(Given the Tanglewood aspect of this, I’m re-posting it from my personal blog daveread.me)

June 26, 2018 – When the email announcing Donald Hall’s death arrived Sunday morning, I was drafting a letter to him, which would include a blank bookplate for him to sign, for my pre-ordered copy of A Carnival of Losses; Notes Nearing Ninety, which the publisher may be rushing to bookstores now.

In a letter dated 1 November 2016, he wrote, in response to my comment about an essay from the book published on the New Yorker’s website:

“Yup, Double Solitude is in the new book. Last week I sent it to my agent and my editor. I haven’t heard yet. I like the title: “I-89,” with the subtitle Flashparagraphs Speeding Toward Ninety.”

At the time, I suppressed the notion that publication may be dragged out in order to capitalize on his death, which this Giant of Poetry had been working against at least since first being diagnosed with cancer in 1989.

My acquaintance with him began in 2012, thanks to the power of another essay published in the New Yorker, Out the Window, from his book Essays After Eighty. I recommended it to a friend, who read it then told me she had taken one of his classes at U. of Michigan in the 1960s. I suggested she send him a note, which she did; he responded right away saying “You probably want to take me to dinner.”

She told him that I was part of the bargain, arrangements were made, and in June 2012 I enjoyed the first of three visits with Donald Hall at Eagle Pond Farm, followed by dinner at restaurants in the vicinity of Wilmot, NH.

We met last in November, at the University of New Hampshire, which held a celebration thanking him for the donation of his papers – comprising 600 cubic feet. He read from his work and also delivered something of a valedictory lecture, advising us of where the best poetry in English may be found.

That event triggered a couple more items that I would be enclosing in the never-to-be-finished note. Donald Hall said something along the lines of that the best poems ever written in English date from the 17th and 18th centuries. I wanted to ask him to list a dozen or so, thinking that I may study them – and maybe even have a go at “translating” them.

When I looked for a transcript of his remarks on the UNH website, I found instead mention that access to his papers would be by his permission, I thought I’d better hurry and get that note in the mail.

Don was a guest on the June 2008 broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor, at Tanglewood, which I reviewed for BerkshireLinks. That gave me an opening four years later when we met. Telling Don that I had been to that show, I referred to the host as simply “Garrison.” Whereupon Don stopped me in my tracks – “Garrison? He’s always been Mr. Keillor to me.”

A year or so later, after I had read Essays After Eighty, I sent him a note inviting him to visit the Berkshires, perhaps during Tanglewood season. Here’s an excerpt from his reply:

“I wish I could come down your way. [My friend] went down not long ago to look over the old Wharton place. I can’t drive any more, I can hardly walk, and needless to say I can’t fuck. I feel fine as you will discover reading the essays – but I cannot come to Tanglewood with the bachelor Norwegian farmer. He wrote me a dear and hilarious response to my Essays. Thank you and love, Don”

Why, you’re welcome Don, may you rest in peace.

Article updated June 27, 2018 by Dave Read

The 1st Annual Northeast Fiddlers Convention convened on June 9, 2018 at Hancock Shaker Village, a co-production with Oldtone, amounting to the most apt pairing of venue and event, especially given the critical role played by music and movement in Shaker life. Dates for the 2nd annual have just been announced – Saturday & Sunday, June 8 & 9, 2019. (Details to follow)

Next year, we’ll assign the 2nd annual convention to someone who can distinguish the sound of a steel guitar and a dobro from fifty paces, and post some discussion about the music played during the event. Meantime, we’re delighted to announce the winners and to show you some pictures from this year’s event.

Prize winners from the Northeast Fiddlers’ Convention at Hancock Shaker Village

Fiddle
1) Ambrose Verdibella
2) Sarah Michel, Southhampton, MA
3) Patrick Peters, New Lebanon, NY

Guitar
1) G. Rockwell, Bridgeport, CT
2) Norman Plankey, Oxford, CT
3) Mat Cherkus, Collinsville, CT

Mandolin
1) John Benjamin, Brattleboro, VT
2) Ambrose Verdibello
3) Norman Plankey, Oxford, CT

Banjo
1) Maggie Shar, Easthampton, MA
2) G Rockwell, Bridgeport, CT
3) Andy Lundeen, Cornwall Bridge, CT

Old-time music in the Berkshires?

