Word is that tonight’s Dylan concert at Forest Hill Stadium might be cancelled due to high winds and storms. There were high winds in ‘65, too, and big temperature drop; it was August, but you can hear people on the tape talking about sweaters. Anyway, I’m at the airport, and prepared this article anyway. Fitting that we’re going through this for a show where he first sang “Everybody is either making love or else expecting rain.”

Now and then, Dylan fans play “What’s your favorite tape?” If we’re talking about performance or audio quality, maybe Charlotte 78, Montreal 75, or the Glasgow soundboards from last year. But as for the tape I get the most out of, or that I think is of the most historic value, that’s Forest Hills 65.

The Forest Hills show in August, 1965, was Bob Dylan’s first full concert after the Newport Folk Festival, a few weeks. And while there are those who say the boos at Newport were due to the audio mix or something, by Forest Hills word had gotten around that if Dylan played electric, you were supposed to boo.

And unlike the Newport soundboard, which picks up very little audience sound (there are some overdubbed boos in the official releases), the Forest Hills tape was made by someone in the audience. As a musical experience, listening to it is rough. But the show here is the audience.

What you hear is a candid document of what it was like to be a music fan in New York in 1965. What did they really think of Murray the K? What did they think of Dylan’s new songs?

Of course, you only hear what’s going around the taper most of the time, and often when the crowd erupts mid-song, there’s no real clue on the tape what they’re reacting to. Contemporary accounts show that it was people charging the stage. I’d always thought it was the angry folk fans, but newspaper reviews from the time say it was the excited rock fans. The Village Voice wrote “The Rockers, in frenzied kamikaze squadrons of six and eight, leaped out of the stands after each rock song and raced for the stage. Some just wanted to touch their newfound, sunken-eyed idol, while others seemed to prefer playing Keystone Cops with pudgy stadium police, running zig-zag on the grass until captured in scenes reminiscent of the first Beatle movie.” (The Beatles had played nearby Shea Stadium just a couple of weeks before).

By all accounts there was tension; Peter Stone Brown, who attended, told me “Forest Hills was scary.” He actually pronounced the italics. And that comes through on the tapes. There are boos. Lots of boos. And some fights over people blocking other peoples’ view.

But it’s not ALL boos. And in the opening acoustic set, the tape gives us a chance to hear a recording of a stadium full of people hearing “Desolation Row” for the first time.

And that was the real revelation of the tape for me, the first time I heard it: people who hadn’t heard the apocalyptic album take of “Desolation Row,” cut just weeks before, didn’t KNOW it was a dark, moody song. Dylan played it like a comedy song, and they received it that way. The chuckles begin after “the beauty parlor is filled with sailors,” and build to heavy laughs at “the other is in his pants.”

The crowd laughs with delight throughout the song. And applauds after verse after verse. The first time I heard this tape, I was stunned. How did I not realize how funny this song was? Listening to the Forest Hills tape again, I’m more amazed that Dylan was able to make such a funny song seem so dark in the first place. But he’s found so many songs inside of that song over the years; last summer he was playing it like a Chuck Berry tune, motorvatin’ through the circus.

The biggest reaction, though, are the cheers after the line about being Einstein for being famous long ago for playing electric violin. The crowd seems to take that line as an apology, admitting that he’d learned his lesson after Newport. They were prepared to forgive and move on (even though this was hardly the “old Dylan;” “To Ramona,” just over a year old, was by far the oldest song in the acoustic set).

In his New York Times review, Shelton cited it specifically: “Among (the “folkish” songs) was a major new work, “Desolation Road’ (sic), a long work filled with the incongruities of black humor and macabre imagery... it can be best characterized as ‘a folk song of the absurd.’” (I’m reminded of William B. Egan’s thoughts on the nurse in Romeo and Juliet: “that mixture of refinement and vulgarity, both the elements of which Shakespeare makes the more forbidding by joining them together.”)

On the tape, the boos had begun before the show, when an announcer introduces “The fifth Beatle, Murray the K.” The DJ is booed like crazy as he takes the stages, and notes that he’s aware some people just want Bob to do folk music.

“What this man is saying is not rock, it’s not folk, it’s a new thing called ‘Dylan.’ …I would like to just say this, that there is a new swingin’ mood in this country, and I think Bob Dylan perhaps is the spearhead of that new mood. It’s a new expression, a new kind of tellin’ it like it is, and Mr. Dylan is definitely…what’s happenin’ baby!” The crowd erupts in fresh boos, but Murray persists. “It all is saying one thing, trying to be a honest, trying to express a feeling of a certain mood, and I say to you that the man that you are about to meet is probably the most talked-about musical figure in the country today.”

I’m not sure if people were groaning at the over-use of the phrase “tell it like it is” yet in 1965, or if that didn’t happen until a few years later. But even to me, two things stand out about Murray’s intro: It’s corny as hell, and it’s basically correct. It’s a new kind of thing called “Dylan.” A couple of weeks later Bob himself was asked what to call his new music, and said “I know my thing, now, I know what it is. It’s hard to describe. I don’t know what to call it because I’ve never heard it before.”

But the lines were drawn in the crowd. They may have come together to boo Murray the K, but the crowd was sharply divided. The Village Voice said “The factionalism within the teenage sub-culture seemed as fierce as that between the Social Democrats and Stalinists.... The confrontation was riotous. The Mods booed their former culture hero savagely after each of his amplified-rock melodies. They chanted ‘We want Dylan’ and shouted insults at him.”

All of this is evident on the tape. Before the second set starts, you can hear someone say “Electric guitar, eh? Electric guitar,” and there are some boos as soon as it starts.

But we mainly hear the crowd around the taper, which seems to be people who’ve heard that you’re supposed to boo, but actually don’t seem to mind it very much one way or the other. One can hear some people talking about trying to get a “We Want Joan Baez” chant going, but it doesn’t really go anywhere, it just seems like a fun way of jumping on the bandwagon. Most of the loudest reactions come to the stage-chargers. “It Ain’t Me Babe” is even a bit of a singalong.

The reaction to “Desolation Row” has been noted before and by others, but on a more recent listen, I was struck by how the people around the taper reacted much the same way to “Ballad of a Thin Man.” There’s a chuckle after “you see somebody naked and say ‘who is that man?’” There’s a chuckle after “..but you don’t know what it is” that sounds like someone saying “Yeah, that’s tellin’ it like it is.” By the second chorus they’re even singing along a bit.

The the Voice noted this: “They should have been listening to the lyrics - they were as poetic as ever.…the mods joined the rockers in wildly applauding Dylan’s second new song of the evening (no title announced) which he sang while playing the piano standing up.”

And then, of course, the closing “Like a Rolling Stone” is a big singalong that everyone seems to like.

There was a flurry of articles and interviews after the show, and it’s remarkable how similar they are to reporters reacting to people who are mad that Dylan’s current show isn’t just a greatest hits nostalgia fest where they can scroll on their phone and “vibe” all night.

Robert Shelton’s glowing review of the show in the New York Times said, “Nothing so dramatized the childishness of the audience’s reaction to folk rock than when it ceased to boo and started to sing along with the popular song, ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ Evidently the hostility extends only toward things with which they aren’t familiar… By the time they get to know his excellent new folk rock songs, such as ‘Tombstone Blues,’ maybe the noisy young boors who ruined an artistically strong concert may have grown up a bit.”

