Artists on the bill with Bob Dylan

New at bobserve.com: supporting & featuring acts

bobserve introduces a new heavily-researched feature

We set out to add to bobserve.com acts that either supported or featured alongside Bob Dylan across his 60+ years on stage. This has entailed countless hours of original investigative sleuthing by bobserve’s overworked Research Team. Trawling through decades of dusty newspaper reviews and ads, books and interviews, and scrutinizing posters, concert reviews at boblinks, and social media posts. Our bobserve facebook page has also reached out to some artists directly.

Even with all this research - almost 1,800 concerts have acts on the bill logged - this remains a work-in-progress, with additional acts to be discovered. Keep reading to see how you can help!

How to check this out

Visit the musicians menu in the top bar at bobserve.com for:

• Everyone on the bill (a list of all the acts)

• A search box for act names

Also, click on any act name for a page listing all their performances, such as Edie Brickell & New Bohemians.

Rick Carter & Loveland Orchestra’s opening act backstage pass for Huntsville, AL April 19, 1993 (shared on Facebook by Rick Carter 2019)

Let’s run the numbers

Dylan has played in so many places around the world that it has given him the opportunity to showcase more than 400 different acts. Of these, around 250 appeared just one time with him.

Here are those who most frequently performed on the same bill as Bob Dylan. This includes dates scheduled through September 2024, and places Willie Nelson’s 100th concert appearance with Dylan on August 10, 2024 in George, WA.

(Note: prior to 1965, Dylan’s appearances with Joan Baez were as a guest during her set, and so for those he was not a supporting act. Other times, she was his guest.)

Various findings

• Sometimes other acts on the bill had guests of their own, such as when Jackson Browne sat in on Marc Cohn’s set in 1992, and Eric Clapton played on Jimmy Vaughan’s set in 2006.

• In Juan-les-Pins in 1992 Dylan played Hey Joe because the opening band had closed with it. Listen here. That opening band is still unidentified! Do you know who it was?

• John Hammond opened for Dylan in Buffalo in 1965, confirmed by Hammond himself in a MySpace message to one lucky concert attendee, Phil Drum.

• When Dylan opened for Neil Young in 1996, Neil changed a lyric to mention Dylan in the song Pocahontas while Dylan watched from the side of the stage. Listen here (at the four minute mark: “Bob Dylan, Cleopatra, and me”).

• Several support acts have ended up joining Dylan on stage, such as Tracy Chapman, Elvis Costello, and Jewel.

• A band called Twist of Fate opened in Linz in 1991. (No, not these guys!)

• Tony Garnier’s brother opened in Lafayette 1992, performing as D'Jalma Garnier's French Band.

• Montreux 1994, Dylan insisted on playing before the support act, Béla Fleck & The Flecktones. Béla Fleck recounts this story in the San Diego Union-Tribune (Dec 21, 2021)

  • “We were so excited to open for him,” Fleck recalled. “We were like: ‘Awesome. This is the biggest gig of our career!’ We got there at the venue and Bob had done his soundcheck first. We got ready to do our soundcheck and here were these big ‘muscle guys’ in Bob’s road crew. They told us: ‘No one is coming on this stage.’ We said: ‘But we’re the opening act. It’s been approved.’ And they replied: ‘Sorry, no one is coming on Mr. Dylan’s stage until after he performs. So, Bob went on first. When he finished, they took all his gear down. We then put our gear up, did our soundcheck and played to 40 people. Thank you, Bob! It was nothing personal; his crew was protecting him and his gear.”

• David Bromberg opened in 1997, performing two songs with Dylan's own band (boblinks.com)

Not just music

Comedian Steven Wright has opened for Dylan. Twice (1992 and 1999).

Another comedian, Mike Pace, opened in St. Louis 1994. He’s self-described as coming “on to the comedy scene with a mullet, an oversized jacket, a skinny tie and a pair of untied high-tops.”

Dennis Hopper read Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, at the New Orleans late show in 1976. Listen here.

Dylan as support act

We have a special page for when Dylan himself opened the show for the likes of Joan Baez, Grateful Dead, John Lee Hooker, and The Rolling Stones. Also: The Smothers Brothers, who had a six-week residency at the Satire in June/July 1960. According to Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, a girl Bob knew suggested he introduce himself to Walt Conley, a singer who was managing the duo. Conley let Dylan do a short opening set at the Satire. Dylan was later “accused of stealing Conley’s record collection before hightailing it out of town” (colomusic.org).

Familiar faces

• Multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron, currently on tour with Dylan and already number three in the list of musicians who performed live with him the most times, has even more Dylan shows under his belt than that. He was a member of BR5-49, the opening act for 22 concerts.

Close-Up of 1997 tour poster. Donnie Herron is pictured at the far left

• Bucky Baxter, beloved band member from 1992 to 1999, as interviewed by Scott Marshall: “I was playing with Steve Earle [& The Dukes]. We’d opened up a whole tour for Bob [in 1989]. So I was just playing with G.E. Smith on the sound checks when Bob invited me to sit in. He asked me to get him a steel guitar, so I bought him a steel in Nashville and gave him some lessons. Then when that tour was over he got my phone number and, I thought, ‘Well, cool, I’m going to get this great gig.’ But then he never called. Two years later he called me up on like a Monday saying, ‘Be here Tuesday, we’re leaving Thursday for Australia.’ That’s basically how it happened.”

Bucky Baxter sitting in on Dylan’s set in 1989

• The upcoming Outlaw shows with Willie Nelson feature Robert Plant & Alison Krauss. Back in 1995, Dylan’s support included four shows with Alison Krauss & Union Station.

“They won’t have any solo acoustic acts opening up for Dylan; that’s the rule”

Brenda Kahn opened for Dylan twice in February 1992, and reports this prohibition on solo support acts in Working Musicians by Bruce Pollock.

Melissa Ferrick tells here the entertaining story of her own 1992 opening act experience. She had to put together her first ever band to meet the support act rule but, due to an unforeseen twist, she actually ended up performing her act solo.

Jimmie Vaughan

Jimmie Vaughan was a surprise guest guitarist at the recent Austin concert on April 6, 2024. Did you know he was a “featuring” artist on the same bill as Bob Dylan back in June/July 2007, 34 shows in all?

How you can help

• Hey, did you open for Dylan but can’t find yourself listed on the site?

• Do you see anyone we missed?

• We especially need help finding more Australian opening acts.

Please contact us or comment below to correct the record.

The small print

It can be difficult at times to determine if an act is a featured artist or support, and so in some cases we have used billing on advertisement and tickets as clues.

For Rolling Thunder we list the people on the ads as featured artists and those with "solo spots" as support.

We do not list artists on the bill for the large festivals, which often have several different stages.

So, what else is new with bobserve?

• View a list of the 30 most recently added audio links to individual songs and full concerts. Link found under the “make you spin” menu item. This is automatically updated.

• Click the year in a setlist page’s date for a shortcut to a list of all events in that year

• Fed up of typing in the year numbers every time, to get a list of that year's concerts? Me, too. Try the new Handy Dandy(TM) year picker in the top menu bar.

Need a refresher?

Some existing features you may have overlooked

• myevents: track your own attended concerts (login required) and view an overview and various lists and poster images for your shows.

• mysettings: customize your account (login required), including

  • Tell us if you’re OK being contacted with our research questions. We’d love you to switch this on! It can help with things just like the subject of this newsletter.

  • Make your attended concerts page available to share with others.

• Click the question mark box on any page it appears (e.g. setlists) to send us info or ask questions.