Why this is one of the best ever NET shows — and some musical diversions

Jam packed with deep cuts, Huntsville 1993 otherwise known as ‘Hard Times in Alabama’ is one of my all-time favourite NET shows

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’Hard Times In Alabama’ has long been a favourite bootleg of mine. There’s just something about it and it’s up there with Vienna, 1999, one that I often return to and will write about eventually.

I probably first heard this show about 15 years ago and the thing that struck me first was the audio quality, and how the audience wrap around the music like a warm blanket. I felt like I was there.

1993 was really when Dylan started coming back strong, and at these shows showcasing the best from Good As I Been To You and mixing them in with a little Oh Mercy, a little Infidels, and some ‘60 and ‘70s deep-cuts and later some World Gone Wrong. What a time to see him live!!

Those setlists were the stuff of dreams, just incredible runs of songs, punctuated occasionally by something bluesier like ‘Watching The River Flow,’ ‘All Along The Watchtower,’ ‘Cats In The Well,’ ‘Everything Is Broken,’ and between them incredible runs of folk songs and ballads, ‘Tomorrow Night,’ ‘Jim Jones,’ ‘I and I,’ ‘Shelter From The Storm,’ ‘Born In Time,’ ‘You’re A Big Girl Now,’ and ‘Gates of Eden.’ What a list of songs! and in fact that same mixing of song choices and acoustic and electric sets came back strong with the Larry/Charlie band from ‘99.

Hard Times (Stephen Foster)

The set opener is Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times,” and Dylan delivers a gentle, contemplative vocal. He always seems to give that extra care to songs that aren’t his own—especially traditional folk tunes—and this performance is no exception. Bucky Baxter apparently just picked up an accordion one day and started playing it. Next thing you know he’s playing accordion in the set. Bucky sure had that uncanny ability to master any instrument.

Stuck Inside of Mobile

There’s something about Bucky and Winston Watson’s fire-breathing drums here that really seem to bring the song to life and Watson was definitely the catalyst that brought this band to life. Dylan is completely relaxed here, just working his way through the lyrics, often singing slightly behind the beat. Dylan dives right into the honky-tonk lagoon—his phrasing sharp and unmistakably his own. Here he’s playing what I think is a Fender Jaguar at this show, through one of Cesar Diaz’s amps and it’s a guitar that really suits his style and not something he used very often unfortunately. Bucky’s pedal steel takes the lead for the most part and it’s beautiful.

The signature Dylan phrasing really kicks in on the line: “I sit so patiently / Waiting to find out what price.” He rushes the words in the first part of the bar and then leaves space to ride the wave of the music.

There's a great extended breakdown to close the song, giving it a loose, lived-in feel.

All Along The Watchtower

“All Along The Watchtower” is where John Jackson really lets it rip. His signature guitar lines—chromatic runs, double-note slides, and those wildcat-growl licks—are all on full display. “Watchtower” is the band’s jam vehicle, the space where everyone can cut loose, and Jackson thrives in it. Dylan absolutely sings the hell out of it, even the barefoot servant seemed to show up for this one and though the two riders never arrive— you could almost see them on the horizon as the song faded out.

This performance is another example of how this band could take a song and stretch it just a little longer, Dead style, easing into the groove until they’re locked in and circling.

You’re A Big Girl Now

I love hearing ‘You’re A Big Girl Now’ in any concert, but I particularly love the ‘93 versions of this song. The structure is more or less the same as the version introduced with the G.E. Smith band in ‘88 but somehow softer, less masculine and muscular than the 88 version, more tender and contemplative.

I’ve always loved the way Dylan sings “back in the rAIn” here. And when he reaches “singing just for yOu / hope that you can hEar / singing through these tEars,” he uses the same melodic pattern each time—powerful, deliberate phrasing.

That’s not someone lazily coasting through a tune. That’s someone fully in the moment, exploring and performing the song as if he’s discovering it while expressing something deeply personal—right then and there.

