Vaughn // @Robbie.Rambles
The Cleveland stop of the Outlaw Music Festival featured five artists: singer-songwriter Myron Elkins, Bruce Hornsby (the songwriter and Grateful Dead-adjacent pianist), Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats (of “S.O.B.” fame), Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. Other dates featured bluegrass phenom Billy Strings, Sierra Hull, Trampled by Turtles, Charley Wesley Godwin and Turnpike Troubadours. Sorry Nate, but I would have preferred just about any of those.
So, we walked in just before Dylan’s set. The argument for not missing these artists in their sunset years grows stronger with someone like Dylan. The criticism around his voice has been ever present in his career but hit a zenith for the past 10 years or so as his nasally whine turned into gravelly, off-beat snarl. One to go off on tangents, I won’t even address the Dylan-can’t-sing hypothesis, with which I’ve always passionately disagree.
Even following that premise, though, Dylan is doing more than the greatest hits show so many shallow fans crave. The 82-year-old is reinventing and recontextualizing his songs. Heck, he’s reinventing himself and our understanding of him — whether on stage by changing the lyrics or covering surprising songs or off of it by creatively collaborating with Cleveland’s own Machine Gun Kelly (I truly can’t believe I just wrote that phrase).
Photo Credit: Rob Vaughn // @Robbie.Rambles
Photo Credit: Ryan Humbert
What Dylan offers these days is more of an exploration of American jazz than a rock ‘n’ roll show. The compositions of old songs are nearly unrecognizable besides the lyrics. Songs like "Don't Thing Twice It's Alright" are almost all reworked into ballads with Dylan often speaking-singing over swelling piano passages or between warm lead lines from expert guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio. His deep, gravelly voice brings a gravitas to tunes like “Gotta Serve Somebody” and “Love Sick.” Meanwhile, the arrangements were pretty experimental, especially on the drums. On “'Till I Fell In Love With You,” for example, drummer Anton Fig’s deconstructed, off-beat percussion almost sounded like a soundcheck, until at the end where it finally relieved the tension by syncing back up with the song. It’s evidence of an artist who continues to push himself creatively.
Many fans complained about the lack of visibility, which was frustrating from the lawn. With the sun still up, Dylan chose a low warm backlight. Paired with his tendency to hide behind the piano, one fan next to me asked, “Are we sure he’s really there?” The signature plunky piano solos — and a 15x zoom on my phone camera — confirmed that he was indeed there. But hey, that’s Dylan the troll for you.
After a brief intermission, the lights went low again for Willie. Fans cheered as the simple signature guitar riff of “Whiskey River" — DUN, DUN, DUN, DUN, DUN, DUN — rang out. A massive American flag unfurled from the ceiling as the show took off. Willie’s setlist follows a narrative arc not unlike his career, from freewheeling cowboy to pensive elder statesman to stoic philosopher.
Photo Credit: Ryan Humbert
“Stay a Little Longer,” “Bloody Mary Morning” and “On the Road Again” got the crowd up and dancing before the band transitioned into contemplative songs like “Always on My Mind” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” The singer took a few breaks, letting guitarist Waylon Paine sing songs like “Workingman’s Blues.” The helper was good enough, but his sons, Micah or Lukas, have played this role on other dates on the tour, and that would have been much preferred.
Yes, Willie’s voice is weak and fading. Am I lowering the bar because he's 92 years old? Sure! You eventually move up to the senior tees in golf, too. Still, fans are treated to brief glimpses of that signature rising warble, like on the chorus of “Always on My Mind.” Some of the best moments of the show, though, fall between the singing. Hearing and seeing Trigger, Nelson’s longtime guitar and companion, which looks like it’s carved out of the Tree of Life in the Lion King, is a transcendent experience. Few guitarists are instantly recognizable from a single, subtle note, but Willie and Trigger offer such a singular sound. Nelson deserves to be considered among the great guitarists, and his inventive Spanish-country lead lines are still on great display. Similarly, Mickey Raphael deserves his stripes. Willie’s 50-year harmonica player is as much a defining element of the catalogue as Trigger, and at only 73, Raphael remains masterful. A real treat.
Photo Credit: Ryan Humbert
But the last act of the show seems hardly accidental. The final quarter is a reflection on death and, eventually, an acceptance of it. “Last Leaf,” a cover of Tom Waits on his most recent album, offers a defiant refusal to roll over, declaring “I’m the last leaf on the tree.” Nothing makes me go, I'm like some vestigial tail/I'll be here through eternity, if you wanna know how long/If they cut down this tree, I'll show up in a song.
In this context, “The Party’s Over” reads more like a meditation on reincarnation: Turn out the lights, the party's over/They say that all good things must end/Call it a night, the party's over/And tomorrow starts the same old thing again. In "Still Not Dead," Nelson sings, "I woke up still not dead again today."
Finally, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?,” during which Nelson invites the entire festival’s performers on stage for a singalong, and “I’ll Fly Away” show the 92-year-old accepting whatever comes after the only thing as certain as taxes, though we all know Willie was unwilling to accept those.
Photo Credit: Ryan Humbert
The show, even his confident stride as he walks off stage, reminds us not only that we’ll be there one day, too — if only we’re so lucky — but also that our twilight years can be glorious, graceful, full of wisdom and full of life. Over the course of just over an hour, Willie shares his recipe for longevity and a life well lived: contemplation, spirituality, righteousness, a whole lot of fun and a life in motion, no matter how far away your road may go.
And one day soon, Willie will travel down the road to one of the few destinations this life hasn’t taken him. But for now, he’s still here. He’s still singing. Why not sing along one last time?
Correction: A previous version of this article omitted Myron Elkins from the Outlaw Music Festival lineup.
Headline image by Rob Vaughn // @Robbie.Rambles
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