All the way in California, Ralph Gleason wrote, “On fan has already written me: ‘The audience did not come prepared for an unbalanced rock n roll band and they didn’t want it. Dylan has changed. He wore a suit, which I don’t mind but which ISN’T Dylan…. Bobby Dylan will no longer be getting $2 and $4 for MY ticket to his concert because I had enough screaming at the Beatles concert last year…I will be content simply to listen to his records.”

Gleason, noting that in a new song Dylan said “Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is,” and added “What’s happening is that the merger of the arts, of poetry and popular music, is taking shape before our eyes in a way… that hasn’t happened before in our time…. Dylan is doing exactly what he wants to do, regardless of whether it is successful in financial terms. Just like the Beatles…They, like Dylan, do it the way they want, and to hell with anybody else’s preconceived ideas. More power to them.”

Newsday’s article, “Show Sold Out; But Did Dylan?” noted, “That his most fervent fans should resent Dylan’s unpredictability and experimentation is ironic. ..Dylan has changed styles several times - influencing the direction of musical tastes each time.”

The Toronto Star landed an interview with Bob:

“I haven’t changed. If you listen to early records and the recent ones, you can see the band really makes no difference.” Then why change? “To get rid of the boredom…When you get a certain power, so that you can do something, then you can just go on and do it. But it’s not very satisfying. You get mad at yourself. You have to do something else. You can’t keep on doing one thing - it bores me, it brings me down…”

And when they booed him at Forest Hills? “That was just another concert.”

Gordon Lightfoot, in the middle of recording a cover of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” himself, wrote an article and interview of his own worth for the Toronto Telegram that’s worth quoting in bulk:

I questioned him at length about the controversy over his new songbag… I asked questions that were about as subtle as a kick in the mouth and about as original as last year’s jokes.

“The stuff I used to write, well there’s about a dozen guys writing that stuff now. I can go back to that any time I feel like it. Right now I’d like to see someone try to imitate the things I’m doing. I’ll eventually write more things like ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’ or ‘Girl From the North Country.’”

The fact of the matter is that Dylan doesn’t really have to care about what people think and probably never did to begin with. He’s already made enough money to last him indefinitely, so he’s in a position where he can and will do exactly as he pleases…. As the undisputed leader of the contemporary song movement he is now escaping into a new realm of creativity, and will probably continue to be the innovator for a long time to come….

He claims that he can still come up with many more songs of the earlier “message” type, but for the present his main interest is in playing with the English language in its most interesting combination of words, as is most evident in “Mr. Tambourine Man,” in its complete version of 10 or 12 verses, a masterpiece of imagery.

Dylan picked up a cookie from a plate on the table. “You see this cookie,” he said. “The cookie is brown. I can probably say the cookie is brown in 100 different ways.” I think he probably could if he tried hard enough. If someone asked him to write a song about the cupboard in the kitchen, or the telephone pole outside, he probably could.

The Star had asked Dylan about “Eve of Destruction” specifically. He’d said “There’s not much happening there. All the words on one level - it’s not very honest. But if anyone thinks there’s any thing happening there, I’m not about to tell them to stop listening.”

Anyway, tonight Dylan is playing Forest Hills Stadium again, for just the second time since 1965. I just couldn’t resist getting a ticket. As noted at the opening, word is that it’s gonna rain out, and I’ll forced for find a way to amuse myself in New York (and maybe use the refund to add a UK show). If now, I’ll be checking in tomorrow on Ray Padgett’s Flagging Down the EEs.

- Barack Obama

What is this Bob Dylan’s Long Hot Summer 2026 tour about? All me a bit of a ramble.

Going into the first Outlaw tour two years ago, the rumor was that the promoters had told Bob that he had to play his early stuff, not his new album. On the opening night in Alpharetta I wondered if that that was why he’d played five 50s covers and four songs from his previous album of originals, and not one song from the 60s. In two years of thinking about it, I’m sure that’s what happened. The next night he brought in a couple more classics (or at least staples), but it still seemed like an absurd way to do a summer festival set. Which was part of what was great about it. Very few artists popular in the 60s and 70s are still bringing back album tracks from the 1990s.

Summer Stadium Shows are a genre unto themselves, and most every artist out there playing feel-good sets full of hits. The Long Hot Summer tour shows certainly stand apart from the archetype. And unlike the last two years, Bob is the headliner, the person most of the crowd has paid to see. People who’ve never seen Dylan or heard anything about his shows assume they’re getting a night full of songs from the 60s and 70s; in a given night there are two or three of his songs from the 60s; some nights when he opened with “Watching the River Flow” and closed with “Every Grain of Sand,” there was only one. When the opener is “To Be Alone With You” (as it has for the last week or two) “When I Paint My Masterpiece” is the lone 70s Dylan tune. There are several covers of oldies, but none of them are the kind where most listeners can join in and sing along, like when Lucinda Williams closes her set with “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

What’s he trying to say with this set? Michael Glover Smith called it a mix of “the last song you hear before you die and go to Hell, and 1950s high school dance songs.”

A few themes emerge when I look at the setlist and listen to the shows, and the first one is Men in Black. We’re getting “Man in the Long Black Coat” and “Black Rider,” two songs of mysterious men with the same fashion sense, right in the same set. Are these the same guy? Even if Bob wasn’t thinking of anything like that when he wrote “Black Rider,” are they the same guy in the context of this setlist? It makes sense if the man in the long black coat who left with a woman who didn’t even leave a note is also the guy being told to “go home to your wife, stop visiting mine.” (And maybe this pairing is why “Black Rider,” a song I never pictured as an outdoor stadium sort of song, is working so well).

There are a number of songs about a mysterious man traveling through strange terrain, battling the odds, meeting people named “Miss Pearl” and “Miss Mary Jane,” searching for something. “Trying to Get to Heaven” and “Crossing the Rubicon” could both be songs from the point of view of the Black Rider in this context. So could “I’ve Made Up My Mind…” where he’s traveling the long road of despair.

And mixed with the 1950s high school dance songs are two of his own dance tunes, “To Be Alone With You” and “Soon After Midnight.” These have something in common, at least in the 2021 rewrite of TBAWY: Murder. The rewrite goes from a dance number to “what happened to me darling? What was it you saw? Did I kill somebody? Did I evade the law?”

“Soon After Midnight” pulls a similar trick; after sounding like a lovely lilting tune, he’s singing about dragging Two Timin’ Slim’s corpse through the mud. The more I think of it the more this song seems of a piece with “Black Rider.”

I can imagine the Black Rider making short work of Two Timin’ Slim.

And if we want to go WAY off the deep end, this could even extend to “Trying To Get to Heaven.” Graley Herren sees the Time Out of Mind album as being full of murder ballads in which the speaker is awaiting execution for murdering his lover. I’d certainly never though of that, but I fully believe that there endless “correct” ways to interpret these songs, and in one of the early handwritten lyric drafts I saw in Tulsa, the first line in the song is “The air is getting hotter, the hangman’s hand is near.”

I could absolutely see most of the Dylan originals in this set as all being about the same man in black who can’t remember when he was born and forgot when he died, traveling on as he escapes the law, finally reaching contentment through love and commitment with “I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself to You,” and settling down to a street named after a saint and reminiscing about how he fought his way out in “Goodby Jimmy Reed.” “Jimmy Reed” is an “I’ve finally won - I did amount to much and I had what it took when they threw everything they could at me” song. The alternating closing songs, “Every Grain of Sand” and “I Shall Be Released,” are both benedictory.

