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Last year, Cat Power, the stage name of Chan Marshall, recorded Bob Dylan’s historic 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert, in the Royal Albert Hall itself, live. It’s no matter that the secret is out that Dylan’s concert was actually at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, but the bootleg version which reigned in the deeper recesses of fandom for decades ignominiously mislabeled the location. So, it was one place, then another, and now Marshall is touring the setlist elsewhere in the U.S. and Europe through August.
There’s been a lot of covers of Dylan’s songs, of course, but this is probably the most interesting in that it’s a collection of songs when Dylan was charting a new course. The concert includes an acoustic “folk” set before transitioning to a full band with electric guitars, drums and organ that, at the time, seemed traitorous to folk purists. Today, there’s no question that it freed Dylan musically with an extra benefit of introducing the music world to The Hawks, shortly afterwards renamed The Band.
This night, a sold-out Atlanta crowd had the opportunity to experience her interpretation and perhaps revelation. Marshall is a huge Dylan fan, and she has admitted the difficulty of making sense of some of Dylan’s lyrics, but that has drawn her closer to his work and, presumably, this set of songs.
The acoustic set includes themes of placing a girlfriend on a pedestal (“She Belongs to Me”), taking one off the pedestal (“Just Like a Woman”), moving on after breaking up (“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”), reality falling short of an ideal (“Visions of Johanna”), a song widely interpreted without consensus (“Desolation Row”), and to a degree, wanting to be led away from desolation (“Mr. Tambourine Man”). Add to that a slight challenge of a woman singing lyrics by a man about women that included some fairly wicked barbs.
The scene. Cat Power sings at center stage, Henry Munson playing acoustic guitar to her right and Aaron Embry occasionally and ever so subtly introducing an expressive harmonica to her left. The stage is dimly lit by six pedestal lights, and although there are three, they’re as stoic as befits a “solo” acoustic set.
It’s not loud. In fact, the volume is low enough that any hushed conversation would make it difficult for those nearby to hear, and even the passing of footsteps as people wander to or from their seats distract. A cough anywhere in the audience would intrude and unhinge the moments. Amazingly, there were none. Though low, the audio was otherwise sterling, giving ample room for Marshall to be clearly heard in her inimitable style of elongated words and intimate voicing.
It’s quite an intent for an audience to focus on her voice and follow the weight of the lyrical content, whether they’ve measured the meaning or are trying to find it. It’s heavy.
The highlight of the acoustic section was “Just Like a Woman,” for both her performance and a respite of sorts for a more familiar tune. But for a song that was considered misogynistic towards women (and may still), Marshall treated the most disfavored line, “and she breaks just like a little girl,” with a winning sensitivity. “Mr. Tambourine Man” also benefitted from her version, a song which more popularly may be just a “jingle jangle” on the radio but presented here with an appropriate mood of sleepless despondency.
Enter the remainder of the band. Piano, drums, bass, organ, and two guitars. And from the first beat of the drum, the venue is suddenly electric, a jarring change from the muted nature of the acoustic set. It’s loud. People can breathe. They can talk, move about and get drinks. And maybe it’s a little harder to follow all those lyrics with the relative onslaught of a full sonic spectrum. That’s just fine.
Highlights were also towards the end of the set, with an appropriately sneering “Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat,” the organ-led groove of “Ballad of a Thin Man” (a scathing rebuke of unhip media) and “Like a Rolling Stone,” which, if you’re reading this, you know. It was a rocking way to close the evening and a remarkable performance.
Note: My interpretation of any Dylan song is mine. Yours may differ.