And John Cougar Mellencamp was singing when we arrived.
I came for Bob, I stayed for Willie
(Pre.S. – I have a new book that drops in January. It’s just become available for preorder on some of the Amazons. If you’d like to be doing something that matters … details in “one last thing” at the bottom of the page.)
A few weeks ago, friends and I headed south across the border to Buffalo—Home of chicken wings, the fantastic Albright-Knox art gallery, and the ever-languishing Sabres (ice) hockey team.
I was there for Bob Dylan. I’d seen him a few times before. First, thirty years ago in a small club in London, with Elvis Costello, solo on an acoustic guitar, opening. Amazing.
Second, in the cavernous Air Canada Centre in Toronto. I’m a fan, yet his tendency to remix his songs meant I barely recognized a single thing he sang. Deeply underwhelming.
Now, in Buffalo, he was part of the Outlaw Music Festival. Dylan would have an hour set, then step aside for Willie Nelson to do his thing.
Both were great. Both were utterly different. They offered two very different ways of showing up to the world. And that made me think of a third option as well.
Do a Bob
Bob came on and spoke to the audience exactly zero times.
The cameras filming him were set to a single wide shot, the band on stage, and that was the entirety of the production standards.
His playlist was 30% knowable, 30% covers, and 30% “deep cuts,” aka utterly mysterious.
He did his thing. We were free to enjoy it as we wished.
And if you’ve ever heard the Bob Dylan Christmas album, surely a contender for worst record ever, you’ll recognize that FANTASTIC attitude …
I’m doing what I want to do, what gives me satisfaction, what’s my best guess for what’s next … and how you feel about it is up to you.
Do a Willie
Willie came on and charmed the crowd from the outset. We were his people, and he knew it, and he wanted us to know that he knew it.
The cameras filming did a bang-up job, focusing in, pulling out, lingering in close-up on his fantastic guitar playing, and creating a mesmerizing show.
His playlist was 100% knowable, and this was from someone who would have said he barely knew any Willie Nelson songs.
He did his thing. And he knew we were going to enjoy it because he was going to make it irresistible. Did he play the songs he really wanted to play that night? Who knows.
Do a Billie (see what I did there?)
Billie Eilish is 207 years younger than Willie Nelson.
OK, not really, Willie’s 91. She’s 22. So let’s round it down to, say, seven decades difference.
She might have found her own path, a middle way perhaps.
Watch one of her concerts, and it’s clear she loves her audience, and they love her. There are a lot of sing-alongs. Very Willie.
But she made her name doing her own thing. Do you remember when this dropped? Amazingly good. Amazingly different. Very Bob.
(For those music aficionados out there, I appreciate I might be stretching this a little. I couldn’t resist the Bob + Willie = Billie connection.)
An adult-to-adult relationship
For years I’ve been saying a core characteristic of an adult relationship is being willing to ask for what you want, knowing that the answer may be no.
Recently, I heard an addition to that, a helpful refinement. Step 3: Be willing to negotiate the difference,
Bob, Willie and Billie are all working that process in their own way.
What do I want?
What do they want?
And where will we meet?
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