They couldn’t be more different. While Tex Tubb paid tribute to his Bobness by being the best Dylan he could, his son Dylan (yes really) and his band the Funky Bumpkins created entirely new songs out of his classics. It’s hard to say which showed more respect.
For the past three years the Funky Bumpkins have been a part of a tradition that started six years before. Dylan Tubb doesn’t live in Madison so he makes a special trip to play this show with his dad. They change the songs so radically that the first year they were halfway through their second song before I even realized they were playing songs I knew. Many, many people have covered Dylan over the years, but most of them have been singers similar to the songwriter, folk singers like Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul & Mary. The R & B group the O’Jays covered “Emotionally Yours,” but I can’t recall any one who funked it up this much.
Purists were probably crying foul, but even if it isn’t my kind of music, these are songs I love and I was impressed by what they had done with them. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” may have been the first rap song with its string of wordy one liners, but I’ve never heard it presented as one. It’s difficult enough for one person to fit all of the words in, but even harder when you are trading the lines like MCs as Tubb and his bass player did. The latter took the lead on the seriously funky “Highway 61 Revisited,” trading in his upright bass for the more slappable electric. Even Tubb’s solo turn on “It Takes a Lot to Laugh It Takes a Train to Cry” was worlds away from the original.
While the Bumpkins gave every song their unique treatment, Tex Tubb & the Jokermen succeeded by putting on a show that could have been Bob Dylan. Tex Tubb bears an uncanny vocal resemblance to the great songwriter and I’m pretty sure he isn’t even trying. Witnessing one of his shows is like seeing the legend in your favorite bar. He has the fancy suit and the trademark incense (though what is subtle in a large theater was overpowering in the High Noon). All that was missing were the matching suits for the band and his Oscar for “Things Have Changed” which is onstage at every show.
The band didn’t seem quite as practiced as in previous years, and Tubb had to give signs for solos and cut-offs. They don’t play the songs the way they were recorded or even the radically different versions Dylan does live, instead they play them the way you could imagine him doing them live, and that is even more remarkable. Tubb had a music stand in front of him covered with pages of lyrics, but he didn’t use them as much as he should have and he stumbled over words, switched verses and rearranged lines more than I remember in years past (I’ve been to eight of the nine shows), of course I was also more sober than usual. The casual Dylan fan probably wouldn’t have even noticed. In fact, the only reason that I did notice is because as much as Tubb sounds like Dylan, I can actually understand him, which is more than I can usually say for the man himself.
The set list could have been from any of Bob’s shows of the last decade. Hits like “All Along the Watchtower,” “Like a Rolling Stine” and “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” as well as newer songs like “Moonlight” from his 2001 release Love & Theft were mixed in with more obscure tunes like “Cat’s in the Well” that Dylan frequently includes in his shows. Later in the set, special guest Stu Levithan joined the band for a manically energetic "Hwy 61 Revisted."
What I would really like is to give Tubb a list of requests, songs that I haven’t heard Dylan do, “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” “The Ballad of Frankie Lee & Judas Priest,” “Nobody ‘Cept You,” and I could pretend I had finally gotten to see them. (OK, I did hear Tomorrow once and it was amazing, but it was a long time ago.) I hope Tubb was kidding when he said this was the last tribute and he was moving back to Texas, because this is an event I really look forward to.
Besides, who would mind the Taco Palace if he left?
The Funky Bumpkins
Tex Tubb & the Jokermen
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