Warm Welcome for Dylan in Minnesota: Bringing It Home at the Mankato Civic Center

The stage had an old-timey surreal theatrical feel.
(Those are mannequins in back)

I wasn't planning to see Dylan on this current leg of the Never Ending Tour, but the reviews have been so strong I couldn't help myself. Tuesday evening I checked to see what was available and grabbed a $12 seat ($17.17 after fees) and then began working on how to get to Mankato from Duluth. When all was said and done, the experience was memorable.

Thank you to Rich & Sue Hall who gave me the lift to Mankato. Rich said this was his third  major concert this week, having seen Willie Nelson and another big name in Vegas at the beginning of the week. Dylan has been doing five concerts a week right now, and his vocal punch shows no signs of letting up.

Dylan's muse on a pedestal, stage right

Despite the knots of rush hour traffic in Minneapolis, and a Thursday Night Vikings game at US Bank Stadium, we navigated through just fine and there were no chewed off fingernails. After scarfing down a burrito at Kato Tacos, I passed through the security checkpoint and began circulating around the arena, grabbing a few fotos and greeting a few friends.

Upon finding my seat, still early, I had a chance to get to know a few of the others who were in the not-so-prime location for viewing the band. Roger and Debbie Seberson, from White Bear Lake, have been to somewhere between 40 and 42 Dylan shows. Jon Erickson of Bloomer, Wisconsin was attending his 49th concert. And young Brook Honig, who also drove down from Duluth but grew up in Wichita, Kansas, was attending his first Dylan concert.

* * * *
At 8 p.m. the arena lights went dark and a cacophony of electronic sound erupted from the darkened stage as the players took their positions. When the lights came on Dylan was standing at the mic, guitar in hand, gold embroidered jacket, black slacks with a gold stripe on the outside of each leg down to his white boots. Hair frizzy and wild, voice strong, "Things Have Changed" was this night's opener.

The energy in the room amped, or was it adrenaline pumping into bloodstream?

After the first song Bob permanently discarded the guitar and took a seat at the piano for a beautiful rendition of "It Ain't Me, Babe" that felt sincere and pained. When he stood to deliver the last verse the crowd responded. When "Highway 61" kicked in the totally amped crowd was all in. The guitar players did the two step in sync, silver jackets glistening in the lights, Tony Garnier giving a fabulous bass line underneath. My feet were shuffling and the room was moving.

Bob remained at the piano for "Simple Twist  of Fate," with variations in the lyrics plus an extra verse, instrumental breaks between. The playlist was following the pattern of his Denver show.

For Can't Wait, Bob left the piano and grabbed the mic, backing to mesh with the band at the back of the stage. This was a funky variation of the song, with especially strong emphatic singing. "I don't know, said I don't know, how much longer I can wait."

The stage went dark as Bob re-positioned himself back at the piano to perform "When I Paint My Masterpiece." The tune and tempo were different, but the singing sizzled and was heartfelt. Halfway through he went to the back of the stage again and grabbed his harp, which seems to never fail to please the crowd, finishing the last part of the song as a vocalist.

iPhone view from the cheap seats. Binoculars got right up close though.

Moving back to the piano he took his Jerry Lee Lewis stand, legs spread with his weight on the right foot, belting out "Honest with Me" from Love & Theft. This was followed by his taking a seat to perform "Tryin' to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door" from Time Out of Mind.

This and later "Not Dark Yet" brought to mind how many of Dylan's songs deal with the finite nature of life and issues of meaning. On his very first album we have selections like "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" and "In My Time Of Dyin'" and ten years later "Knockin' On Heaven's Door." It's a recurring thread appearing several times this night.

Donnie's violin opening to "Make You Feel My Love" was sweet, and used frequently during the show. Bob tucked himself back into the band again on this song, delivering lyrics with visceral power, holding the mic to his face with his right hand, punching the air with his left.

This is where some of the action takes place.

There was a new arrangement to "Pay In Blood," which opened with a guitar intro. Bob, standing again toward the rear of the stage, balanced on his feet with legs spread, throwing that left hand forward with each phrase, like a boxer jabbing, only his fingers would be spread sometimes, squinting as his phrases burst out from a deep part of his diaphragm.

The darkness descended and when the lights lifted he was at the piano to sing Lenny Bruce. One of the emotionally charged tender moments of the concert. It's a great song, though perhaps was a surprising addition to his Shot Of Love album. There were new lyrics now. On the original he sang:
Lenny Bruce is dead but his ghost lives on and on
Never did get any Golden Globe award, never made it to Synanon

Last night, however, he sang:
Never did make it to the Promised Land, never made it out of Babylon. 

When Bob sang, "I rode with him in a taxi once, only for a mile and a half but it seemed like a couple of months," he sang it with an affection you could feel.

The verses were re-arranged so that near the end of the song it sounded to me like he sang, "He's on a Christian shore, he didn't want to live any more." As opposed to the original, "He's on another shore..." The effect was mesmerizing for me, and a beautiful rendition of the song. I wrote in my notebook, "Wow. Wow. Wow."