From the organizers:Oldtone and Hancock Shaker Village aspire to create a beacon in the Berkshires for Old-time enthusiasts. The first-ever Northeast Fiddlers’ Convention is inspired by the great Southern Old-time music conventions. Participants are invited to jam, learn, compete, eat, dance and celebrate together in an atmosphere of participation. We envision a new annual tradition in the preservation of the rich Old-Time music culture in the Northeast.

This year’s convention features instrument and historical workshops by Bill & the Belles, Nils Fredland, and Tara Linhardt. We are offering picking & singing in the historic round stone barn, instrument contests, jamming, and a square dance with live music from Bill and the Belles, one of the most popular roots bands on the scene today. The Square Dance will be called by renown caller and the Artistic Director of Revels North; Nils Fredland. Historic demonstrations available all day from Hancock Shaker Village.

Hotels in the Berkshires

Find hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2018 Tanglewood schedule

The 2018 Tanglewood schedulefeatures a season-long celebration of the centennial of Leonard’s Bernstein’s birth, culminating in the Aug. 25 Bernstein Centennial Celebration hosted by Audra McDonald, with Maestro Andris Nelsons, four guest conductors and soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and others.

July 2, 2016 Tanglewood concert review by Dave Conlin Read

It was a night of biblical proportions at Tanglewood, a concert by Bob Dylan that was a revelation, following a set by Mavis Staples that was a revival. The revelation is that some 55 years into his career, by remaining true and not wavering from his original vision, Bob Dylan was able to belt out a genre-skimming array of 20 songs, imbuing each one of them with just the right degree of scorn or glee, humor or haughtiness, bile, blasphemy, or belligerence.

Dylan’s constancy was demonstrated by She Belongs To Me, the second song tonight, which he also performed the first time I saw him, on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Tonight’s set started with Things Have Changed, his trophy-winning song from 2000, which was performed with more ardor and vehemence than an opening number usually gets, as if he’d been singing along backstage to old girlfriend Maris Staples!

Bob Dylan sings the Great American Songbook

Tonight’s setlist also demonstrated that Mr. Dylan’s perusal of the Great American Songbook is no passing fancy; besides doing five songs from the 2 new “Sinatra” albums, Fallen Angels and Shadows in the Night, he also sang How Deep is the Ocean and I Could Have Told You, brand new entries on Bob Dylan’s setlist. While it’s hard to imagine that his own lyrics have overlooked any nuance of emotion or condition of life, nontheless he seems all fired up to be singing this material, making a fresh wind blow through Tin Pan Alley.

Those seven songs were distributed evenly among his own, five of which hail from Tempest, which took the world by storm upon release in 2012, when Dylan-wags reminded us that The Tempest is the name of Shakespeare’s last play. Turns out not to mark the end of the line for the bard of Hibbing, at all! Tempest is a great album, and tonight Bob Dylan delivered five songs from it with a high degree of fidelity to the recorded versions: Pay in Blood, Duquesne Whistle, Early Roman Kings, Scarlet Town, Long and Wasted Years.

Duquesne Whistle gets your attention

Duquesne Whistle, in the 7tyh spot tonight but 1st on the album, reminds me of Like A Rolling Stone, the opening number on Highway 61 Revisted. Whereas the latter shocks the listener with the loud crack of a snare drum right up front, Duquesne Whistle lollygags for more than half a minute before slapping you awake. Bob Dylan is an artist who doesn’t put much effort into promotion, but every now and then he takes the measure of our attention.