Tangled Up In Blue

I was never a true fan of the Larry Campbell driven version of ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ not that it wasn’t a brilliant part or a brilliant arrangement, It was in fact both of those things. He was trying to capture a combination between the official released version of the song and the New York session version, where Dylan‘s guitar goes up and down the neck in open E tuning. Yet somehow the Larry version always felt somehow caged by the guitar part. Something I like about the 93 versions is that it’s allowed the emerge. But being honest I was never a big fan of the live versions of this song, not that there haven’t been amazing performances of it, I could definitely name a few. Particularly one in Glasgow in 2011 when Dylan took the microphone and stood centre stage, spitting, growling, grinning and cackling the lyrics:

But aside from the masterpiece original (from the original acetate) there’s only the 1978 grand ballad and the 1984 version that really blew my mind.

Anyway, on this version Dylan‘s voice is really subtle and some of the rasp earlier in the set seems to have disappeared as the smoother countrified element of his voice kicks in.

Born in Time

There’s so many highlights in this set, but it’s a magnificent ‘Born in Time’ that signals something special. It just seems to slowly rise from a deep sleep, Bucky’s pedal steel yawns and rises over the creek, the band never overextends itself and Dylan plays some typically quirky electric guitar. It’s a gentle version with Winston Watson’s shuffle holding pace and Bucky Baxter’s steel guitar carrying Dylan down the river.

I love the way Dylan sings “made of dreeeams” and “listening to my heartbeeeeeat… in the record breaking heat.” He flubs some lyrics at times on the first chorus, probably half remembering words as he sings, but it doesn’t matter. It’s part of the charm.

There’s a lot of space in this version of this song. No one is overplaying, with Bucky Baxter taking the top line melody on the pedal steel during the instrumentals. There’s also some lovely vocal moments:

“You hung the flaaaaame. You’ll pay the price. Oh babe, this future is too uncertain.”

The way he sings, “you were snow, you were rain.” and “Can’t you say I’m hurting?”

He must realise as he’s singing this song how stupendously good it is. He’s not forcing anything, he’s just in the groove, the band are locked in for the ride; nothing to rush. As the verses close Dylan plays some interesting low note riffs on the guitar, a Dylan speciality and something I always find really interesting about his playing. Where many guitar players might think about playing runs or playing higher up the fret on the higher strings, he steps back to the low end, like a boxer punching his sparring partner’s gloves, percussive, short pentatonic riffs with sprinklings of higher chord shapes in between. It’s always interesting. John Jackson ends the song by playing an absolutely beautiful jazzy run.

It was probably around 1993 that Dylan really developed this new way of playing guitar solos, and just his general way of playing electric and acoustic with his band. It’s certainly something he didn’t do in the ‘80s or back in the ‘70s. On the 86/87 tours he’d often just play chord shapes higher up the neck. It’s not the greatest example but think of the intro to ‘Had A Dream About You Baby’. Dylan was never a guitar player who played runs on the guitar, aside from some of the scales he played around chord shapes on the Hard Rain album (‘You’re A Big Girl Now’) solos were a rarity. There’s definitely something about his playing style that he took from Willy Deville and his band. It’s no wonder Freddie “The Frenchman” Koella ended up in his band. Dylan took a lot of Koella’s chord splashing technique and general experimental playing into his own style (see 2m23 in the video below) I just wish Freddy had stayed longer.

I’ve always felt Dylan plays guitar more like a horn player or a horn section. A few notes, repeated and varied, over and over like a call and response that builds and builds. He’s even said it himself.

Interviewer: You're playing more and more lead guitar in a style mixing between Django Reinhardt and Link Wray.

That's a good way of putting it. You can't even call my guitar playing guitar playing. Coming out of the folk school, it has a certain kind of momentum to the rhythm of it, but outside of that, my guitar playing just plays with the drums. In my group, the drummer is the lead guitar player. I play on the structure of where the drum plays, and that's all I do. It's almost like a horn.

I don't want to be known as a lead guitar player and I wouldn't assume a position like that, but nobody's going to play that part that I want to hear being played. I've tried years and years to get somebody to play it, but nobody wants to stick to that particular style because it's too simple or something.

[4 October 1997, London Press Conference, Metropolitan Hotel, London, England]

There’s something of Red Prysock’s one note staccato intro on ‘Hand Clappin’ about Dylan’s way of playing guitar too. Repetition and diversion for power, not myriad notes and variations and digressions.

