{"id":764,"date":"2004-08-09T02:03:03","date_gmt":"2004-08-09T09:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2004\/08\/the_pharoah_the_outlaw_and_the\/"},"modified":"2004-08-09T02:03:03","modified_gmt":"2004-08-09T09:03:03","slug":"the_pharoah_the_outlaw_and_the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2004\/08\/the_pharoah_the_outlaw_and_the.html","title":{"rendered":"THE PHAROAH, THE OUTLAW AND THE HOT CLUB"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glad I went to the sold-out Bob Dylan \/ Willie Nelson gig Friday night at Doubleday Field in
\nCooperstown, N.Y., where they launched their summer tour<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> of minor league
\nballparks before a crowd of about 12,000 fans. <\/P>
\n

Loved the Hot Club of Cowtown<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>, the
\nopening act. Hot Club plays western swing  — lots of their own original
\nsongs<\/B><\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/A> and jazz standards. I’ve got a crush on Elana Fremerman’s
\nvoice<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>, not to mention her fiddling<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>. You won’t find a better
\nmusician than Fremerman, a Kansas native who started out playing classical violin and viola. And
\ntry finding a guitarist as fine as the Hot Club virtuoso Whit Smith (from Connecticut, of
\nall places) or someone who slaps a bass as well as Jake Erwin,
\ntheir crack bassist (another Kansas native). <\/P>
\n

Full disclosure: A friend of mine, Joe Kerr<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>, plays piano on couple of their recordings<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>, including their recent “Ghost Train.”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> Here’s a sample<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>. And here’s another opinion<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>.<\/P>
\n

Especially enjoyed Willie’s 45-minute set. He opened with “Whiskey River”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> and closed with
\n“Texas Flood.” I was looking forward to hearing Dylan, too, but after the fourth or fifth number,
\nhis set sounded like pure aggression. It became monotonous, too. Everybody else seemed
\nto love his performance. <\/P>
\n

The crowd was peaceful, though it moved toward the stage like a tidal wave when Dylan
\ncame on, trampling blankets that people had laid out. There was no point in sitting. To catch a
\nglimpse of Dylan’s regal doings onstage, everyone was forced to stand shoulder to shoulder and
\ncrane their necks for more than an hour and a half. <\/P>
\n

Dylan played keyboard, which you couldn’t hear over the wall of sound from the huge drum
\nkit and the wailing electric guitars. Dylan didn’t sing, of course; he growled into the mike. I liked
\nhis growl, but naturally the words were unintelligible. When he played harmonica, the others
\npiped down a bit so you could hear him. Even so, there was no way his tooting could hold up
\nagainst all that electrified screed. The harmonica sounded feeble. <\/P>
\n

Also, except for the rhythm changes from tune to tune, you almost couldn’t tell one song from
\nanother. (Well, I couldn’t.) And some of them sounded exactly alike. Dylan seemed so remote,
\nfrankly, the crowd might as well have been cheering a pharoah.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glad I went to the sold-out Bob Dylan \/ Willie Nelson gig Friday night at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y., where they launched their summer tour of minor league ballparks before a crowd of about 12,000 fans. Loved the Hot Club of Cowtown, the opening act. Hot Club plays western swing  — lots of their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-ck","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}