SONIC REDUCER / CARL HANNI

ROAD-DOGS, HEAT, AND VINTAGE GEAR: Wiyos on the Dylan/Nelson/Mellencamp Tour

By Carl Hanni

July 27, outside Duck, Outer Banks, NC: Leaving New York City four days ago in a driving rain, the signs of rock ‘n' roll start immediately, with billboards for Creed and AC/DC. If this is a signifier of some sort, it's a bit obtuse: we're off for 2 1/2 weeks of touring, and there will be some rock ‘n' roll, but little of the hard-rock varietal.

I'm here on a 17 day run with The Wiyos, NY-based vaudevillian string band extraordinaire. They are booked to play 28 out of 33 dates as the opening act on the Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp summer tour, which started in Sauget, IL, July 2, and finishes in Stateline, NV, August 16. With a couple of exceptions, the tour is playing minor league ball parks/stadiums all across the country. I jumped on the tour five days ago, in Lakewood, NJ, and will ride it through the show in Dallas (really Grand Prairie) TX August 7, as Wiyos tour manager, publicist, merch wrangler and all-around boy-Friday. I'm delighted to be here in such fine company and out of my scorching home base of Tucson. Not that it's much cooler out here, as I soon realize...

The Wiyos played to a remarkably enthusiastic bunch of die-hards the other evening at First Energy Park in Lakewood, bunched up in front of the stage trying for some respite from the downpour, faces framed by a rainbow coalition of colored ponchos and soggy cowboy hats. The Wiyos have 1/2 hour every tour stop, from 5:30 till 6 pm, to play, make new fans, greet friends from the stage and put in a plug for their new CD. Then there's a quick 10 minute turnaround before Willie Nelson takes the stage for an hour, followed by John Mellencamp, followed by Bob Dylan. The exact same routine every show, different venue, for 6 weeks. The whole production is as smooth and tight as a long-running Broadway show or a military parade. This is a professional operation in every possible detail.

After three shows (Lakewood, NJ; Aberdeen, MD, outside of Baltimore; and Norfolk, VA), truisms and patters quickly manifest. For one thing, the catering is incredible. Cast and crew are fed lunch and dinner every day, and it's had to overstate how great the spread is. Copious, endless amounts of tasty, healthy and inventive food, drinks and deserts appear twice daily, including fruit, cheeses, coffee and teas, soup, salads, cold drinks, multiple deserts, vegetarian fare, vitamin supplements and more. I mean, really.

So far, the crowds have really been digging The Wiyos. They generally play to 600-800 concert-goers in front of the stage, with thousands more filing in and spread around the bleachers. Most in the crowd may not know who they are coming in, but they sure do going out, and CD and t-shirt sales have been steady. The Wiyos, versed in everything from busking on street corners to playing to sit-down crowds in theaters, know how to work a crowd, and needless to say they are making the most of a fortunate situation that most other acts would love to find themselves in. They do what they need to do and what they have been hired to do: connect with the crowd and warm them up, give them a taste of what they are all about (think a 1930's vaudeville act crossed over with a modern take on old-timey music), then bust everything off the stage lightening fast and make way for Willie. Come back the next day and do it again.

For the most part everyone on the tour (to one degree or another) is friendly, helpful and supportive. Production and promotion staff, stage crews, sound and security are all working like clockwork. As the next act up after The Wiyos, we see lots of Willie's people, especially his stage crew and harmonica player Mickey Raphael, a prince of a guy. Members of Mellencamp's and Dylan's band have been stopping by to chat and talk shop. The Wiyos definitely have a curiosity factor going for them: who are these young lads with the vintage clothes, washboard, standup bass, steel and resonator guitars?

Willie's show is as loose, casual and intimate as a camp-fire sing-along for 10,000 people. He plays the hits ("Crazy," "Nightlife," "Whiskey River") and the crowd sings along and revels in his Willienesss. Willie Nelson occupies a completely unique space in the popular culture, and it is this: EVERYONE digs Willie Nelson. How does he do this, the great leveling of all the country into his corner?

Well, he's WILLIE NELSON, and no one else is. As has been pointed out over the years, he could probably run for president and win in a landslide.

John Mellencamp's show is rocking. The volume goes up - way up - when he takes the stage, and all of a sudden we're at a rock concert. Girls in halter-tops and skin tight jeans suddenly appear, butts suddenly begin to boogie. This guy has enormous populist appeal, a bunch of hit songs that are also cultural signifiers, and an ace band. When he's not on stage he hangs out in his Airstream trailer (the one with the motorcycle in front) in the holding area in back.

I've only seen one entire Dylan show so far, in Norfolk. We watch the show with The Maybelles, friends of The Wiyos that appeared just in time for the beginning of his set. Bob looks incredibly natty in his tailored country gentlemen attire and white, flat-brimmed hat. His band, a casually road-worn bunch of veterans, is almost as sharp in matching white jackets and black hats. Dylan's voice is somewhere between well seasoned, ragged and deliciously ravaged in a sexy, older guy kind of way. In Norfolk he kicked in with "Rainy Day Women # 12 and 35" from Blonde on Blonde; in Aberdeen it was "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" from that same joyful record from 1966, a good sign for sure. Tonight's songs run from older numbers like "Highway 61 Revisted," "It Ain't Me Babe" and "Like a Rolling Stone" to more recent ones like "The Levee's Gonna Break" and "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum" plus "Jolene" (from his new Together Through Life CD).

The title seems telling; if there's anyone we've been together through life with in America, it's Bob Dylan. He switches from guitar to keyboard; he cues his band with glances; he does not, of course, address the audience. Dylan's "stage presence" in front of an audience is much like it is off stage, an impenetrable wall that only lets out or takes in exactly what Dylan chooses. He's earned the right to be and do exactly as he chooses to be and do. The quality of his song-writing both over the years and in the last several years pretty much puts him beyond reproach.  What you take away from one of these shows is in a large part determined by what you bring to it; he's certainly not going to tell you what to feel or think.

We're here on the coast relaxing with a couple of days off before picking up the tour again tomorrow in Durham. Will report more down the road.

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Carl Hanni is a music writer, music publicist, disc jockey and vinyl archivist living in Tucson, AZ. He  hosts the vinyl-only Scratchy Record Show every Tuesday night at the Red Room in downtown Tucson, and spins records wherever and whenever he can. He believes that in a better (all analog) world all records would be released on vinyl, but takes good music from wherever he finds it--even on CD. His feature piece on legendary bass player/record producer Harvey Brooks was recently published in Goldmine.