If you isolate some of Dylan’s guitar parts, especially from the mid ‘90s through the mid 2000s, before he gives up the guitar for the keyboard, you’ll hear these little horn section riffs, Motown horns or straight out of Motown or Staxx, and these short sharp blasts of guitar: 123 12 123 12 and back again.

See his guitar intro to ‘Forever Young’ from 1995 for an explicit example of this horn section style of playing, again using the thicker strings:

Theres’s nothing harmonically astonishing, and it’s not trying or intending to be, but it’s certainly punctuating and original. He plays guitar and harmonica in a very similar way and it all ties in with how he sings. Even when he messed up a solo, ‘search and destroy’, they were still enjoyable in their own context. But when it worked, it was a really good anchoring for the band to bounce off. You could almost hear them as horn parts, even later with his big band piano licks that he’d hand off to Donnie Heron. But 1993 seems to be the beginning of this new way.

Here in 1993 Dylan’s guitar picking takes on some of the really splendid percussive technique we hear on Good As I Been To You and on World Gone Wrong. Dylan uses the chords to punctuate the song, for both melody, syntax and beats. It probably originated with Woody, or the Carter Family for him or from watching or listening to Howlin’ Wolf or Jesse Fuller play, but he takes it his own way.

He’s one of the only guitarists I’ve ever heard to spread chords and inversions up and down the neck plucking them hard and extracting as much percussive and melodic zest out of them as possible.

Think ‘Dark Eyes from ten years earlier, or the Good As I Been To You outtake, ‘You Belong To Me.’ It’s an incredibly unique way of playing.

There’s some great choices from Good As I Been To You on this show. In the previous year Dylan was still playing solo-acoustic, and his distinct mid-career guitar style shone through. Those versions of ‘Little Moses’ come to mind. But here in ‘93 Dylan gave space for the band to swell around him, but also for him to lead it in a new way, with guitar accompaniment from John Jackson or Bucky on accordion, dobro or mandolin.

Some other highlights from this show include, ‘Jim Jones’, ‘Hard Times’ and ‘Tomorrow Night’. John Jackson shines too displaying his acoustic finesse, and building on the structure of Dylan’s album versions.

Watching the River Flow

You know you’re in for a treat when this super fast shuffle kicks in with Jackson’s guitar not too far behind and Bucky’s snide lap steel growling. Dylan sings loose and easy in probably one of the finer arrangements this song has ever had. Dylan near speak sings at times, there’s probably no time to want to sit and read a book yet plenty of time to just sit and watch the river flow.

Jim Jones

Tomorrow Night

‘Jim Jones’ and ‘Tomorrow Night’ were staples at these shows and you could guarantee almost every night they’d be great too, especially when Dylan combined it with some harmonica playing as he does on ‘Tomorrow Night.’ ‘Jim Jones at Botany Bay’ appeared 31 times in the set throughout 1993, from February to November, and rarely was it anything but stellar. Dylan was a lover of Australian folk ballads, with ‘Female Ramblin’ Sailor’ being another, and they have a quality that I can’t quite explain that marks them out from purely English, Scottish and Irish Folk even if that’s where they derive.

I remember the first time I heard the studio version of ‘Tomorrow Night,’ I was stunned by the vocal. It reminded me of what Dylan had done with ‘Rank Strangers’ and how he could hold that sustained note on “everybody I met,” and here it was again on ‘Tomorrow Night.’ And it went against the grain of a man with a shot voice because what it showed is that he could really sing the shit out of anything, if he wanted to go there.

This live version is not quite as intense as the one on the album, here it’s a gentle ballad serenading the audience. That’s the difference between a live show and a studio recording. In the live show you have an audience, the moment has a different kind of vibration and that changes everything, but in the studio you’re singing into a void that only your imagination can fill. The studio is like a reflection, and a live performance is a communion.

