Jacob Dylan and The Wallfowers commenced the second half of their 2023 tour with a stop at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on what was an extremely hot and sweaty night. The oppresive heat didn’t prevent anyone, be they musician or spectator from reveling in what turned out to be a great night of new music interspersed with all together familiar chestnuts from the band’s meteoric hit album, Bringing Down The Horse from 1996.
The evening’s festivities were started off with an artist to whom I was not at all familiar with, treya lam. lam who happens to be a member of the musical collective Resistance Revival Chorus is a multi instrumentalist performer and composer who took the stage solo but quickly informed the crowd that they brought along a couple of collaborators since they just didn’t feel like being up on the stage all alone. Well moving forward, we in the audiance were treated to a beautiful set of mostly (I believe) new material which treya is working on. The material included accompaniment from modern dancers, additional singers, a mixed media presentation and of course lam on guitar, piano and violin. The theme of the current project (according to lam’s website) which they call “otherland” is an interdisciplinary grief ritual and chamber protest album that explores grief as a catalyst for radical empathy, intersectional solidarity and repairing our relationship to the earth. Nonetheless, their set was not only beautiful but incredibly moving. treya will be appearing at Joe’s Pub on October 26th and I highly recommend chcking them out.
The Wallflowers jumped right into the thick of it with opener, “Three Marlenas” one of the classics from the aforementioned Bringing Down The Horse album. Unlike his famous father, THIS Dylan was quite engaging of the crowd with almost constant stage banter between songs which while at times seemed a bit forced, was nonetheless welcome.
Of course the sweltering heat was a major topic as Jacob regularly fanned himself with his oversized hat or wiped his face down with a towel. At one point, while acknowleding the fact that they were performing in an actual neighborhood and would have to adhere to a strict curfew, he thanked everyone for allowing him and the band to be the soundtrack to everyone’s Thursday night in the park.
Pushing forward, knowing full well that their time on stage was indeed limited, Jacob and crew did a freat job at mixing the hits in with the new(er) material from 2021’s Exit Wounds album as well as lesser known material from their early 00’s albums.
The Wallflowers as a unit, despite the fact that Dylan is the only original member still in the ban, were clearly a well oiled machine. Blurring the lines between late 90’s alternative with americana and straight-up heartland rock and roll, collectively the band was spot on. I found myself at numerous points throughout the evening thinking to myself how the similarities between them and Jason Islbell’s 400 Unit was pretty self evident…although The Wallflowers are nowhere near as “slick” as the 400 Unit.
After closing down the main set with a rousing sing-a-long versionof the monster hit “One Headlight” the band returned for an encore of Tom Petty’s “The Waiting” coupled with another of BDTH’s well known anthems, “The Difference” which had Dylan waving, winking and flirting with all of the women who were singing and dancing up along the railing. And just like that, the hot sweaty night of nostalgia and good times came to an end with I’d venture to guess, virtually everyone who came out very pleased that they decided to venture out of their air conditioned homes for a great night of music.
W.S. Walcott Medicine Show 
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