So is that the story in this set? The trials and tribulations of a Man in the Long Black Coat who hangs around old dance halls, occasionally kills people, and has to stay one step ahead of the people coming after him?

Of course, the songs that fit this theme are mixed in with those covers that don’t really fit this theme, and his summer favorite “Under the Red Sky,” and the two “hits,” “It Ain’t Me Baby” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” (They both fit the theme too, if I squint, but I do have to squint pretty hard at that point).

Any way you cut it, it’s a bold set to be playing on a summer stadium tour.

Many of us the Dylan community have social media pointing us right to the bad reviews this year - stuff the algorithm knows will get under our skin (many of us were pointed to the same bad review of a Paul Simon show, too). One person after another saying that Dylan doesn’t understand that people come to concerts to “vibe” to the hits while they scroll on their phones. They whine that he doesn’t talk, that he doesn’t have big video screens, that he keeps his hood on, doesn’t play “a single song anyone knows,” and that he doesn’t sound like he’s 23 anymore. In short, they don’t get the oldies show they expected to get. Yesterday I saw a person who said she had to google to see why “he looked like Adam Sandler’s grandfather.” (Did Google AI tell her that people often look like grandfathers when they’re 85?)

Now, there’s some truth in their claims about “what people expect.” If you didn’t realize that Bob Dylan has a 60+ year history of not doing what people expect, and didn’t trouble to look at recent setlists, you might go in thinking you were getting a nostalgia fest, like most every other show playing at the same venues this summer.

And it’s true that Dylan has seemed relatively grumpy ever since Outlaw began; I hadn’t seen him grinning like he did in Cincinnati since Austin 2024, the end of Rough and Rowdy Ways v1. (The resumuption that fall was a different sound and setlist, really Rough and Rowdy II). By the end of last summer he had a hoodie up and was hiding behind the piano completely. He’s hardly said a word onstage since last spring, when he said things like “We’re playing all the hits tonight” in a show that had just one song from his 50 most-played on Spotify.

And now we’ve had the band and crew drama this tour. While I imagine that if we all knew the whole story we’d probably sympathize with Bob Britt and Doug Lancio, it seems quite possible that since the first 4 year leg of the Rough and Rowdy Ways ended (it’s not been the same show since Outlaw), Bob has been frustrated with the band. He didn’t keep the 76 band for 78, after all.

I didn’t see the show where new guitarist Joel Paterson played all the guitar parts himself, but I’ve seen him with both Julian Lage and Jad Tariq. And what was most apparent in Cincinnati was the Dylan was really enjoying Joel’s work, with more guitar pyrotechnics than I’ve seen in a Dylan show since the Freddy Koella days in 2003-4. Does this point to a new era of Bob music, perhaps a new album where jazz guitar plays a prominent role? I’ve been trying to explain that seeing Dylan is like seeing Miles Davis for year; he uses his voice the way Miles used his horn.

I couldn’t guess what’s next, any more than I can guess whether Dylan really had any intention of a theme when he put this batch of songs together. Trying to guess what’s going on in his mind is a fool’s errand, and he’s never going to give us the answer key.

But what is apparent is that this is the show he wants to put on right now, and he’s never been one to “pander and play to the crowd,” as he sings, perhaps by way of explanation, in “Goodbye Jimmy Reed.” Much as I’ve loved shows by other acts who play all the hits recently, those shows haven’t made me look at the songs in a new light. They haven’t felt like I was witness an artist engaging in his craft in real time, creating something that adds to their canon. Even Bruce’s utterly fantastic “Land of Hope and Dreams” show, with its very explicit theme, didn’t bring out anything new in the songs. I didn’t feel like i was watching Bruce create and explore (he does that more in shows without the E Street Band).

Honestly, I’d personally love to see some more Basement Tapes songs in the Dylan set, or some different covers, or more of the songs that might fit this same set (“Moonlight,” maybe? “Where Teardrops Fall?” “Ain’t Talkin?”). But as a paying customer, I am paying to see Bob Dylan up there doing his thing, creating new art from old material. I can’t wait to see it again next week in Forest Hills.

At one of my first shows, we could see a bit of backstage through a crack in the fence. Right as the show ended we could see Bob stepping down the steps off the stage. As he did, someone said something, and he looked up with a jack-o-lantern grin. I haven’t seen that grin on his face in a while; starting with the first Outlaw tour he’s generally been moody and hooded. But tonight in Cincinnati he was all smiles, bopping to the beat, and even dancing around behind his piano. It was probably the best show I’ve seen since Austin a couple of years ago. After the show everyone was just jubilant (as in the picture above).

This day didn’t start out promising promising. I hadn’t planned to do this one - a five hour drive is in that dead zone where it’s too close to want to fly, but really too far to drive. But Henry had a spare ticket, and the evolving band has been exciting to follow, so I decided there was just too much happening to miss the chance. All my friends would be here, after all. Of course, then I started my day getting a huge bill, being unable to find parking by Henry’s place (street sweeping day), and kind of feeling crappy. I had a weird whistle in my ear and didn’t know why. My back was sore. It was hot out. And, of course, there are wars on and stuff. I wasn’t in a great place when I left the house.

But we drove off to Ohio (“Where America’s From”), passing through Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio all in ten minutes, and met up with Mike and Kait. Ben showed up and we did some tailgating. It was sweaty out and I didn’t seem to feel the beer at all. Something there is in Ohio that always makes it hard for me to breathe there.

But Cincinnati is my favorite part of Ohioa, and the outdoor arena turned out to be covered, which was a relief. Shade! The whole vibe of the place was “Theme Park that Remodeled in 1990 and Hasn’t Changed a Bit.” It was like an ampitheater, only with no lawn and everything was covered. We took our seats, down at the front stage left, just before John Doe Folk Trio’s excellent set. John came out and said “You thought you came out for a night of good music. But you’re getting a night of GREAT” music. Mike shouted his approval and John said “That guy gets it.” Later Henry shouted out a request for his cover of “Pressing On.” John smirked and said “‘Pressing On?’….No.”

Lucinda Williams, post-stroke, has to be helped onto the stage. She stands a bit weak on her feet and her singing probably isn’t as dynamic as she’d like. But her focus is visible, and her sheer resilience shines through. What a badass! Her set was terrific again, with the crowd high-fiving, and the guy who helped her out throwing devil horns offstage, during her closing cover of “Rockin’ in the Free World.” John Doe reminded us that we are all worthy of love, and can love whoever the hell we want. And despite both of their digs at “What’s-His-Name,” Lucinda reminded us that we can keep on rocking.

My mood had lifted. In fact, about halfway through her set, I realized that I felt fantastic. Calm. Happy. Sweaty, and glad I was wearing my neon headband (it’s Neon Magic Summer ’26), but just plain happy. I was with friends; we’d hung out with Gordon and his son Jude, and Heather had shown up with pics of me from Atlanta 2004, and Dan K from Chicago was right in our row. The weather cooled to one of those hot, brown, midwestern nights that I always mention when I’m tasting Heaven’s Door Rye and saying what it tastes like to me, pretending I have much of a palette. I felt so good I wondered if Mitch McConnell had died somewhere out there and made the world a bit of a happier place.

