“Just a little slice of light”

July 23, 2009
Lakewood, NJ
FirstEnergy Park
Willie Nelson, John Cougar Mellencamp, Bob Dylan

“What’s the matter with me. I don’t have much to say.”
And that is how my musical night opened. It was a rainy night and despite all the weather forecasts, I did not take it seriously and man did I get soaked! I waited in line to get in. That was where I got soaked. Right there. Before any music played. So the rest of the night, until Bob, was all about shelter from the storm…..
I was fortunate to have a travel companion. As we all know, misery loves company! We settled into a couple of places for warmth. By far the best was behind an ice cream vendor in the heat of the refrigerator compressor! With a cup of tea, I was right as rain…..
We could hear the two openers well enough from our location. We chatted and strategized our way through the night until Bob time. We wandered down and got pretty good spots on the field. Throughout the show we were able to keep moving up. By the end we were in pretty great spots.
As Bob rolled into “Watching the River Flow” I was completely restored. I called that song during the day. Not as the opener, but as one I wanted to hear. I live along the Hudson and this song is my theme. As the show continued, it was all different from my first night until the Tweedle number. I could easily never hear that song again, but the man just loves playing it. And it is a fun live tune. Our reward for indulging him was a little Bob irony. Yup, he played “A Hard Rain”. I was back into the show full throttle. Is it a nuclear rain Bob? No. It’s just a really hard rain. And it was.
The rest of the show was amazing. The highlight for me was “Ain’t Talkin”. Oddly there were no songs from the new album until the encore. Usually an artist plays too much new stuff. Not this contrary man.

# Watching The River Flow
# Girl From The North Country
# Lonesome Day Blues
# Chimes Of Freedom
# Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
# A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
# Honest With Me
# Workingman’s Blues #2
# Highway 61 Revisited
# Ain’t Talkin’
# Thunder On The Mountain
# Like A Rolling Stone
# Jolene
# All Along The Watchtower

One thing I learned this night is that Mellencamp has a lot of really serious fans. Who knew? I thought everyone always thinks what I think. Wrong again……