— By Tim Edgeworth

Bob Dylan put a lot of consideration into the sound of Time Out of Mind. In a press release accompanying the arrival of the album, Dylan was quoted as saying that he and producer Daniel Lanois had “talked about these songs and how they should sound long before we recorded them.” Besides thinking about how the songs would sound on record, Dylan – being the performing artist that he is – must have also been thinking about how to bring his new material to the stage, and how, after recording with 12 musicians all playing live in the room, he could adapt the arrangements to suit his four-man band.

Keyboardist Jim Dickinson, talking about the Time Out of Mind sessions in a 2008 interview with Uncut, recalled that Dylan had “an orchestral concept” in mind for the sound of the album. While Dylan and Lanois’ guitars are often at the forefront, the rest of the musicians are often playing the role of that orchestra, providing a backdrop for Dylan’s singing.

To bring this sound to the stage Dylan uses his pedal steel player Bucky Baxter (who is on the album, albeit rarely featured prominently) to fill the space formerly occupied by the ‘orchestra’ of backing musicians on the record. Bucky provides the atmosphere, while Larry Campbell replaces Lanois as Dylan’s lead guitar foil. Bob, meanwhile, provides the most important instrument of all: his voice, which – even without the vocal effects provided by engineer Mark Howard – had by 1997 assumed a ghostly, otherworldly quality.

Love Sick, Live Debut, Bournemouth UK Oct 1, 1997

Six of the eleven songs on Time Out of Mind were given their live debuts during Dylan’s fall 1997 tour: ‘Love Sick’ in Bournemouth, England (during a quick four-date UK tour making up for cancelled dates earlier in the year); ‘Cold Irons Bound’, ‘Can’t Wait’ and ‘’Til I Fell in Love With You’ in Starkville, Mississippi; ‘Not Dark Yet’ in Columbus, Georgia; and ‘Make You Feel My Love’ in Columbia, South Carolina. Despite the reduced number of musicians, most of these early live versions adhered closely to the studio recordings. The exceptions were ‘Make You Feel My Love’ – which was given the full band treatment after being recorded with just Bob, Tony Garnier and Augie Meyers – and ‘Can’t Wait’, which leaned into a riff that was present but much less prominent in the studio. Some early performances of ‘Cold Irons Bound’ (and at least one performance of ‘Love Sick’, in Columbus, Georgia) featured Bucky Baxter playing a Vox Continental organ, replicating Augie Meyers’ keyboard parts from the album.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner css=”.vc_custom_1659413360615{margin-bottom: 30px !important;}”][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBlEOann8cI” align=”center”][vc_custom_heading text=”Cold Irons Bound (LIVE DEBUT) Starkville MS 1997″ font_container=”tag:h2|font_size:14|text_align:center”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQtYvx4Y4lM

Til I Fell In Love With You, Starkville MS 1997

Can’t Wait – Athens, CA – Oct 1997

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju4yD-Zw34M

Not Dark Yet (LIVE DEBUT) Columbus 1997

While ‘Love Sick’ ‘Cold Irons Bound’, ‘Can’t Wait’, and ‘’Til I Fell in Love With You’ all became setlist mainstays during the US fall tour, ‘Not Dark Yet’ and ‘Make You Feel My Love’ were played just once, suggesting that Bob was still deciding how to present them. They would both return in January 1998. ‘Make You Feel My Love’ – following another one-off performance in New London, Connecticut where Bob himself played Vox organ – made frequent appearances beginning in the spring, while ‘Not Dark Yet’ appeared just twice in January and once more in June. It wouldn’t find a regular place in Dylan’s live show until 1999.

Million Miles, Toronto CAN – Oct 1998

‘Million Miles’ made its live debut in January 1998, and quickly settled into the regular rotation. The other three Time Out of Mind songs, however, had a much more protracted introduction to the stage. ‘Tryin’ to Get to Heaven’ first emerged in Lisbon in April 1999, where it was played in the acoustic set (Bob played acoustic guitar while the band provided subtle electric backing). It’s a strong performance, but the song didn’t appear in this guise again. By the time of its next appearance three weeks later in Vienna, it had been moved to the electric set and given an arrangement that more closely resembled the album version. ‘Tryin’ to Get to Heaven’ made five more appearances in 1999 and one more in the spring of 2000, before being given a Sinatra-esque rearrangement in September of that year.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]A brief recording exists of Bob and his band road-testing ‘Standing in the Doorway’ at a soundcheck in Atlanta, Georgia in October 1997. This version, built around Bucky Baxter’s haunting pedal steel lines, is a tantalising glimpse at what might have been – unfortunately, the song never made it to the stage during the remainder of Bucky’s time in the band.

Nevertheless, the early live performances of ‘Standing in the Doorway’, which finally debuted in Portland, Oregon in June 2000, were worth the wait. Bucky’s replacement, guitarist Charlie Sexton, had assumed his predecessor’s role as the band’s resident ‘atmospherics man’ (I believe Charlie was the first Dylan band member to make extensive use of effects pedals, allowing him to get a wide range of sounds out of his guitar). The instrumental runs in these early ‘Standing in the Doorway’s are just breathtaking, and one of the many highlights of the Sexton-Campbell partnership

Standing In The Doorway (DEBUT) Portland 2000

Make You Feel My Love – Live San Jose 1998

According to Andrew Muir in One More Night: Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour, ‘Highlands’ was also soundchecked in the fall of 1997, before the first show of the tour in Starksville, Mississippi. By the time the song finally arrived onstage in June 1999, it had undergone the biggest transformation of any of the Time Out of Mind songs up to that point. The trudging, Charley Patton-esque rhythm and wandering guitars and keyboards of the studio version were gone, replaced by a Larry Campbell mandolin riff and a more prominent bassline. It also moved at a faster tempo, cut down to a lean ten minutes from the album’s seventeen. The comical elements of the song are amplified in performance – at times it has the feel of a Buster Keaton short film, with the luckless narrator shuffling from one bizarre scenario to another. ‘Highlands’ stayed in this arrangement for all nine of its live outings in 2000-01.

Highlands – Worcester MA 1999

Aside from ‘Highlands’ (and ‘Dirt Road Blues’, which has never been performed live), all the Time Out of Mind songs went on to lead varied and interesting lives within Dylan’s live shows, most of them going through various rearrangements as the years went by. However, no matter much time passes or how much the arrangements change, these songs will always contain echoes of that strange, ethereal sound born in Criteria Studios in early 1997.