Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow bring Summerfest’s 50th to an epic end
As if 11 days and some 800 bands weren’t enough, Summerfest’s 50th edition ended Sunday with the longest amphitheater event in the Big Gig’s history.
The Outlaw Music Festival featured eight Americana acts across a staggering nine hours and 20 minutes.
Along with a generous quantity of music, there was some exceptional quality, from two living legends — Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan — and celebrated veteran singersongwriter Sheryl Crow.
For his 70-minute closing performance, the 84-year-old Nelson shuffled the deck, his set consisting almost entirely of songs he’s played during his numerous Milwaukee shows in recent years. Not that the crowd seemed to care: the moment Nelson purred the word “Georgia” with his tart Texan twang, for “Georgia On My Mind,” there was a collective, audible awe that swept the amphitheater.
Nelson nevertheless embraced a few small changes, with thrilling results. One was a cover of “Texas Flood,” most famously played by the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, with Nelson, his son and guitar player for the night Lukas, and harmonica player Mickey Raphael gently trying to one-up each other’s solos.
But for one instrumental, Nelson was largely left alone with his battered old acoustic guitar Trigger, and he made it sing to high heaven. I’ve seen Nelson several times now for more than a decade, and even the rougher concerts have had some bright guitar moments. This almost unimaginably lush guitar instrumental was the finest playing I’ve ever heard from him.
The biggest crowd-pleasing moment happened near the end, when various Outlaw players — including Crow, Amanda Shires and Margo Price — crashed the stage to stomp, clap and sing through “Still Not Dead,” “Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die” and “I’ll Fly Away.”
Never mind the fact that only Shires had something of substance to offer with her fiddle solos. This was exactly the kind of thing you’d want to see at the end of a big festival.
Dylan, not surprisingly, didn’t show up during Nelson’s set, nor did he welcome any guests. He opened a 75-minute set with a spaghetti Western rendition of “Things Have Changed,” his verses seemingly changing tempo at will, as if he were trying to throw off his band.
It did not sound good. But as Dylan sang a few songs later, “Why try to change me now?”
No one can, and no one will. And that’s exactly how it should be. Fifty-two years after rattling the world by going electric at Newport, Dylan still defies to be different.
If that meant skipping “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” Sunday, so be it. If that meant re-imagining “Desolation Row” as an anthemic pseudo-stadium rocker, or spinning “Summer Days” into a hoedown, OK then.
Dylan even dared to reclaim his 1997 song “Make You Feel My Love,” which has been immortalized by Adele’s radiant rendition, accompanying Sunday’s country version with his unapologetically ugly croak.
With Dylan, you may not always get great musicianship, but you’ll always get the element of surprise. People in the crowd who cast aside expectations and went with the flow seemed to enjoy the bumpy, one-of-a-kind ride; Dylan indisputably did too. At one point he looked like Jerry Lee Lewis, standing with his legs spread apart behind the piano, tapping his right white boot and tickling the keys for a bouncy variation of “Tangled Up in Blue.”
Crow dared to be a little different too, devoting a significant portion of her set to new album “Be Myself,” a risky venture for someone expected to largely play the hits.
“Be Myself” however is a musical return to Crow’s ’90s hitmaking sound. Live, the new songs were more inviting, particularly the title track, where bouncy melodies and Crow’s shimmering voice overshadowed the “get off my lawn”-like jabs at hipsters, Uber and Facebook.
Near the set’s end Crow did oblige Milwaukee with “Soak up the Sun.” To the audience’s credit, and Crow’s appreciation, the crowd seemed just as excited about her Gregg Allman-honoring “Midnight Rider” cover with Lukas Nelson. More on Outlaw For reviews of more Outlaw acts — including Jason Isbell, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Margo Price and Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real — visit the Journal Sentinel’s live Summerfest 50 blog at