Now, there’d been much discussion of who would be in the band tonight. With Julian Lage probably on a plane for his gigs in Europe, the best guess was that Joel Paterson would go back to holding it up himself on guitar, as he’s quite capable of doing. We saw a hollow body Gibson, like Joel played, over stage right, where Julian had been before. But then we saw another hollow body guitar on the other side, where Joel had been. Two guitarists?

As the band came out, Joel was right near us, so we shouted “Yeah, Joel! Chicago! Chicago!” He looked down, motioned to us, and mouthed “You? Chicago?” Then smiled and put a finger to his lips before we could get him in trouble with the boss.

Behind him, a new guitarist had come out, putting on another hollow-body Gibson. He was a younger guy with great hair and a World War 2 allied pilot mustache. With the large guitar and suit, he was giving “member of a jazz band at the officer’s club in 1944 playing tasteful jazz and making all the women go crazy by curling his lip every now and then.” None of us knew who he was. Now and then a guy would poke his head from behind the curtain backstage and look at him, and I started to imagine he was a character in a screwball comedy who was on the run, ended up backstage, and someone said “Thank Gd you’re here! You’re on!” and now he was onstage, with the guy who was chasing him stuck backstage. (The murky picture someone took during the formation does not capture his regal, spy-like essence or how well-groomed that stache is).

“To Be Alone With You” showed Bob in good voice, Joel going right to town, and the new guitar fitting right in, playing a lot of staccato rhythm with jazz voicings of the chords. He did a few solos, and he was great, but the night would belong to Joel on guitar.

Bob was in his hoodie, but was grinning and bopping along, in a better mood than I’d seen him in (at least visibly) in a long, long time. Tony, too, was grinning (the ultimate barometer). “Man in the Long Black Coat” was perfect for the weather.

“It Ain’t Me Babe” was a big crowd pleaser, and the two guitars were really adding to it. Joel and the new guy (revealed well after the show to be 29 year old Jad Tariq of Memphis) were watching each other, giving each other looks like “you play a solo” or “now I’ll play a solo.” It was Joel’s first time up as the guitarist with seniority. “Trying to Get to Heaven” was perfect for these two; Henry pointed out that the song seemed to fit very well with “Man in the Long Black Coat.” Other than having the same producer on the album tracks it’s hard to see why, but it works. Maybe the Man in the Long Black Coat is trying to get to heaven, and Miss Mary Jane went with him without leaving a note.

“False Prophet” began very leisurely, lacking the evil bite of earlier versions. It was jarring, really. It was like a walk in the garden, and not like Bosch’s garden of earthly delights, but a pleasant garden someplace. But then the guy walking with you is still saying all this dark, vaguely threatening stuff, which made it a whole different kind of unsettling, akin to “Soon After Midnight” when the gentle lilt suddenly becomes a song about dragging Two-Timin’ Slim’s corpse through the mud.

The song featured some dueling guitars, which broke up the “pleasant stroll” vibe with some biting blues; by this time Bob was often nodding at Joel. Usually you can’t tell what a nod from Bob might mean; tonight it was very clearly “Take a solo.” Or “Keep soloing.” He occasionally nodded the new guy’s way, but most of the looks were going to Joel. And they all seemed good and encouraging, sometimes even punctuated by a smile.

“I Can Tell” featured Joel on slide, which has really brought that song to life. The covers in the set generally feel like filler - Mike said after Chicago that this show alternated between the last song you hear before you go to hell and a 1950s high school dance. But the new band is really lifting them up.

Things began to go to another level with “Black Rider.” A bit less sinister than in Chicago, vocally. This time he seemed like the guy who appears to the Black Rider every couple of miles, uttering vague warnings and threats, in a gentle, “I’ve been warning you…” tone that you know the Black Rider isn’t going to heed. One day i’ll wave his hand and the Black Rider will turn to dust. Maybe he used to be the Black Rider himself. Maybe the Black Rider is like the Dread Pirate Robert; there’ve been many over the years. You can tell a show is good when I find myself going into these weird raptures of fantasy from them. It doesn’t always happen. It didn’t happen much the other night in Chicago.

And best of all, it started raining - hard - outside of the stadium in the middle of the song. We could hear it on the roof, and sometimes the wind would even blow a mist in from the wings. It was like the song summoned a storm. Damn, Bob - what else can you do?

Bob nodded for Joel to keep going a bit during the intro to “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” and when he did, Bob’s face broke into a huge smile and what appeared to be a delighted chuckle. He sang like he was having a blast up there.

“Crossing the Rubicon” gives Bob a lot of great opportunities vocally - a lot of lines that he seems to like playing with. Tonight he seemed to be really telling the story of the song more than he usually does to me, not just leaning into the vocal gymnastics, but really living inside of the song, telling us how he crossed the Rubicon. Joel played some wicked guitar. As we always do, we all shouted “Woo!” in the seconds when the band pauses during the instrumental breaks, and Tony was so amused that people who’d been in the back came up after and asked if we’d noticed Tony reacting to us. Heather said “Tony thinks you guys are funny!”

“Soon After Midnight” is a song I could generally skip, if it was long enough to make into bathroom break, but the two guitars are really pushing it forward, with Bob again seeming absolutely delighted in Joel’s work.

The two guitars are also adding a look of good shading and texture to “Under the Red Sky,” which is probably the song that comes closest to the album version. Fireflies were lighting up the stage. There was a harp solo here tonight, and a great one. The crowd went nuts for it.

“I’ve Made Up My Mind…” is another that I sometimes think I’ve heard enough, but it was particularly lovely and heartfelt tonight. “Goodbye Jimmy Reed,” which is sometimes known to limp along, is back to being an uptempo bop.

Now, this had been a hell of a show. Bob seemed to be having a blast, something that I don’t think I’ve seen in a long time. The two new guitarists were playing like they’d been playing together for ages and really elevating the set, clearly inspiring Bob. Just one wild card remained: would the closer be “Every Grain of Sand” or “I Shall Be Released?” Henry has been wanting to see “I Shall Be Released” live for twenty years. As noted in Steven Ring’s review of Chicago, when Bob closed with “Every Grain of Sand” there, Henry had thrown up his hands in despair. Today he was still bugged by it, even though he knew in his heart that you can’t get your hopes up about a setlist surprise. He’d been telling himself not to get his hopes up again all day.

But then Bob leaned over towards Joel and said “Shall be Released” with a little nod. When Bob sang the first line, Henry broke down. I was cradling him for much the song as he ugly-cried with joy. He later said he felt like he’d been released. The version Bob brought in also happened to be gorgeous - well arranged, beautifully sung, and with a benedictory harp solo to close out the evening. The whole show was a triumph.

Sometimes you wonder if it’s just your own mood. If you just have a better time than normal because you have seats with friends or simply have a great view. What you get out of a concert definitely reflects what you put into it. But everyone else we knew was just aglow after the show. We buzzed around the seats and the parking lot for a long time, trying to find out if anyone knew who the new guy was and rehashing favorite moments. There were a lot of them. This is the kind of show you chase. The reason we travel around. One of them, anyway. You get a lot of adventures and make a lot of friends along the way, but you’re always hoping for one of those shows that just seems to rise from A+ to something more. That lifts you out of yourself. What if there’s a show like this and you miss it because you didn’t want to take a five hour drive? It’s a nice ride with a friend and if you take a slightly scenic route you’ll probably see some interesting stuff.

Word around Chicago was that Joel was going to be out for 2-3 weeks, but that was probably before Bob Britt had left the band, and he just expected to fill in for dates when Julian had prior commitments. I wonder if Bob is going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.