And tonight, he even addressed the audience, after the first 9 songs, telling us the band would be leaving the stage but would return in a few minutes. For years, he spoke only to introduce the band and maybe say thank you at the end of the set and before the encore, but hadn’t even been doing that much talking lately. This encore alone was worth the price of admission: Blowin’ in the Wind, with Dylan’s vocals and piano assiduously accented by violin, and a rollicking reading given to Love Sick, off the immense 1997 album Time Out of Mind.

Mavis Staples rouses the audience

Mavis Staples had the audience in the palm of her hand by the time her opening set wound up, and on their feet, singing along and testifying! She doesn’t share Dylan’s reticence, rather is as chatty as your sister, eager to tell you what’s been happening. We couldn’t sit still during her set, which left us revived with the fervor of the Sixties. Her band is awesome and they mix up an intoxicating blend of gospel, soul, funk, blues, and rock ‘ roll.

Hotels near Tanglewood

Find hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

Berkshies transportation

For how to get to the Berkshires and public transportation within Berkshire county, see this page: Amtrak and Peter Pan bus schedules.

Tanglewood tickets and box office information

Tickets for Tanglewood concerts are available through Tanglewood’s website, www.tanglewood.org, SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200, and at the Symphony Hall Box Office at 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston MA. Download the 2018 Tanglewood season brochure.

Article updated Dec. 22, 2018; written by Dave Conlin Read

Bob Dylan’s Tanglewood show, July 2, 2016, will be the seventh time he has performed in the Berkshires, but only the fifth time he has headlined a concert here. His surprise appearance as guest of Joan Baez at her Aug. 17, 1963 concert in Pittsfield, when he sang Only a Pawn in Their Game, Blowin in the Wind, and A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall, came in the midst of an epic summer – following July appearances at a pivotal Civil Rights Rally in Greenwood, MS and the Newport Folk Festival and just before the March on Washington. Local reporter Milton R. Bass wrote: “His voice is not a pretty one, his guitar playing is just plain old banging away, but there is an intensity about him, a dedication, that forces one’s attention where it belongs.”

Rolling Thunder Revue Berkshires respite

Dylan’s second Berkshires’ visit was November 7, 1975, during the first wave of the Rolling Thunder Revue. After playing two shows the day before in Springfield, he brought the troupe to Mama Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge for an all-day party and sing-along in Becket. Catching back-to-back episodes of the Rolling Thunder Revue is about as lucky as any Dylan fan can get, and listening to Vol. 5: Live 1975 of the Bootleg Series practically brings it all back home again!

Dylan at Tanglewood

When Dylan headlined his first concert in the Berkshires, at Tanglewood, July 4, 1991, the most familiar image of him was from the Grammys a few months earlier when he accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award, without a word of thanks to anyone, but with characteristically cryptic remarks about defilement and redemption, after performing an accelerated version of Masters of War, at a time when the country was drunk on the patriotic glory of the Gulf War. According to the Tanglewood electrician working the show that night, Dylan was quite belligerent, threatening to blow the show off if his demands for a total backstage blackout weren’t met. My friend told me that it nearly came to fisticuffs!

The second Tanglewood show Aug. 4, 1997, came on the heels of Dylan’s bout with histoplasmosis, a respiratory infection that nearly took him out. Opening the show was BR5-49, whose multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron, who has been a member of Dylan’s band since 2005, when Larry Campbell departed. He performed an abbreviated set of 13 songs, including an excellent reading of Tangled Up in Blue, plus the rarely-performed This Wheel’s On Fire, co-written with Rick Danko, but without All Along the Watchtower, which had been on nearly every setlist since 1992.

Dylan’s ball park shows in Pittsfield

Then came the two ballpark/variety shows: June 23, 2005 and Aug. 26, 2006 at Wahconah Park in Pittsfield. With the estimable Willie Nelson on the undercard in 2005, Dylan went deep into his own songbook to perform a set that included 9 songs from 1967 and earlier. Mr. Dylan is expected to go deep into the songbook again at Tanglewood, but not his own, rather the Great American Songbook, including numbers Frank Sinatra may have done at Tanglewood in 1994.

