​DylanFest to revisit Broadway

Merrill Piepkorn isn’t the biggest Bob Dylan fan. He finds Dylan’s trademark nasally voice difficult to understand and as a harmonica player himself, he dislikes Dylan’s handling of the instrument, which he admits are limited by the harness Dylan wears.

“I always looked at Bob Dylan and his talent from kind of tunnel vision as a harmonica player and it’s not that great,” says Piepkorn, who has played in country western and blues groups since about 1972.

But it was through conversation with friends and Dylan fans and hearing other people cover Dylan songs that Piepkorn understood the importance of the music. He even wound up adding half a dozen Dylan songs to his sets over the years.

Flashback to a year and a half ago, Piepkorn was riding his bike and heard Mike Olson playing Dylan songs on Prairie Public Radio. “I just started thinking about Bob Dylan and the phrase ‘DylanFest’ just popped into my head,” he says.

He talked to some musician friends and young entertainers and discovered everybody knows Bob Dylan songs. Then he talked to local small businesses and found the financial support needed to back the first-ever DylanFest.

The concert featured several local acts performing Dylan songs at the Fargo Theatre in what became a sold-out event. The success spawned a Johnny Cash tribute show, Black is Back, in November and just last month, Queens of Country Music, which featured 13 women covering the songs of legendary female country musicians.

Now, DylanFest is making its return to the Fargo Theatre on Saturday afternoon with DylanFest 2: Broadway Revisited. But this won’t be the same show as last year.

“I think a lot of the artists that were chosen this year have chosen to go a little deeper into Dylan’s catalogue,” says Darrin Wentz, who will co-host the event with Diane Miller and perform a set himself.

“Last year, there was a lot of folks doing songs that were very recognizable, very iconic, and I think this year the artists have really changed it up a little bit,” Wentz says.

This year’s DylanFest will feature 16 acts from a variety of musical backgrounds. Many familiar names from last year will appear on the bill, such as the Moody River Band and Mike Holtz, but this year will also feature newcomers and local favorites the Pat Lenertz Band and The Vistas.

While last year’s event allowed audience members to hear local talent and allowed the performers to share the music of one of the most gifted songwriters of our time, it also helped Piepkorn find some respect for Dylan.

“I realized what an influence Bob Dylan still has on every generation of player, musician and then music fan. Even if I don’t have that deep appreciation and admiration for Bob Dylan, I have more of it than I did. When a Bob Dylan tribute packed the house a year ago, that boosted my respect level considerably and I’m happy.”

While Piepkorn is hush on what he has in store for the next tribute show he produces, it’s a safe bet DylanFest will return for a third time.

“Because of the volume of Dylan’s material, I think he could do DylanFest for several years and by that time, you could almost reset the clock and start over again,” Wentz says. “... I mean the guy has, what, 2,500 songs?”

Robert, Bob and Bobby

Bob Dylan’s connection to Fargo doesn’t start with DylanFest. It actually goes back to the summer of 1959, back when Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, was going by the name Elston Gunnn (that third “n” is intentional).

The young musician had left his hometown of Hibbing, Minn., after graduating high school and moved to Fargo, where he worked as a busboy at the Red Apple Cafe, which closed years ago.

It was in Fargo where he met Bob Becker, who fronted Terry Lee and the Poor Boys. Becker was in need of a pianist and was introduced to Gunnn through a mutual friend. At their first (and only) show with Gunnn, they discovered he could only play in the key of C and sometimes A.

They wound up letting him go because Ralph “Doc” Chinn, who owned the Crystal Ballroom where they were performing, wasn’t impressed. Soon after, Dylan found himself as the pianist for Bobby Vee’s band The Shadows.

The gig lasted two days before Vee came to the same conclusion: Elston Gunnn wasn’t a good fit.

Gunnn left Fargo, enrolled at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, dropped out of college and then made his way to Greenwich Village in New York City where he found a name that stuck, Bob Dylan, and the rest is history.

“So that’s the key to success: Get fired from two bands in Fargo and then move to New York and become the world’s biggest singer/songwriter star in the history of music,” Piepkorn says. “If you want to make it big time, start off in Fargo.”

While Dylan’s stay in Fargo could be summed up as a brief flirtation, he does make a point of touring through the city every few years as part of his Never Ending Tour, which has been on-going since 1988. He last played Fargo on Aug. 19, 2012, at the Fargo Civic Center.

IF YOU GO

DylanFest 2: Broadway Revisited

Saturday, Feb. 27, 2 p.m.

Fargo Theatre, 314 Broadway N.

Tickets available at Tickets 300