Now it’s morning. I’m in a blue light cheap hotel in some speed trap town in Indiana, eating a hotel breakfast that doesn’t include any eggs while the Hallmark Channel plays Hallmark Christmas movies on the TV screen, even though it’s July. The whistle in my ear is a bit worse. If Mitch McConnell kicked it, it hasn’t been announced yet. But I’m feeling great, still buzzing from the show. I’m taking comfort in knowing that Mitch will probably be out of my hair pretty soon, anyway, and that I still have the Forest Hills show ahead in a couple of weeks. Hallelujah, I’m ready to go.

Outside the venue, sweating it out. On the inside the chili dogs were seven bucks, which isn’t bad for stadium chow.

Leaving Chicago; thanks for driving, Henry!

No announcements were made, but when the band hit the stage they were joined by Joel Patterson, another jazz guitarist who on any other monday would be playing at the Green Mill in Chicago, a jazz club noted for its habit of showing people which booth was Al Capone’s favorite (a claim that has no basis in fact). Twice a month he plays at Simon’s, a dive bar a mile or so south of my place. Tapes of him first few shows as a the sole guitarist in the band were a delight to hear. Guitar solos!

Looking back it’s been clear that Bob has been ready for a shakeup for some times. We had the brief, mostly inaudible tenure of an organ player, those fall nights when Bob Britt played steel guitar, and the spring tour with no electric guitar at all. The Rough and Rowdy Ways era is (pretty much) over, and it was time to mix up the band. He didn’t take the 76 band on the 78 tour.

Prior to this, I’d been a little lukewarm on the tour. Sounded good and all, but summer stadium shows can be such a hassle. And it’s hot out. And you have to get through multiple openers. And the good seats can cost a pile. I was just going to do Chicago and Forest Hills (mainly for the historic factor with Forest Hills; I love that 65 Forest Hills tape so much I’d always meant to go find the venue). But now I’m doing Cincinnati, and who knows what else.

Met up for a pre-show at Exchequer, where the staff where shirts with Al Capone’s face that say “Big Al Dined here” (a claim that has no basis in fact). Talked with Sarah, who was at her first meeetup, and of course Mike and Kait and Henry and Roberta and Bailey and Ben. The meetups are as addictive as the shows. I was so hungry that it was hard to focus.

We took a shuttle bus to the island, which is really a peninsula. I’d only been to the outside of this venue to hear Stevie Wonder when I couldn’t afford to get a ticket in my 20s. After the bland corporate ampitheatres that dominating the Outlaw tour, the Huntington Pavilion was a nice change. You walk by a beach full of swimmers to get in, and on the inside it has a makeshift, county fair sort of vibe that was charming. Ran into Stu Levitan, Steven Rings, Peter and more old friends and just strolled around, having a nice time in nice weather.

John Doe and Lucinda Williams both played short, highly enjoyable, politically charged sets. The couple beside me had brought their little kids, who were a delight, and the couple in front of Henry and me bickered and sniped at each other. That was a delight, too.

Word had gotten out that it was to be both guitarists tonight - Julian and Joel. Julian had returned following his own tour dates, and but Joel had stayed on, at least so far. The band came out to a dark stage, and the lights didn’t come on until “To Be Alone With You” started up.

Now, both Joel and Julian are jazz guys, but aren’t exactly playing jazz. They’re playing Dylan music, the same sort of guitar we’ve heard at Dylan shows for years, only a bit flashier, and with a LOT more lead. There were solos and some duelling guitar moments. This reinvigorated a lot of songs tonight - especially the covers.

Julian was all smiles throughout; a grin so wide you could tell from the crowd that he didn’t have any cavities. Joel, to me, seemed like he fit right in. He just looks like a Dylan sideman to me. This was a hometown show for him; he was seen wandering in the crowd during the openers, and when someone shouted out “JOEL PATTERSON” Tony gave that person a thumbs-up and a grin. (Tony, too, was grinning all night - a good barometer of how things are going).

As for Bob himself, in his white hoodie, he was in fine voice and seemed to be in a better mood than I’ve seen him in in ages. He gave lots of approving glances to Joel throughout the night. It wasn’t his very strongest night, with a rougher voice that the last few shows (according to the tapes) and a lot of lyric flubs. But he was in strong voice and seemed excited.

Some highlights to me for me included a particularly good (despite lyric flubs) “It Ain’t Me Babe” early in the set, a spectacularly sinister “Black Rider,” the best “I Can Tell” I’ve ever heard (by FAR), and the two-guitar attack of “Soon After Midnight.” “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” was especially improved from its sometimes-limp arrangement.

Overall I’m finding it hard to know how to react to the show, as it seems like things are just getting started. This show may be noted more for the lineup; Julian has some gigs back in Europe, so presumably Joel will be back to being the lone guitarist for a bit. But his bands here say he’s planning to be out for two or three weeks, suggesting that maybe Julian will end up the lone guitarist for the last stretch of the tour. And he has tour dates of his own in the fall. So who’ll be in the lineup by then? Will the sound of this band keep evolving? Will the show evolve as Bob gets more comfortable with the new guy/s and mix things up more? As he once sang, “It’s all gonna be pretty much unknown.”

There’ve been a lot of reports of people walking out in disgust this tour, as Bob is still wearing a hoodie, not using close-ups on the screens, and not playing the any real hits (basically just “It Ain’t Me Babe.”) But maybe that’s just because social media algorithms are set up to show us the posts that they know will rile us up. I don’t even go on Threads if I can help it; every time I do it selects some post from an activist being antisemitic as hell, knowing that it’ll keep me engaged. I know several of us in the discord were pointed to the same bad review of a Paul Simon show. I went in really thinking that most of the crowd was hating the show. But that wasn’t what I saw in the crowd at all. Sure, a lot of people would have liked him to talk more, play a few more hits, and lower the hood. But no one around me was complaining.

Afterwards we walked to the Palmer House, which seemed like a better idea than it actually was (quite a hike and it was still pretty hot out). I got home exhausted, so today I’m just resting up. Road trip to Cincinnati tomorrow!

Years back, Rands gave an interview in which he said “Beethoven didn’t know everything that was in his music. How could he?” Dylan is the same way. Liz C. and I were discussing how playing “Man in the Long Black Coat” in the same set as “Black Rider” makes for a whole new context for those songs. Is the man in the long black coat the black rider now?

Anytime we go on like this, people ask if we think Dylan planned these things. Who knows? Did he intend for “To Be Alone With You” to be changed by having it come right after “My Own Version Of You?” Some nights it felt like he was singing to the creature he’d created in the last song, sometimes it was to the “You” who was about to be replaced by Bob’s own version. Some of this sort of thing I imagine he does consider when he puts a setlist together, or while he’s singing the songs, but whether it’s what he really has in mind is anyone’s guess, and he’s not going to give us an answer key. But even he doesn’t know everything that’s in his music. How could he? The first thing on the back of the album is “I Contain Multitudes,” which after this tour began I started to see as a label, like “Drink Me.”

Anyway, to check an item off my rock n roll bucket list, I “hitchhiked” from Saginaw in a car with Graham from the UK, Sergi from Barcelona, and Selena from Canada. (By coincidence I will be at the New Jersey turnpike in four days). It’s fun to travel with Graham; he asks everyone he meets if they’ve heard of Bob Dylan. It’s like he’s an evangelist, asking “Have you heard the good news about Bob?” I keep thinking he should print up some cartoon booklets.

