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Bob Dylan Birthday Bash |
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A Fun Night! Some Words From Derek.jpg)
The new In The Well album was finally released on May 24th, so we celebrated with an informal get-together down at a funky Tauranga café called The Orange Zephyr. Being Bob’s birthday, the only real things we had in mind were to sing as many Bobsongs and possible and to make sure we polished off the bar tab. Mission accomplished on both counts but we do have a few songs left over for next year's birthday.We had a big screen projector behind the band, so we had images of Dylan waching over us throughout the night. It looked kinda spectacular, but the pics don't really do it justice. Grant Haua kicked things off with a sensational up-tempo bluesy version of “Sweetheart Like You”, before playing “All Along the Watchtower” and “Like a Rolling Stone”. I couldn’t help but smile to have both of these played so early in the night, given how long Bob had them together in the encore slot. Then John Michaelz joined Grant and sang for about half an hour, including a bag of the gospel songs.
All in all a fantastic night! And positive reviews are starting to come in for the album, and it’s selling well on CDBaby. So it’s all good. Hopefully we’ll be bringing a show of Dylan songs to your town sometime this year. A big shout to everyone was there on the night – thanks for making Bob’s birthday and the album launch a special night for us. (And, credit where credit's due, the two middle pictures here were taken by Ken Usmar, the other two by Jan Holdem.)
SWEETHEART LIKE YOU
All the best
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There was a five minute break, then Nigel and I did a couple of tunes as The Self-Righteous Brothers before we got the whole of Kokomo on and basically played the album, or at least ten of the twelve songs. Beano was just using a snare and brushes and the songs sounded rather good in the stripped-back setting. Sonia played a particularly beautiful flugelhorn solo in “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven” and she and Grant jammed out on “Highway 61 Revisited”. For this set we switched the big screen to showing images of Kokomo from through the years. I'm sure Bob wouldn't have minded..jpg)
After another break we ran through a quick “Country Pie” – a new outing for us – before Shona Laing sang magnificent versions of “Positively Fourth Street” and "It Ain’t Me Babe". I swear they sound better every time she sings them. Then Johnny and Grant played some more with the band, before we assembled Kokomo again for a big finale, during which I was foolish enough to plough through the complete “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” (showing that the bar tab was still running strong) before we wrapped up with a big jam on “On the Road Again” and a final “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”, by which time the whole place was dancing and no one feeling any pain..jpg)
For the Bob and Kokomo fans who might be interested, here are all the Bobsongs that were played (the ones I can remember!) in something like the order they were played in:
