Bob Dylan, Stu Kimball, and The Art of Rhythm Guitar

Stu impersonates Tom Waits, 2009

Bob Dylan has had many guitarists in his band over the years: Robbie Robertson, Fred Tackett, GE Smith, Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton, to name just a few. Dylan’s longest-serving guitarist, however, is also the one who tends to get the least recognition. I’m talking about Stu Kimball, who played guitar with Bob for an incredible 1,323 concerts between 2004 and 2018.

Kimball joined the band in June 2004, replacing Freddy Koella as co-lead guitarist alongside Larry Campbell. It didn’t take long for the new bandmember to make an impression, as Peter Stone Brown reported in his BobLinks review of that month’s show in Atlantic City, Kimball’s third show with Dylan:

“A great guitar player not only knows what to play, but equally important when to play, and when not to play. A great guitarist isn't only about speedy licks, it's about taking all the licks and guitar tricks you've learned and knowing when and where to use them. Like Larry Campbell, Stu Kimball is a walking catalog of great guitar licks. And like Larry Campbell, though they have very different style, Stu Kimball knows when and how to use those licks and use them with taste. Now reports from the first two shows of this tour basically had Kimball holding back. However, tonight he did anything but. He shined, bringing back to this band a feeling and a power that's been missing for a long time. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say Kimball can take his place as one of the top five guitar players to play on-stage with Bob Dylan - easily. There was no stumbling about looking for a groove, searching for that magic thing that might lead somewhere. Every time out he hit it. It fit, it was right, and it was soulful.”

This paragraph might sound hyperbolic, but there’s something to it. Go back and listen to the shows from the second half of 2004, and you’ll find a band in which Stu Kimball is often the lead guitarist, with Campbell serving as more of a rhythmic anchor. The show from St Etienne, France, on 5th July 2004 is a great showcase for the unfortunately short-lived Kimball/Campbell guitar team.

The arrival of Denny Freeman as Larry Campbell’s replacement in 2005 led to Kimball assuming the role of the band’s rhythm guitarist. And this is how it stayed for the rest of his tenure. Other guitarists came and went in the lead guitar position – Charlie Sexton, Duke Robillard, Colin Linden, Charlie Sexton again – but Stu remained in a background role, only occasionally called upon to step out of the shadows.

Rhythm guitar is often seen as an unglamorous position in a band, but the truth is it’s an important role; one that goes all the way back to the 1920s, when the guitar gradually replaced the banjo in the big bands. As a rhythm guitarist, your role is to fill out the sound, provide harmonies to support the melodic instruments/vocals, and to lock into a groove with the rest of the rhythm section. There are some bands where the rhythm guitar player is the timekeeper who everyone else follows, like The Rolling Stones in their younger days. Another function of rhythm guitar is to accompany yourself while singing alone, as Bob Dylan himself did once upon a time. It may often be portrayed as a thankless task, but rhythm guitar is an art that relatively few have been able to master.

The nature of the role means that rhythm players tend to fly under the radar, but they’re worth paying attention to. Take Leon Warren, for example, rhythm guitarist in B.B. King’s band from the early 1980s all the way to the early 2000s. King rarely played chords, and from the early ‘70s onwards relied on another player to augment his solos (his original second guitarist was the excellent Milton Hopkins). Leon Warren’s playing was jazzy, in the mould of players like Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery, and he would occasionally step out to play a precise, unflashy solo that provided an interesting contrast to the inimitable style of his boss.

We can’t talk about rhythm guitar without mentioning New Orleans legend Danny Barker. Born in 1909, Barker’s professional career began in the early 1930s, several years before the guitar became firmly established as a lead instrument. As such, Barker remained a devoted practitioner of rhythm guitar (and banjo) throughout his life; it would be fair to say that he knew every variation of every chord under the sun. Nearly 30 years after his death, a music festival is still held in Mr Barker’s honour every year in New Orleans.

Keith Richards, himself one of the great rhythm guitarists, took the time in his autobiography to praise the rhythm playing of Don Everly of The Everly Brothers. He was right to do so: you need only to listen to Don’s acoustic guitar intros to hits like ‘Bird Dog’ or ‘Claudette’ to hear that the elder Everly knew what he was doing.

I would argue that the best showcase for Don’s talents is the 1983 live album The Everly Brothers Reunion Concert. This album makes it clear that Don’s rhythm playing was the bedrock of the Everly Brothers sound: songs often begin with just his acoustic guitar strumming, the rest of the band gradually falling in behind him. If you watch the video of the concert, you’ll notice that while Phil Everly is playing along quite capably with his brother, his guitar is neither miked nor plugged in – the guitar you’re hearing is Don’s.

Moving to the present day: if you’re following London’s vibrant jazz scene, you’ll know that one of the best rhythms players around right now is Shirley Tetteh, who has played in the band Nerija and with many other London Jazz performers.

Bob Dylan himself is a fine rhythm player, which (as mentioned earlier) is probably borne from the years spent accompanying himself solo. Several songs in Dylan’s discography, from ‘Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream’ to ‘Saved’ to ‘Highlands’, begin with him setting the pace with his guitar before the band picks up the beat. In concert, some great Dylan rhythm guitar playing can be found throughout 1989 and into early 1990: check out the video of that famous concert at the Hammersmith Odeon in February 1990 to see how he drives the band forward with his guitar.

We could talk about great rhythm guitarists all day (for the record, some more of my favourites are Joan Armatrading, Black Francis/Frank Black, and Steve Van Zandt). But let’s get back to Stu Kimball. I would say that Stu’s finest hour as Bob’s rhythm player is on the 2015 album Shadows in the Night. This album is almost entirely drumless (or at least, the drums are so quiet as to be inaudible most of the time), leaving Kimball’s guitar as the main percussive instrument. 

If you’ve attempted to learn these songs on guitar, you’ll be painfully aware that they use a lot of jazz chords that aren’t easy to play. Stu’s playing on Shadows might not draw attention to itself, but it’s rock steady, and the perfect foundation for the delicate electric guitar/pedal steel work of Charlie Sexton and Donnie Herron. You'll need a good pair of speakers or headphones to hear it, but there's some great, subtle acoustic playing going on here.

Stu’s acoustic rhythm playing was also a big part of Dylan’s live sound around this time, contributing to the quieter performance style Dylan had initiated in 2013. You could say that it also extended an olive branch to fans who might have been less familiar with Bob's latter-day performance style: at least someone onstage was playing an acoustic guitar, even if Dylan himself wasn't.

Stu Kimball was notable by his absence when I caught the Dylan band in performance in July 2019. Curiously, Bob took a full year to replace him, leaving the remaining bandmembers working overtime to fill the gap in the sound. That's the thing about even the best rhythm guitar players: you often notice them more when they're gone.