Speaking of evangelists, the Michigan landscape is dotted with billboards about abortion and sheriffs. We passed one that said “Caged by Lust? Jesus can help” with a picture of Jesus’s hands and no real hint of how he was going to use his hands to help with your lust. It’s a true gift for one’s inner seventh grader.

The show in Detroit was in an old Masonic temple where people in the hall can see right into the stalls in the womens’ bathroom, which is probably a sign that the freemasons didn’t have women in mind when they built it. But the theater portion is a lovely auditorium. I took a seat with Graham and met the Adam from Toronto.

The show opened as before, with Anton on stage first, and Bob walking out in his white hoodie, unleashing a rager of a “To Be Alone With You,” followed by a “Man in the Long Black Coat” with no lyric flubs (the houselights again went down right after the first verse).

It’s hard to write a new review, because the show was very similar to last night in Saginaw. Wildly inventive and particularly energetic work from Bob. I can only really name the highlights: a wild “I Can Tell” (which Adam from Toronto pointed out sounded like “Odds and Ends”), a great “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” a delicate and gorgeous “I’ve Made Up My Mind,” and some of the most creative and thoughtful singing on “Every Grain of Sand” that I’ve ever seen. “Goodbye Jimmie Reed” started out seeming like it might be a momentum killer, but was rescued by some really imaginative takes on the vocals mid-way and beyond. It was barely a week ago in Iowa City that I felt as though the new show was still coming together. Now we are witnessing “the firepower of this fully armed and operation battle station.” Bob is standing up more, even bopping to the music. The mic issues persist, in that occasionally one line will bill notably quieter than the previous one, but they’re always fixed very quickly.

In Saginaw the harp solo on “Masterpiece” whipped the audience into a frenzy, so of course Bob didn’t play any harp on it tonight. Instead, he waited until the end of the last song to break out the harp, as he often did in Fall of 2023. Just like it did then, finally playing harp prompted a thunderous roar from the audience, arguably the first thing a casual fan would really recognize as a Dylan trademark, like he’s finally peeking out to say “Yep, it’s been me, Bob Dylan, this whole time!”

The show was the equal of last night’s Saginaw banger, and the crowd was particularly responsive, shouting out and cheering after many individual lines and verses. But people who travel to a lot of shows (like, a lot more than i do) are always saying Michigan crowds are particularly uptight, and that’s about been my experience. The practice of waving lighters at concerts is often said to have started on Dylan’s 1974 tour, but in Detroit a woman was ejected for it. No one told me that nodding my head was giving them an anxiety attack, as someone did last night, so it was easier for me to relax and get into the show, but the people dancing on the floor were told to sit down by security early on, and no garage rock icons were walking around telling people about all their past lives, at least as far as I know. So to compare Detroit to Saginaw, we had was a similar (great) performance in a more ornate venue, but with a somewhat less interesting atmosphere.

After the show, while wandering the sidewalks of Detroit with Liz and Jacob, we saw a fight break out in a liquor store, and a man dragged out of a club with his pants pulled down. He stood there, propped up by his friends in his black briefs, too drunk to operate his trousers. You really do have some adventures when you travel to Bob Dylan concerts.

Back at the airbnb we talked about Dylan’s recent Patreon posts, the short story “The Bull Rider” and the imaginary letter from Mark Twain to Rudolph Valentino. At the airport the other day I’d tried asking some AI bots to write a story about a bull rider “in the style of Bob Dylan’s prose works,” and got a few stories that were similar in style to (but not as good as) the “Bull Rider” story.

Now, whether this makes it more likely that these “curated” stories involve AI or more likely that they don’t is one of those things like saying “Everything I say is a lie” that makes computers explode in cartoons. One possibility is that Bob started the bull rider story by asking a program to write in his style, then fixed it up. And again, we have to ask wether building a story from lines designed to imitate his own style, having been trained on his own works, would be better or worse than using lines from a Henry Timrod poem. All I know is that it would be funnier. (Some people have suggested that the word “Bull” in the title might be a clue, and that Dylan is using the same “riding/ writing” pun he seems to employ in “All the Tired Horses.”)

Trolling has always been a skill of Bob’s, after all. I think there’s some of it in the current setlist. Most artists his age end up dropping “the new songs” after a tour or two, either to make room for the next batch of new songs or to have more room for old classics. After five years Dylan has cut back the number of Rough and Rowdy Ways songs, but he also cut most of the 1960s and 70s songs he was playing and replaced them with songs from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2010s. Now there are even fewer old classics in the show, arguably the least he’s had on any tour in 45 years. Maybe it’s trolling, and maybe it’s just him doing exactly what he feels like doing, which is what I hope he keeps doing.

But as I turned that all around in my head on the drive home, new stuff was added to the Patreon that changes everything.

ON THE NEW PATREON POSTS:

The morning after the show I listened to Goose with fan club founder Caroline at the airbnb, and to Geese with my longtime partner in crime Michael Glover Smith in his car as we started the our trek back to Chicago. We were almost finished with the drive when some new Patreon material was posted, including a “Letter Never Written” from James Baldwin to Walt Disney and a short story credited to “Anthony Swilly.”

While I could probably be convinced that “The Bull Rider” had some AI use in the chain someplace, these ones seemed like pure Dylan.

The letter, in particular, comes off as a voice from the mountain, like one of the “finger pointing” songs he said he was going to stop writing in about 1964, as “Baldwin” points a finger at Walt’s sanitizing and whitewashing of history and reality. “You have taken the oldest American impulse - the refusal to look at what one has done - and given it a soundtrack, a color palette, and a procession of smiling animals….. no past interrupts the perpetual present of your cheerful mythology. You have not created fantasy so much as you have embalmed reality.” In the end, the letter says “You have chosen comfort over confrontation, myth over memory, and in doing so, you have helped sustain a national dream that cannot survive being awakened. The trouble is that awakening will come, whether invited or not. Reality is patient in ways fantasy cannot afford to be. And when it arrives, it will not sing.”

This is probably the most blatantly political thing Dylan has written in years. I gotta say, I didn’t think that when he came back to finger-pointing songs he’d be pointing at Walt Disney. But you would have to do some real acrobatics to say that the letter isn’t saying exactly what Dylan thinks of the current state of affairs.

By contrast, the short story, “Frozen Pizza,” is a poignant, Sherwood Anderson-style slice of life in a small Minnesota small town with some great humorous touches. It begins: “In the town of Larkspur—population 2,143 if you counted the Lundgren twins separately, which most folks did except on Sundays when they dressed alike and confused the ushers—there was a small grocery store called Halvorson’s Market, a place where time moved at the speed of conversation and the freezers hummed like a choir that had given up on perfection but not on faith.”

Of interest here, to me, is that in the Tulsa archives is a small notebook from the late 60s in which Dylan wrote out a list of town characters, such as Cousin Billy Pinkerton, who works in scrap metal and plays in a local “rockabout” band. There are a few snatches of song lyrics about these characters, but no real hint as to what he was planning to do with them. A book? A musical? And album?

What I do know is that no AI engine has access to those notebooks, and that, even though it’s 60 years later, “Frozen Pizza” sounds exactly like what he was taking notes for.

