TORONTO -- Given Bob Dylan's songbook and the turbulent times we currently find ourselves in, it would have been easy for him to kick off his Air Canada Centre show last night with a protest song.
But then the 60-year-old music legend is anything but predictable.
Instead, Dylan -- joined by a four-piece band on a stripped-down stage -- launched his two-and-a-half-hour concert with the innocent, rollicking country song, Hummingbird, a tune more reflective of his two-month-old latest album, Love And Theft.
Still, he didn't waste any time getting to his classics and pretty much stuck with them for the rest of the night.
The follow-up songs were The Times They Are A-Changin', as relevant now as it was when Dylan wrote it back in the early '60s, and Desolation Row.
Dressed in a country gentleman's beige suit, with matching beige and black cowboy boots, Dylan stayed on acoustic guitar for the first four numbers, occasionally whipping out his harmonica, much to the crowd's delight.
His electric guitar made its debut for the new bluesy song, Cry A While, but he delivered another standout acoustic set later with A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, John Brown and, especially, Tangled Up In Blue.
And whatever Dylan lacked in terms of elocution -- words were often undecipherable -- the folk-rock Buddha more than made up for in his guitar playing and, frankly, just by being Bob.
His tight-sounding band, meanwhile, all dressed in matching burgundy suits with black shirts, looked ready to play the Grand Ole Opry instead of a hockey arena. Adding to the Nashville feel was talented multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell playing everything from mandolin to pedal steel to banjo, along with a retro-looking black-and-white-diamond patterned stage floor, and a curtained backdrop.
Still, Dylan in the year 2001 obviously isn't the draw he once was, given the crowd of 10,000 who turned out to see one of the best songwriters of the 20th Century. That number was said to be about 2,000 shy of a sell-out but there sure were a lot of empty seats in the upper sections of the ACC.
Doesn't everyone know that Dylan's at his musically strongest in years with both Love And Theft and its darker, Grammy-winning predecessor 1997's Time Out Of Mind?
All of his newer material, High Water, Summer Days and Sugar Baby, in particular, dovetailed nicely with older gems Just Like A Woman, Maggie's Farm, Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, Like A Rolling Stone and Blowin' In The Wind.
And when he returned for his first encore, it was his 2001 Oscar-winning-song, Things Have Changed, from the film Wonder Boys, that he played first.
His last number -- during a second encore -- was, most appropriately, a blistering rendition of All Along The Watchtower. (More on: Bob Dylan).
Set List
1. Humming Bird (acoustic)
2. The Times They Are A-Changin' (acoustic)
3. Desolation Row (acoustic)
4. This World Can't Stand Long (acoustic)
5. Cry A While
6. Just Like A Woman
7. High Water
8. Maggie's Farm
9. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (acoustic)
10. John Brown (acoustic)
11. Tangled Up In Blue (acoustic)
12. Summer Days
13. Sugar Baby
14. The Wicked Messenger
15. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
First Encore
16. Things Have Changed
17. Highway 61 Revisited (Paul James on electric guitar)
18. Like A Rolling Stone (Paul James on electric guitar)
19. Forever Young (acoustic)
20. Honest With Me
21. Blowin' In The Wind (acoustic)
Second Encore
22. All Along The Watchtower
JAM! Rating: 4.5 out of 5
