Concert Reviews
The Wallflowers played their smash hit “Bringing Down the Horse” in full, followed by Petty’s “Long After Dark.”
Jakob Dylan of the Wallflowers, left, with Tom Petty in the 2018 documentary “Echo In The Canyon.” Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment
The Wallflowers at The Cabot in Beverly, May 22, 2026.
It’s hard to overstate just what a splash The Wallflowers’ “Bringing Down the Horse” made when it hit the charts in 1996, and none of it — or at least very little — was because of lead singer Jakob Dylan’s famous father.
These were rich, melodic songs with intricate, clever lyrics and a slam-bang delivery that owed much to the best classic rock of the ’70s, but still felt fresh. The album immediately entered contention for THE roots-rock album of the 1990s, up alongside the likes of Counting Crows’ “August and Everything After.” (You’ll recall that Adam Duritz referenced Bob Dylan in the Crows’ “Mr. Jones,” and Jakob Dylan referenced him by existing.)
The Wallflowers have been sort of on-again, off-again in recent years — their last song to get radio play (whatever that is these days) was “Reboot the Mission” back in 2012, although their 2021 album “Exit Wounds” was actually a surprising, if largely unheralded, return to form. Regardless, there’s no denying that hearing the opening riff of “One Headlight,” coming out of the darkness at the band’s sold-out Cabot show in Beverly Friday night, elicited palpable back-to-the-’90s butterflies.
I’ll get this part right out of the way: Jakob Dylan looks more like his famous father than ever, in particular the turn-of-the-century Bob who made his post-heart ailment comeback right around the time “Bringing Down the Horse” was galloping up the charts. The younger Dylan, now 56, maintains a laconic aura that’s also not unlike his dad’s, and a proclivity for prowling the stage with what feels like a genuine sense of menace that, not gonna lie, didn’t NOT make me nervous.
Jakob Dylan, right, and the Wallflowers at the Cabot in Beverly. – Peter Chianca / Boston.com
As for Dylan’s voice, it’s definitely brusquer than during The Wallflowers’ heyday, and he’s more prone to spitting out lyrics in a spoken-sung cadence that, it turns out, actually suits many of the sardonic lyrics better than the smoother, more radio-friendly vocals on the original album.
Speaking of the album, to mark its 30th anniversary — the Cabot crowd missed the actual date, May 21, by just one day — the band is playing it in full for this tour, a decision Dylan acknowledged made for an awkward setlist. After all, “Bringing Down the Horse” is famously front-loaded, with its three most popular songs taking the first, second, and fourth spots.
But as it turns out, what was most fascinating to hear, 30 years on, weren’t the songs seared into your brain, but the ones you’d forgotten that you still remembered. I haven’t thought about “Invisible City” or “Josephine” in years, and apparently it was my loss: Dylan and company reminded us just how beautiful those quiet side-two nuggets were.
Not that it wasn’t a pleasure to hear Dylan and company barrel through never-forgotten hits like “One Headlight” and “Sixth Avenue Heartache,” not to mention a mesmerizing “Three Marlenas”: Buoyed by Aaron Embry’s roiling keyboards, Dylan wrung way more longing than should have been possible out of his pledge to “buy myself a Rolls, maybe a Chevrolet … One where I can pull that top down, just let my radio play.”
Another definite highlight was “The Difference,” with Dylan chewing through its biting chorus (“the only difference that I see, is that you’re exactly the same as you used to be”) with an almost winking glee.
Unfortunately, the mix didn’t do Dylan any favors, with the lyrics sometimes getting lost in the shuffle. That wasn’t so much of an issue for the songs already burned into your brain, but for the ones that spent less time on repeat (“Angel On My Bike” comes to mind), it was sometimes hard to penetrate the garble. But when the lyrics did come through, it was clear that Dylan’s gruffer tone actually felt more expressive than during his ’90s heyday — there was no way not to feel the titular emotion of “Sixth Avenue Heartache,” for instance.
The band was solid and striking throughout, the standouts being Embry on keyboards and the dynamic guitar work of Chris Masterson, who took full advantage of his alt-country bonafides to give upbeat numbers like “God Don’t Make Lonely Girls” a rollicking rockabilly twist. (Of course, neither of them were Wallflowers when the album first came out — much like Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, the Wallflowers are whoever Dylan decides they are.)
After “Bringing Down the Horse” wrapped, the band took an interesting detour, shifting immediately from the album’s sad country closer, “I Wish I Felt Nothing,” into “One Story Town,” the driving opening track of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1982 album “Long After Dark.” It wasn’t until after they finished that one that they explained the central conceit of this tour — that the Wallflowers would follow up every track from their best-known album with every track from one of Petty’s … well, not least-known, but certainly not his most popular. But “Long After Dark” clearly meant a lot to the Wallflowers.
In fact, it could have been the transition from the sad, slow burn of the “Horse” closers “Angel On My Bike” and “I Wish I Felt Nothing” into the classic-rock jangle of “One Story Town,” but it was hard not to get the impression that maybe, just maybe, these Wallflowers were more excited about singing Petty’s songs than their own.
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The choice of doing this album (perhaps better known as “the one with ‘You Got Lucky’”) rather than, say, 1979’s legendary “Damn the Torpedoes,” or just a selection of their favorite Petty tracks, was problematic at times — ”We Stand a Chance,” for instance, is on nobody’s list of Petty favorites, and let’s face it, “Between Two Worlds” was a little pokey even when the Heartbreakers did it.
Still, there are some definite gems — the Wallflowers’ take on “You Got Lucky” produced a spooky masterpiece, their “Change of Heart” perfectly captured Petty’s dry wit, and on a driving, laser-focused “Straight Into Darkness,” Dylan showed why it’s his personal favorite song from the late (and much-missed) artist.
There’s no doubt that playing “Long After Dark” was kind of a risky choice: After all, the Wallflowers have enough great non-“Horse” songs that they could have easily filled out the show with those. (Two of them, “I’ve Been Delivered” from “Breach” and “Everything I Need” from “Red Letter Days,” turned up in the encore, along with two more Petty classics — “Refugee” and “The Waiting” — that sent a joyous Cabot crowd out into the street dancing.)
Regardless, in the end, it worked. Jakob Dylan proved himself a fine herald for Petty’s work, and more than that, the band’s loving interpretations clearly displayed the contagious joy of why they must have started playing music in the first place — and why we started listening.
Setlist for The Wallflowers at the Cabot in Beverly, May 22, 2026:
“Bringing Down the Horse”:
- One Headlight
- 6th Avenue Heartache
- Bleeders
- Three Marlenas
- The Difference
- Invisible City
- Laughing Out Loud
- Josephine
- God Don’t Make Lonely Girls
- Angel On My Bike
- I Wish I Felt Nothing
“Long After Dark”:
- A One Story Town
- You Got Lucky
- Deliver Me
- Change of Heart
- Finding Out
- We Stand a Chance
- Straight into Darkness
- The Same Old You
- Between Two Worlds
- A Wasted Life
Encore:
- I’ve Been Delivered
- Everything I Need
- Refugee (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers cover)
- The Waiting (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers cover)
Peter Chianca
Peter Chianca, Boston.com’s general assignment editor since 2019, is a longtime news editor, columnist, and music writer in the Greater Boston area.
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