Now, does he even remember those notes? I have no idea. I didn’t transcribe much of them, so I’m not sure there’s any overlap here. While I didn’t bother to look up whether “Anthony Swilly” is a real guy (you’d have to get up pretty early in the morning to convince me he was), I wouldn’t see any more reason to suspect the use of AI in its creation than I would in any other short story. But it’s a part of reality now: ANY piece of writing can be accused of using generative AI. In some corners of the internet it’s generally assumed that anything with an em-dash or a simile is AI now, as if those haven’t been in use before.

(There is also a new 59 minute audio post in the voice of Jack London but damn it I’m too tired for that).

BACK TO REALITY:

I am now at home after a three day run that felt like three weeks, minimum. Right before embarking I spent a week in New York with an enormous school group, taking them to see The Great Gatsby musical, where Eva Noblezada has returned as Daisy, playing her as about five years and fifty-thousand cigarettes older than Sarah Hyland’s excellent rendition last year. In the opening number the revelers sing “Where’s the party and can you take me there? And when the party’s over can you find another party somewhere?”

Those lines lived in my head from Thursday to Sunday. I suppose that’s how we always live when we’re following a tour, but I feel like this particular road trip vacillated between feeling like Almost Famous and Wonder Boys and I’m not sure which character I was in the whole thing. It was downright disorienting. Maybe it’s because I’d already been on the road a week, maybe it’s the major shakeups in my career and personal life that were happening at the same time, or maybe there was just something in the Michigan water.

Naturally I’m checking my calendar and my pay checks, seeing if I can work in another show somewhere this spring. I want to see this show continue to evolve and I want to see more of my friends and have more adventures, wandering in strange cities and taking rides from strangers to places with plaid carpet on the walls where we can talk about the implications of putting one song next to another in a setlist. 101 concerts and nights like this could never be enough, even though I had to see that one guy’s underpants. The world is large. It contains multitudes.

This held true tonight. My 100th show was an absolute banger. I got to meet up with my Wales road buddy Graham and my longtime partner in crime Michael Glover Smith. I got to ride in an Uber with a guy talking about Alice Cooper and then step into a “Mar ini Bar” where more people were talking about Alice Cooper. I heard tales of Question Mark, the Saginaw-based garage rock icon (“96 Tears”) wandering around the theater tonight telling people he died on the Titanic in a previous life (he met with Bob after the show). I’m just saying: all the pieces were in place.

Once again Anton Fig kicked off the show with a drum beat, Tony joined on bass, and soon Bob was aboard in his white hoodie, wailing a “To Be Alone With You” worthy of a Question Mark and the Mysterians garage-rock single. In Grand Rapids, I felt this was a high-octane opener to a generally laid-back show, but tonight this simply wasn’t the case. The crowd was very responsive; Bob took note of the people dancing up front and fed off their energy. I could see it from the balcony. I couldn’t sit still, even though the woman behind me said that my head-nodding was giving her an anxiety attack. Now, I’ve been bugged by people standing and blocking my view in the past, I admit. Usually I’m on the “sitting” side of the sit-vs-stand debate. But I think it’s a fact that Bob likes to see people up and responding, and tonight that was clear. As they say to rock and roll crowds: “You drive us wild, we’ll drive you crazy.” The crowd tonight was destined to drive Dylan wild, and he in turn drove us crazy.

An opening lyric flub in “Man in the Long Black Coat” marked the single flaw in the show. In the past few shows, the house lights have first come down right after he sings the title for the first time.

One thing I’ve noted is that, without “My Own Version of You,” there hadn’t been a song that seemed to tell me a different story each night, but now there is: “All Along the Watchtower.” Back home in the three spot, tonight the joker sounded furious, and the thief seemed conspiratorial, like he was assuring him that they were about to change their fates. Like they were staging a raid, sneaking into the palace while all the women come and go and the princes keep the view. I thought it would surely be the highlight.

It was during “Black Rider” that I noticed how creative he was getting with the vocals. Last night I’d noticed he was singing the “cock” line in a way I hadn’t heard before. Tonight he was singing almost every line in a way I hadn’t heard before. The overall effect was conversational, like the speaker was giving the Black Rider a friendly (but firm) warning.

From then on, it seemed like every line was a fresh delivery. The energy behind the singing was several notches above my first two shows. On “Love Sick,” he locked into an absolute groove, throwing in an “I said” before lines and just riding on the rhythm. “Jimmy Reed” rocked as hard as I ever saw it rock (and often it has not rocked) and even ended with a rare mid-show “thank you!”

“When I Paint My Masterpiece” deserves particular mention (with “mean and hungry look” back; in Iowa City it was the original line about “wasting time”). The harp solo whipped up the audience—the response when he began was huge, and as he progressed it became thunderous. The descending line he found for the last lines had to be heard to be believed.

It’s genuinely hard to find the highlights. I mean, I couldn’t wait to hear how he did every upcoming line. “Forgetful Heart” vocals went from being stretched into feeling like “one more cup of coffee” cantillation. “Nervous Breakdown” rocked so hard you could almost imagine it was 1966. I would have sworn it was electric with my eyes closed. Bob was all smiles and clapped for the audience a bit at the end.

I’ll be honest, I expected to make fun of Saginaw a bit. But it turns out that, in addition to the Mar ini Bar, Saginaw has a place with wood panels and plaid carpet and a Duck Hunt mural outside and for some reason there are kids there. I had a good reuben in two places, and one of them sent us our waters on a little elevator. And, like so many towns, I never would have experienced it if there wasn’t a Dylan tour to follow. At the edge of the balcony the sound sucked, but through the muck came the kind of show you hope to see when you attend show after show. A great one for number 100.

Ben (baseball hat), Graham (fedora), Me (glasses), Liz (laughing) Brain the Maine Man (beard) and our new friends from Saginaw at the plaid palace.

Tonight a guy in front of me sat down with his wife and started chatting about how he assumed Bob would be playing “Tangled Up in Blue.” The person next to him, a younger guy who was extremely eager to see his third show, told him that song hadn’t been on the setlist lately. We’d been chatting, and he looked back at me to confirm. I said you never know what might happen in any show, but that song hadn’t come up in a while, and this wasn’t going to be a “greatest hits” show. I began my usual spiel of thinking of this like a jazz concert, which I always find to be useful. Bob sings the songs the way Miles Davis might have played them. He uses his voice as a jazz instrument. If they’re open to what he’s doing, I think most people will have a great time.

The guy looked at me, incredulous. “You don’t think he’s gonna do ‘Lay Lady Lay?’”

I told him nothing was impossible, but I hadn’t seen that one in about twenty years.

The guy said something to his wife, and the two of them took off. I assumed they were getting a drink, but they never came back.

I understand why people want to hear the hits (and this particular set has arguably the least of any set in ages). But if it’s that important to you that certain songs are played, you can easily find the recent setlists online and save yourself the trouble and the cost of a mezzanine ticket. I can think of several bands that I’d probably skip if they weren’t playing the songs I liked. Then again, when I tried to think of an example, I kept thinking “Well, really, if the Spin Doctors weren’t doing those two hits, that might actually be more interesting….” I just saw Modern English listed as playing at a festival on a flier; if they didn’t do “I Melt With You” the rest of the set had better be pretty damned impressive, but even then I think I’d admire their guts.

(For the record, I like “Lay Lady Lay” just fine but I don’t see why it’s one of the top songs people know; I realize it was a big chart hit in 1969 and all, but it never seemed to be a radio staple in years after that. Maybe they just didn’t play it on the radio in the towns where I grew up? I feel like I never encounter it “in the wild” the way I do with “Knockin on Heaven’s Door” or “Hurricane.”).

