Leave it to Bob Dylan to find the cure for the summertime blues.

Spent the 4th of July inside with my two dogs, Blue and Mabel, wrapped around my ankles like leg warmers as I tried to comfort them from the neighborhood fireworks and bottle rockets.

While we could have had a nationwide celebration highlighting everything that has made our imperfect but beautiful nation great for 250 years, we are governed by the world’s worst interior decorator, whose idea of a good time is UFC cage matches on the White House lawn, exhuming Lee Greenwood to perform that song of his, and social media posts as if written by the town drunk at the end of an empty and lonely bar.

It totally harshed my buzz, but I digress.

I decided to celebrate the 4th on July 6 at the Bob Dylan show at the brand-spanking-new Mystic Lake Casino in Shakopee, Minn., not far from the grave of Dan Patch, one of the greatest American racing horses.

For me, every Dylan show is, in a way, an American holiday, and I was ready to celebrate. It was a gorgeous evening; the sun seemed like it did not want to set. Having lived and played in Minneapolis for 40 years (and now living in Duluth), I so enjoyed running into so many old friends.

First up was Dan Buettner, who biked across Africa, including climbing to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro carrying his bike. He has written books, won Emmys, and has two Netflix shows. You never know who you are going to bump into at a Dylan show.

Bucky Baxter (Dylans’ pedal steel player 1992-1999) kindly gifted me VIP seats at the Roseland Ballroom in NYC in 1995, where I spent the show sharing cigarettes with Paulina Porizkova before Springsteen and Neil Young came out to play “Highway 61” for an encore.

While leaving, I had a great post-show chat with Allen Ginsberg before walking into the neon glow of Times Square.

We are in Minnesota now, and Bob has a farm not too far away. And not unlike New York City, we claim Dylan as our own through dual psychic citizenship.

As we navigated the 17,000-seat modern temple of sound, we heard the opener John Doe Folk Trio echo through the grounds, performing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” as if voiced by Johnny Cash.

John Doe knew he was in Judy Garland’s home state.

Bravo, John.

We were nearing our seats when the second act, Lucinda Williams, whose walk on song was Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” before her immortal “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.” Woody was from Oklahoma, but the first chapter of Bound for Glory ends as he departs the train at the St. Paul Depot. No Woody, no Bob. Simple as that.

We had great seats. We were in the 25th row, right in the middle of the action. I was with my long time harmonica playing partner Sonny Earl (who popped for the $220-per-seat tickets), his wife Lesa, and their daughter Izzy and boyfriend Nate, none of whom had seen Dylan in concert. I was to be their Dylan whisperer, giving clues as to what they were witnessing.

I really didn’t need to, as they all luxuriated in the power of pure artistry for the next 75 minutes. And what a show it was.

The lights dimmed, and the stage seemed lit as if by candlelight. The band entered dressed in black, as if undertakers at the world’s coolest funeral.

The Bard entered dressed in an all-white ensemble with a hoodie, conjuring images of Will Steger on one of his Arctic journeys. Steger is currently in the middle of an 800-mile solo journey through the Arctic at the age of 81, four years Bob’s junior.

The high definiton video screens on both sides of the stage (rarely allowed at Dylan shows) let us witness one of the world’s grooviest television shows in real time.

Bob may be entering his Howard Hughes phase, long fingernails, slightly masked but not anonymous, in a Kabuki dance of rhythm, folk, blues, rock and roll, and poetry that Walt Whitman would dance to if he somehow magically rose from the dead.

Let the games begin.

The sound mix was exquisite. The wind caressed the crowd, and as soon as the band was on stage, everybody sat down in their expensive seats. Thank you.

The opening song, “To Be Alone With You,” swung like every great VFW band ending their second set with fire, hope, confidence and glee. Let the good times roll. “Man in the Long Black Coat,” a personal favorite, was next, and I could feel Bob was on his game and taking no prisoners.

His new guitarists, Julian Lage and Joel Paterson, were playing their first gig together. I can only imagine them both receiving recordings of these songs they were about to play and then, on stage, realizing the arrangements were nothing like what they heard. But as they were both total pros — Guitar Slingers Par Excellence — they dug in, conjuring improvisational magic not unlike perhaps when Duane Allman and Dickey Betts first jammed.

The legendary guitar duo of Eddie Lang and Carl Kress were smiling down from the cloudless sky.

That Dylan gave them time to breathe, solo and experiment added to the excitement — notes dropping just like lemon drops above the chimney tops. Damn if they didn’t start to discover and enjoy the similar guitar-fool sympatico that Charlie Sexton and Larry Campbell felt and developed through the years playing behind Dylan.

Those  are big cowboy boots to fill but Julian and Joel did it with aplomb, their solos like spurs that went Jingle Django Rheinhardt (apologies to Gene Autry for this metaphor.)

I did not expect this kind of guitaristic wizardry, and as a guitarist myself who wants to break the fingers of anyone better than me, I was in hog heaven.

So now, there are two movies playing. One is on stage, with one of the world’s greatest living artists doing what he does: playing piano like a cross between Thelonious Monk and Little Richard on a Mississippi riverboat, with the ease of when he serenaded Echo Helstrom on an upright piano after hours at the Moose Club in Hibbing.

He played classic reworked chestnuts from that glorious and divinely inspired songbook, along with various covers that would have been right at home in a smoky beer joint in Milwaukee.

The other movie in my mind and perhaps others is the dozens of kaleidoscopic and black-and-white images of what we are witnessing.

Those songs  shepherded all of us from our teenage years and beyond. The separate soundtracks to each of our lives. I have seen Dylan nearly 30 times in concert. There were times I’d swear he was singing in German, and others when you least expected it, exploding into several of the greatest shows I have ever seen – fireworks of sound, beauty, and is Bob’s calling card- truth.

After all these incarnations, this night felt like a new beginning chockful of joy and wonder. Bob is now a jazz cat wise, playful and sure as a man can be. Most men at the age of 85 are either playing shuffleboard in knee-high white socks or whittling small pieces of wood in rocking chairs. That ain’t Bob.

We are witnessing that sort of devout artistic commitment and alchemy performed by a man who created, for many of us, the soundtrack of our lives.

This is an American lesson, just as American as apple pie, Louis Armstrong, Betsy Ross, Lenny Bruce and Billie Holiday. American magic as it were and is, and as pure as the springs of Lake Itasca.

Toward the end of the show he played “Under the Red Sky,” a personal favorite and I surmised this Iron Range song and dance man still has plenty of high octane gas in his tank.

His final benediction was a divine version of “I Shall Be Released.” And then we went forth into the starry night “with our light come shining, from the west down to the east.”