The way he sings “last” in “but darling will it last” is almost an archaic lost way of singing, like he just time travelled to the ‘30s. But then the way Dylan sings is from another era entirely, especially his latest singing voice he’s almost reaching beyond the ‘50s and the ‘40s and ‘30s in terms of how he wants to sing. Those early singers, vocalists and crooners had a particular way, especially the more jazz and blues singing like Lonnie Johnson, or the Ink Spots (Dylan had a soft spot for We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me), or even as far back as John McCormack the Irish tenor. What Dylan does at times seems to go that far back and I feel it in this performance. The only downside to this version is where it shifts into a blues riff on Jackson’s guitar which somehow breaks the spell for me.

Gates of Eden

One of the great mystical songs of all time, I’ve always loved hearing Dylan do ‘Gates of Eden’. The NET features many a great version of the song, something he returned to in 1988 with G.E Smith after a long hiatus, with about a dozen last played in 1978. Those chord changes, where he moves from the G major to the D minor but he plays that strange inversion of it is just the most spooky sound, something he also applies to things like ‘Trail of the Buffalo’ and ‘Female Ramblin’ Sailor’ in the previous year.

From Eyolf Østrem’s indispensible Dylan Chords

I feel like Dylan owns those chord changes more than anybody else. It’s another example of a set of chords that probably come from an old folk song like ‘She Moves Through The Fair,’ that spooky Mixolydian mode, the ancient Greek harmonic tone, medieval church modes. It’s got a mystical, ancient mediaeval feeling to it and of course the lyrics reflect that too.

The clash of surrealism, medievalism, old and new morals, the state of the world. Some higher being, someone unknowable watching the world and the truth twist. The savage soldier, the shoeless hunter. A song that comes from the same place of shadows and light that ‘Shelter From The Storm’ inhabits. From one-eyed undertakers and preachers riding a mount to utopian hermit monks and promises of paradise and Dylan delivers it like it’s scripture. He’ll even play ‘Shelter from the Storm’ later in the same set.

“I can’t see a phoney audience being forced to accept a song like Gates Of Eden. I don’t believe THAT song could be accepted as a ‘thing to do’.”

“And if they can TAKE a song like that, there’s hope for them, whatever sort of people they are, right?”

Horace Judson Interview, London, England: 9 May 1965

Some of those magical phrases, especially the “motorcycle black Madonna two-wheeled-gypsy-queen” could’ve fallen from the pages of Ginsberg, or Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues. That apocalyptic aura, ancient and timeless. Just as with it’s sister song ‘It’s Alright Ma,’ Dylan seems to be gliding through apocalyptic times, it could be anytime. It could be moving through Feudalism and into Capitalism, relationships of ownership, succeeding kings. As “the lonesome sparrow sings,” Dylan reaching inside its mind to harmonise, to receive the message, this ancient bird, sacred to the goddess Aphrodite of the Greek pantheon, to Vishnu in Hindu mythology. It’s carrying messages from previous times, while a lover whispers in your ear dreams and stories of kingdoms, princes and princesses.

This is being delivered at a concert in 1993, let that settle in for a moment. Is there a higher form of expression, than this? At a concert? You could spend your whole life trying to unpack this song and in the end the only solution is to be born in the age of the crusades or 79 AD walking among the ruins of previous civilisations, because that’s just the tip of the iceberg with this song.

Don’t Think Twice (It’s Alright)

Dylan lightens things up next with his love song to Suze. Faster than the original, two guitars carrying the tune. Mandolin threading the edges of the song. You don’t sense the heartbreak and Dylan in this version is more just the remembrance of something gone.

Dylan’s emphasis here on the never-mind, ending, the vocal part of the song with “it’s all alright” extended and wailed. A brief interlude before Dylan’s breezy, whispered harmonica. Some of my favourite playing of his. When he does those quick rasps as if there’s a wind rustling through the song.

Cats In The Well

I And I

“Someone else is speaking with my mouth and I’m listening only to my heart” might be one of the great lyrics about fight or flight. This is THE performance of the whole concert the whole band just lifts off into the stratosphere.

Shelter From The Storm

Dylan leads off ‘Shelter From The Storm’ with a long electric guitar intro, splashes of wave-like chords sliding up and down the neck, with the band catching on at verse one. It’s a magic version.

