Things were sizzling like a summer afternoon in Texas when Bill Kirchen and his trio pulled on to “Highway 61 Revisited.” The song crackled with so much energy, even the guys slinging pizzas in the open-air kitchen at a sold-out Natalie’s Grandview were bopping their heads in time to the music.

Dubbed Bill Does Bob, the gig found the Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen co-founder celebrating his lifelong love of the Bard.

It began in 1963 with the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and led Kirchen to hitchhike to the ’64 Newport Folk Festival where he witnessed the debut of “Mr. Tambourine Man.’ He returned in ’65 for Dylan’s electric coming out – “I didn’t hear booing,” the guitarist said – and it was those latter arrangements that informed this 95-minute performance.

With precision backing from bassist Jack Saunders and drummer Rick Richards, Kirchen, singing with the slightest nasal effect, ran through 13 loose-but-not-sloppy selections from the rock era’s most-pliable songbook plumbed by everyone from the Byrds and Grateful Dead to Joan Osborne, Old Crow Medicine Show and Emma Swift. Such “inscrutable titles” as “From a Buick 6” and “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” were thus rendered with space in the rhythm section – Richards employed brushes on the languid shuffle that was “It Takes a Lot to Laugh in Takes a Train to Cry” – and Saunders sung slightly behind Kirchen, whose tones recalled Roger McGuinn and Jerry Garcia in the early-1970s, but mostly reflected his own unique approach as the “master of the Telecaster.”

So it unfolded that “To Ramona” was sent direct from Bakersfield; “Maggie’s Farm” was pure twang; and “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” found Kirchen running up the neck of his instrument and placing his plectrum in his mouth as he switched from aggressive flat licking to nimble fingerpicking. Playfully saying he was happy to “finally be in a tribute band,” Kirchen nodded to primal Dead on his scruffy rendering of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and earned the first of two standing ovations on his late-set interpretation of “Like a Rolling Stone.” 

The second came when Kirchen tweaked the lyrics of his raggedy finale, “The Times They are A-Changin’.” 

“The orange one now will later be last,” Kirchen predicted as the audience celebrated both this eventuality and what they had just witnessed. 

***

Setlist: From a Buick 6; It Takes a Lot to Laugh, it Takes a Train to Cry; Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues; To Ramona; Don’t Think Twice, it’s All Right; Highway 61 Revisited; Love Minus Zero/No Limit; Maggie’s Farm; Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat; It’s all Over Now, Baby Blue; Mr. Tambourine Man; Like a Rolling Stone; The Times They are A-Changin’