Desolation Row is first among perhaps a score of favorite Dylan songs, from Highway 61 Revisited, which was released when I was sixteen. It was the highlight of the 2006 show, as I wrote at the time: “The arrangement of Desolation Row was simply spectacular – it was a sound ballet. There was luscious acoustic work between Garnier and Freeman, laying down swinging, jazzy lines and then doubling them. Geroge Recile was all over his drum kit, making thunder and great brassy noise. And Herron pinned down every phrase of Dylan’s with hot rivets of electric mandolin; a wicked cool effect.”

Opening this Tanglewood show will be Mavis Staples, whose own history with Dylan is a long and romantic one.

Article by Dave Conlin Read

Update: Bob Dylan at Tanglewood July 2, 2016.

Bob Dylan has an association with the Berkshires that spans the five decades of his career and includes a couple of events at the apogee of all Dylan fan’s “wish-I’d-been-there” list, even though there have been only four Bob Dylan concerts in Berkshire county. For concerts, there were two Bob Dylan shows at Tanglewood, July 4, 1991 and August 4, 1997 then two of his minor league ballpark shows at Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, June 23, 2005 and August 26, 2006.

The other two Bob Dylan appearances in the Berkshires were August 14, 1963 when he was Joan Baez’s unannounced guest at her concert at the Boy’s Club in Pittsfield and November 7, 1975 when Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue spent the day at Mama Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge in Becket.

Bob Dylan at Tanglewood – 1991 & 1997

The Tanglewood concerts of 1991 and 1997 were light years apart in Dylan’s performance and demeanor. Although he was uncharacteristically chatty during the first one, which set a Tanglewood attendance record of 20,516, he raced through an 18 song set in a manner that got the gig listed on Dylan Pool (defunct website) in response to the request, “What was your worst Bob Dylan concert?”

The 1997 concert was just his second after recovering from a near-fatal heart infection. He was his usual laconic self, nattily-clad in a shiny blue western suit, and did an abbreviated set of 13 songs, notable for an especially fine rendition of “Tangled Up in Blue,” and for the omission of “All Along the Watchtower,” which Dylan had sung at every concert since 1992. The opening act that night was BR5-49, whose multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron is now a member of Dylan’s band.

Bob Dylan concert reviews and articles by Dave Read

Article by Dave Read

Cowboy Junkies, the Canadian alternative country/blues/folk rock band, have a concert scheduled for 8 mp on Saturday March 8, 2014 at the beautifully restored Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, MA. For more than 20 years, the Cowboy Junkies have remained true to their unique artistic vision and to the introspective, quiet intensity that is their musical signature, creating a critically acclaimed body of original work that has endeared them to an audience unwavering in its loyalty.They have released 16 studio albums, several live albums, and a number of singles and built up a dedicated following in the alternative rock community. (Mahaiwe 2014 schedule)

Since the release of The Trinity Session (1987), the Cowboy Junkies have been popular and busy beyond the usual boundaries of rock stars and their music has been featured in dozens of television programs and feature films. Their The Nomad Series, made up of four albums, Renmin Park, Demons, Sing in My Meadow, The Wilderness was released over an 18-month period. The latest, The Wilderness, was released in February of 2012 and demonstrates that the Cowboy Junkies are still into that hypnotic melodious brooding thing.

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center tickets and directions

Tickets are $30 to $50. The Mahaiwe is located at 14 Castle Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Box office hours are Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 6:00pm and three hours before show times.

• 14 Castle Street
• Great Barrington, MA 01230
• Box Office: 413-528-0100
• Mahaiwe.org

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About the Mahaiwe

Located in downtown Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center is the year-round presenter of world-class music, dance, theater, classic films, “Live in HD” broadcasts, and arts education programs for the southern Berkshires and neighboring regions. The intimate jewel box of a theater opened in 1905 and has been in continuous operation for over 100 years. In 2005, the theater experienced a renaissance as a beautifully restored 681-seat venue to offer a broad range of cultural and community events. Today’s “Mahaiwe Mix” of diverse, high quality programming strives to provide meaningful, memorable entertainment for all ages and interests.