(For more on Lenny Bruce, see: Intersections: Dylan, Lenny Bruce and a Quiet Funeral for the Beats.)

And then we had Bob back at center stage for "Early Roman Kings." I know he loves to sing the line, "I ain't dead yet. My bell still rings." In Duluth (2013) he hand a little white hanky in that left hand as he put his hand out. Last night he did that hand gesture without the hanky.

"Girl from the North Country" followed, with a huge response from the audience of Minnesotans who especially appreciate this Minnesota tribute of sorts. His piano playing was again tender. Tony played his stand-up bass with a bow, and the song ended with a big applause.

I know that "Not Dark Yet," which followed, moved quite a few of us. It was a time of meaningful reflection.

After the encore, lights went on and we made our way to the exits.

The concert's pacing was perfect as he leapt into the plundering uptempo "Thunder on the Mountain," a whomping boogie blues riff with guitar breakouts between verses and dancing down in front of the stage with solos for all. With a head signal to Tony the band did a tight wind out.

"Soon After Midnight" and a totally rockified "Gotta Serve Somebody" closed out the 17 song set, Lights out and a lengthy foot-stomping, hollering, whistling for more followed. After a suitably long pause in the noisy dark they returned for the two song encore that has been in their standard during other concerts lately. "Ballad of a Thin Man," again with guitar breaks and a harmonica solo, and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry."

Oh yeah, it was a good concert.
And thank you Zane and Miriam for getting me home safe and sound afterwards. The only thing that could have made it a better night would have been seeing Northern Lights as we headed North back to Duluth. Maybe next time.

Where Have All the Short Story Writers Gone?

Once upon a time short story writers could make very good money. In the days before movie theaters and television, magazines like The Saturday Evening Post offered some of the best entertainment around. And they paid well to get these marquis writers on their covers. Around a century ago the highest paid of these scribes was a writer named Jack London. During the Roaring Twenties F. Scott Fitzgerald earned in a week what most people made in a year, simply with his typewriter.

I began writing short stories in high school. I'd like to believe they were very good stories, I suspect that the caliber of the ideas exceed the writer's ability to execute skillfully. Much like my drawings, the stories were original, even if handled clumsily. One of these, for example, was a story told from the point of view of a stick of chewing gum. It have alienation and despair, longing, suffering and satisfaction.

It wasn't till the eighties that I took seriously my efforts as a writer. I attended writers conferences and participated in a few writers groups. And, among other things, I wrote stories.

Like many fledgling writers two decades ago, I paid attention to the publications that published short story writers. The list of literary publications seemed tiresomely lengthy and it was as much work to find a honme for your story as it was to craft it. But there was always the hope of getting a story into one of the many magazines that included a short story in each issue: Esquire, Playboy, The Atlantic, Harper's...

At the Robert Wright Writers Conference I attended in 1985 (Mankato State University) I learned to my dismay that most of the magazines publishing writers have already filled their slots for the next ten years. That is, the big name writers who will increase sales by having their names on the cover are the ones who already have assignments. Stephen King, William F. Buckley Jr., etc.

In short, your best bet was to do the tedious business of finding publications by means of the Fiction Writers Digest or a place like The Loft in Minneapolis where all there literary mags are assembled in one place for your perusal.

So it was that when the Internet came along, I placed my stories in cyberspace because I wanted to share my work. The work I wanted to be doing was creating, writing. Not studying markets. Not figuring out how to write a letter that someone would notice in the midst of ten thousand other such inquiries.

To my delight, I discovered an audience. Somewhere in the mid-90's a Croatian poetry group asked permission to translate my story Duel of the Poets into Croatian as a centerpiece for their site. A Russian publication asked to translate one of my stories into their mother tongue, and a fellow in France asked to translate my story Terrorists Preying into French.

Two of my daughter's stories were later published as well--in California and New Zealand--after I posted them on my website. The Internet quickly demonstrated its power to change the playing field.

Those early tremors were exciting on one level, but there have been consequences. According to Ted Genoways' article in Mother Jones publications that once existed to showcase emerging literary talent have been folding. Other publications that once had at least one short story feature have ceased from the practice. Is fiction dead? No. But will writing fiction get you paid? That's a different game. And like performing in a band or making art, doesn't it really down to motivations? Why do we do the things we do?

The reality is that there seems to be more opportunity for writers than ever. That's why one million books were published last year instead of the 50,000 books of 1985.

One stat that sticks with me from that writers conference was that of the 50,000 books published only 2,000 were fiction. But don't let the lack of competition get your hopes up. Most of those would end up as remainders in dollar stores. My guess is that of the one million today, if that ratio holds there were 40,000 volumes of fiction produced last year. With the advent of Print On Demand,

One hundred years ago there were no television sets. No movie theaters. No radios. The Saturday Evening Post was your entertainment. Or making music Saturday night in the barn. Yet despite the multifarious means of getting distracted these days there's still a vast portion of the population that seems deliriously happy to do nothing more than curl up with a good book.

And if you like short stories, as many readers still do, I hope you'll find a way to curl up with some of mine. Unremembered Histories is my first in print. I'd be honored if you tell me what you think.