Touring together for an extended period for the first time since 2009, Willie Nelson, 91, and Bob Dylan, 83, thrilled audiences Wednesday night at the Hollywood Bowl, where the two living legends performed separately as part of this summer's touring Outlaw Music Festival.
Here are 10 highlights from the sold-out show:
1. Nelson, who kicked off the annual Outlaw tour in 2016, was forced to cancel the first few dates of this year's edition due to illness. Here, however, he looked to be in top form as he shuffled across an empty stage with his six-piece band, sat down next to his son Micah and opened his hour-long set with a rollicking rendition of “Whiskey River,” as he has done so many times before.
2. Nelson's other son, Lukas, was not present in his father's group on Wednesday. Nelson did, however, have a handful of unexpected guests: The Doors' John Densmore, who played various percussion instruments, as the singer put it, throughout the concert; Amanda Shires, who played violin on a lively “I'll Fly Away”; and Lily Meola, a former “America's Got Talent” contestant who joined Nelson for a fiery version of his “Will You Remember Mine.”
3. “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” sounded like a piece of timeless wisdom when Nelson wrote and recorded it for 1980’s “Honeysuckle Rose.” Nearly a half-century later, the country-jazz ballad is still a hit — in fact, the song’s beauty has only deepened as Nelson somehow continues to find new ways to put a spin on its sinuous vocal melody. It also has a great guitar solo.
4. The longtime progressive activist didn't say anything election-related from the stage, though it seemed notable that in a crowd-pleasing set packed with hits (“On the Road Again,” “Always on My Mind,” “Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”) one new tune Nelson opted to play was the title track from this year's “The Border” LP — a stark depiction of the moral complexities at play in a place often reduced to a political caricature.
5. Memories of Dylan’s electric days have been put to rest lately thanks to the just-released trailer for James Mangold’s upcoming biopic starring Timothée Chalamet. Here, however, Dylan returned to a time before that era-shift with loving covers of late-’50s classics like Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie” and the Fleetwoods’ “Mr. Blue,” the latter of which is lighter than air.
6. On the other hand, Dylan’s snarling version of the deliciously unpleasant “Ballad of a Thin Man” — which he performed, like much of Wednesday’s set, in a splayed stance behind a grand piano, his shirt open almost to his navel — suggested that he can still find fresh irritation in the misunderstandings of the mid-’60s.
7. Lifelong friends (and former “We Are the World” collaborators!) Dylan and Nelson never worked together at the Bowl, although Dylan did invite Nelson’s harmonica player Mickey Raphael to play a lovely piece from “Simple Twist of Fate.”
8. In addition to the two headliners, the Outlaw tour includes a third veteran of American roots music, John Mellencamp, whose fervent, if somewhat arid, readings of “Small Town” and “Pink Houses” on Wednesday made us reflect on how radically ideas about the country’s heartland have changed over the past four decades.
9. The way Mellencamp sums up the message of his song “Longest Days”: “Stop worrying about things that aren’t worth it.”
10. A fresh face among all the graying faces, Brittney Spencer — who got a boost this year when Beyoncé included her on “Cowboy Carter” — opened the concert with a slick, joyful performance that culminated in a medley of Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” and her own “I Got Time.”