John Jackson, Winston Watson and Bob

I’ve always felt that this incarnation of the NET band never fully got the credit they deserved, but I also feel it’s the band where Dylan learned the most about playing in a band, and they get eclipsed because they were followed later by a band featuring the exquisite playing of Larry Campbell, Charlie Sexton and David Kemper, who were kind of the sum of all styles, and the sun and moon to Dylan’s Gaia, in the spring of the internet age and so just more visible. But I’d argue the sets that this band delivered in those handful of years have more mystery and beauty in them. Mystery in playing, and mystery in just going to see a concert. Before the era when everything was online.

This band was definitely born from the ashes of Dylan’s stint with the Grateful Dead. They know how to jam, they know how to extend a song and take it to histrionic peaks and bring it right back down again and they do it in an instinctive if sometimes rough and ready way. In fact many of the songs of this era have extended ending, half time endings, even false endings. When people say Dylan doesn’t give all to his audience or he just plays for himself, they must have had their ears sliced off, this is sweat and blood stuff. This is a man letting his audience squeeze every last drop out of the songs.

But you can journey through the live shows of ‘93 to ‘96 and enter into a magical world, and it is a wonderland of creativity and chaos. You’ll find a band who had their own groove and their own sound. In a strange way they kind of made Bob Dylan sound modern, of this time, and not of other times. They had a unique sound. You couldn’t say they were a blues band, a country band, they weren’t a particular style. They were their own thing. They had strong elements of a jam band and definitely drew from the Grateful Dead. But they also had some of the flavour of Americana and Alternative Rock bands of the time. You can see how someone like Ryan Adams, Blake Mills, Adam Granduciel and Kurt Vile might have grown up on this stuff. Adams even poached Bucky Baxter (although that could have equally been inspired from Bucky’s time in Steve Earle’s band). Even Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo saw a good bunch of this era of shows.

Everything Is Broken

Again, Winston is the fire in the belly, while that Surf/Link Wray riff cooks in the background. Dylan letting rip on the “Choking!” line and Bucky sliding in on the dobro.

What Good Am I?

Another showstopper with his best singing of the night saved for ‘What Good Am I?’ Which was virtually perfect every time he played it on through ‘94 and ‘95.

The way he sings “turn away” and the way an audience member says “niiice”. The elongated “cry” finishing on a satin refrain of “What Good Am I!!” And then we’re into a gentle second verse. Punctured by Winstons Drum and a passionate “the rest who don’t try.”

Dylan is a performer full of quotable vocal phrases and during a show it’s often the way he sang a line that you take away with you into the night. I can think no other artist who can do that and have that effect, even if I was to list all of the great singers.

Maggies Farm

A strong ‘Maggie’s Farm’ leads into an always incredible ‘It Ain’t Me Babe.’

It Aint Me Babe

The singing on ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ is heart melting. The song floats along on free time, those chords so recognisably Dylan signal something beautiful. Bucky’s mandolin tap-dancing gives way its plucking to a fluttering bird in flight. The way Dylan sings “go way from my window” is just spine tingling and then later the phrasing on “eyes for you” and “close his heart” is like a desperate heartbroken plea. This is deeply emotional stuff.

Some of the same techniques as on ‘You’re A Big Girl Now,’ which has almost the same chord changes, return with “defend you” and “right or wrong.” A majestic performance brings to a close a favourite concert of mine and more reflections on just how splendid those sweet middle ‘90s years truly were.

I often wish John Jackson had stayed in Dylan‘s band and that they had just made an addition of Larry Campbell in 96 or 97 because I think a lot of what John and Larry could’ve done together could have been special. The band peaked and Dylan wanted change, but sometimes a player just needs a new challenge and a new catalyst.

I can’t think of another artist, other than the jazz players, who do what Dylan does, even if he brings to it the sort of synthetic cubism of Picasso, there’s still that element of supreme Jazz sensibility. There is not a single contemporary of his doing this.

In fact it was this very thing about him that first drew me in. My gateway was ‘94’s MTV Unplugged. I remember being shocked, awed, enchanted and hypnotised by way he used his voice on Desolation Row. I’d never heard ANYONE sing that way.

I hope you enjoy this show as much as me, and if not, hopefully some of my digressions are good enough to take away.