Bob Dylan fans can commiserate on his website.
Bob Dylan fans have good news and bad news to contemplate. The bad news (you know you saw this coming, didn’t you?) is that the Dylan show at the Simmons Bank Arena, set for June 27, and also featuring two exceptional opening acts, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats and Hot Club of Cowtown, has been canceled. It would have been a fine lineup, all three bands, but, alas …
Jana DeGeorge, director of marketing at the arena, says, “In light of the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, the Bob Dylan and His Band show on June 27 has been canceled. Tickets already bought will automatically be refunded from Ticketmaster in approximately 30 days of receipt of email notification of the cancellation. Tickets bought in person at the Simmons Bank Arena box office will need to be returned for a refund.
“We will try again,” DeGeorge adds.
As for the good news: Rough and Rowdy Ways, the first album of new songs by Dylan in eight years, will be released June 19. The double-CD and vinyl album can be ordered early; you can also listen to bits of the songs and read bits of the lyrics. See bobdylan.com for information on listening, reading and ordering.
And if you want to see what you were missing, bobdylan.com has put up a full concert (103 minutes) called “The Very Best of the 2019 Exemption Tour.” There are awestruck comments on it, but there’s another video, identified only as “Bob Dylan Live Concert 2020,” from Jan. 1, that’s 39 minutes long, and it gets less favorable, shall we say, commentary.
★★★
Bonnie Montgomery, the White County songbird known for her skills in the worlds of opera and country music, is unsure about a forthcoming performance she has had on her schedule.
“They are talking to me about what to do for the June 4 date,” she reports, referring to a show at the Rail Yard. “We may do something virtual …”
★★★
Bobby Bones, the pride of Hot Springs suburb Mountain Pine, continues to carry the country music ball down the field of play in the contest against coronavirus boredom. Bones is presiding over weekly simulcasts of the Grand Ole Opry on Circle, a new cable and satellite station. (It’s on DISH 102 and Sling TV in Central Arkansas.)
Just last Saturday night, Bones presided over an Opry show that featured Keith Urban, Kelsea Ballerini and Australian newcomer Morgan Evans (who married Ballerini in December 2017).
Watch online at circleplus.com.
Bones also recently revealed that his girlfriend, Caitlin Parker, would move from her California home to continue the couple’s togetherness in Nashville, Tenn., which began with the virus quarantine.
★★★
The Cate Brothers are the subject of a forthcoming documentary film, and you can see a snippet on YouTube that aired on Northwest Arkansas TV news channels KHBS and KHOG in February. Here’s the link: youtube.com/watch?v=WPljk0zu_Xg.
★★★
Chris DeClerk, a frequent performer at Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack in Little Rock, has taken to the internet to perform on behalf of small businesses, including Stickyz. His friend, Daniel Brown,a graphic designer in Memphis, came up with liveshowfromhome, for Facebook and Instagram. Watch it and other performances, including one from Brian Nahlen at facebook.com/liveshowfromhome/.
★★★
Amy Lee of Little Rock rock band Evanescence was recently featured on cnn.com in an interview about her band’s work on the new album The Bitter Truth, its first since 2011, to be released later this year. As Lee talked, the video of the first single, “Wasted on You,” played.
★★★ Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, online at at rockhall.com, is inviting fans to check out its free online learning platform, which features materials that include the Lady Gaga Activity Pack, the Lizzo Activity Pack, the Punk Collection, the U2 Collection, the Bill Withers Collection, the Electric Guitar Collection, the “Hound Dog” Lesson and the Rock & Roll’s Blues Roots Playlist.
★★★
The fine folks at Paste Magazine — pastemagazine.com — are featuring The 10 Best Little Richard Songs, The 10 Best (And Worst) Music Collaborations of Quarantine So Far and The Paste Happiest Hour: Hayes Carll & Tommy Emmanuel.
★★★
Todd Snider’s May 17 show from the Purple Building Live in East Nashville, Tenn., had an interesting theme — the songs he recorded, but did not write. For his archives, see “What It Is.” Check it out at purplebuildinglive.com.
★★★ Bryan Sink, former operator of Three Monkeys and other restaurants in Hot Springs, now lives in Iowa and devotes part of his time to musical pursuits. You can watch him perform the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain,” which he recorded on YouTube Sunday. Find it here: youtube.com/watch?v=Fi2_UP4qFcM.
★★★
Jason Isbell, in an informative interview in Variety, talks about his new album, Reunions, along with “Missing John Prine, Digging Fiona Apple and the Fine Art of Honing Heartbreak.” See variety.com to read the interview, and Isbell fans will also be interested in an interview with novelist and music journalist Silas House in Oxford American. It’s available on Facebook at facebook.com/ events/356906551952242/.
(Stay tuned for a possibly still-scheduled show by Isbell and the 400 Unit on Aug. 5 at the First Security Amphitheater in Little Rock.)
Just in case, you should definitely watch Isbell and his wife, Amanda Shires, doing a May 15 concert from the Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville, Tenn. The show featured fans (some with dogs) logging in at fans.com to be part of Zoom. The show is also on Facebook.
★★★
Worth a watch: Forrest City native (the Rev.) Al Green, along with Bonnie Raitt, Joss Stone, Michael McDonald and Hall & Oates are together in a YouTube video from 2013 at youtube.com/watch?v=rg7EwBLPAXo&app=desktop.
★★★
Who says there is no good news these days? As reported last week in these pages, the return of Beaker Street, hosted by Clyde Clifford, seems to qualify as quality news, for sure, at least to those of us who were mesmerized by Clifford’s DJ abilities and his choice of music when his show first hit the airwaves.
He will again set the controls for the heart of the sun, so to speak, Fridays from 9 p.m. to midnight on a bevy of Arkansas AM and FM radio stations collectively known as “Arkansas Rocks.” Stations in the Arkansas Rocks Network include KLRG-FM, 94.5, Little Rock; KAFN-FM, 99.3, Benton; KWPS-FM, 99.7, Hot Springs; KDEL-FM, 100.9, Arkadelphia; KZYP-FM, 104.1, Malvern, KXYK-FM, 106.9, Gurdon; and KCMC-FM, 94.3, Mountain Home.