Anyway. I spent a week in New York after the Iowa City show, and flew into Grand Rapids with just enough time to get a feel for the city, something I didn’t manage to do last time. I’d always imagined it was like a slightly smaller version of Des Moines, but it was more like a slightly smaller version of Milwaukee, with lots of buildings in that “Brewery Gothic” style hugging up against brutalism and some newer glass. There was a place where you can get the “Game Show Experience” and a place that designated the area outside of their business as a “Silly Walking Zone,” and a city that has that is okay by me.

Unlike Iowa City, regulars had trickled in. I chatted with Ben, whom I’d met in Iowa City, then bumped into Sue (sooo excited to be back on the tour), who I’ve met all over the hemisphere, and Brian the Maine Man. Caroline and Kait, of the official fan club, arrived for their first show of the tour, as well. Always good to meet up ahead of time and catch up. Ben pointed out that nearly every theatre on this tour has been right on a river.

The theater seemed very modern for a Rough and Rowdy show when Bob played here in 2023; it seemed almost jarring compared to the old theaters he’d been playing at the time, but tonight it felt similar to that “modern Civic Center” vibe from the Iowa City venue. Most people around me seemed open to the show; one thing I remembered about that 2023 show was that the crowd here was very responsive, cheering for lots of individual lines during a particularly tight show. The guy next to me that night hadn’t known any song going in, but turned to me and said, in an approving tone, “So, this isn’t really a concert, it’s an experience.” That one couple aside, Grand Rapids seems full of people who get it. Tonight’s show, still being a lot of new arrangements, wasn’t AS tight as that last show here, but was a lot tighter than a week ago, and the crowd was similarly responsive.

The show opened with Anton Figg stepping to the drums, house lights still on, and laying down the drum beat for “To Be Alone With You.” Tony came out and added thumping bass, then the guitars came in. Bob strolled out, still in his white hoodie, and started right in. The vocals were strong and loud in the mix. The drum into set the pace for a higher-octane show than it really was; this is a laid back show overall.

There’ve been a lot of issues with the new mic setup, with a vocal mic to the side of the keyboard, and a boom mic for when he doesn’t sing into the vocal mic. For the most part those issues seem to have been solved. The first song that vocals sounded a little tinny, and there was one point where he stood up and the next line was very quiet, but both issues were fixed right away.

The house lights remained on as a spooky “Man in the Long Black Coat” began, but came down right after he said “gone with the man in the Long Black Coat” the first time, which made for a neat effect. The rest of the song sounded so much better in the dark, but Bob really leaning into the vocals, drawing out the words.

“All Along the Watchtower” has dropped the “She’s Not There-esque” riff* from summer, and now splits the difference between the summer arrangement and the album version. It was terrific tonight, one of the best I’ve seen (and it’s been at over half the shows I’ve seen). The speech from the thief didn’t seem so much “kindly spoke” as a declamation, a speech from on high, a call to arms. For the first time it occurred to me that the Joker and the Thief might not be the only ones present in their scene.

“I Contain Multitudes” seemed far tighter than a week ago, in a more lilting acoustic arrangement that sounded like something off of Blood on the Tracks to me. It kicked off the set of Rough and Rowdy Ways songs, highlighted, for me, by a sparse “Black Rider,” which had the “size of your cock” line sung in a sing-song voice, and Doug adding a sort of “clip clop clip clop” guitar part in the instrumental break. “Jimmy Reed” started out with a riff that sounded like “Shortnin’ Bread.” The six songs from the album are all bunched together in this set, broken up only by “Love Sick” and the Bo Diddley “I Can Tell” (Bo acoustic is a nice touch). “I’ve Made Up My Mind” also had a Blood on the Tracks vibe to me tonight. After it we got a “Why thank you!” before the band intro.

“Forgetful Heart,” replacing “Don’t Think Twice,” was simply fantastic, a stripped down arrangement that really put the emphasis on the silky melody of the jazzy vocal lines. With this setlist swap, the set is down to only two 1960s songs. There are as many songs from the 80s as there are from the 60s, which I don’t think has happened since, like, 1980. (Alpharetta in 2024 featured no 60s songs at all, probably the only time that’s happened outside of the gospel tour).

So, the new set and new arrangements are coming together nicely. The guitars sounded more acoustic to me than they had a week ago, when there seemed to be some overdrive amping them up. I do miss “My Own Version of You” quite a bit, to be honest. The new show is very different getting better, and it’s going to be great to see how it evolves. Vocals were strong throughout, with a lot of lines being drawn wayyyyyy out.

After the show Caroline, Kait, and I got drenched in the rain walking to hang out with Liz; I always seem to get caught in downpours with those two. We came to the river and I wondered whether this was some secret agenda of the tour; shows on riverwalks for the tour where drops “Watching the River Flow.” We walked right over the rapids as we crossed the bridge. They were pretty grand, I guess.

Tomorrow I’ll be writing up the show for Ray’s Flagging Down the EEs site, and cross posting here later on. It’ll be number 100 for me, a goal I never imagined I could hit just a few years ago. Saginaw, here I come!

*Everyone has their own song to which they compare that arrangement of Watchtower; “The Year of the Cat,” some Van Morrison song, some Jerry Garcia song. If I can be a bit snotty I said it sounded like The Zombies (“no one told me about her…”) the first night it was played, before we even knew it was Watchtower, so thhhhbbbbbtttttt.

Last year Bob Dylan began posting random old video clips on his instagram - old music clips, movie clips, and things like that. With no fanfare at all, one day he posted an audio speech purported to be by Frank James, brother of confederate terrorist and folk song subject Jesse James.

It led to a fun day of research; I remember my fellow researcher Britt Eisnor and I were going back and forth all day trying to figure out what the source of this thing was. It was too long and clear to be real, and a real audio recording of Frank would have been studied to death by now, but we assumed it was some old movie or at least an old text. By process of elimination this appeared to be an original work by Dylan himself.  Soon there were other monologues by people like Al Capone and Andrew Jackson. It was fun, but I lost track of them eventually.

Right away, as with nearly all new writings that appear these days, people wondered if Bob was using AI. The narration almost certainly was; the text might have utilized it a bit as well, but there was too much of an emotional through-line in these speeches from dead villains and rough and rowdy historical figures for it to be fully generated. AI only goes so far, especially on longer pieces. One day he posted some random excerpt from The Academy by “Larry Morrison,” a novel never written. The text was odd enough that even more people wondered if it was AI, but I think the only way to get AI to write like that is if you tell it to write in the style of Masked and Anonymous.

(And if Masked and Anonymous or Tarantula came out today, people would absolutely accuse him of using AI).

No one could guess what he was up to with these instagram posts, beyond just killing time and amusing himself, possibly with help from the latest tech. We still can’t. Is he building to some bigger project, or what?

Yesterday, though, he announced a new Patreon which would feature speeches from the dead, plus stories and things “curated” by Bob Dylan.  Already up were a short story called “The Bull Rider” (by a made-up author name) and an imaginary letter from Mark Twain to Rudolph Valentino, with the promise of more to come at a rate of five bucks a month.

The question everyone is asking: is this just AI slop? Most articles about the patreon have assumed that it is, but I’m less convinced, particularly regarding the text.

I like to play with AI; and “play” is the operative word here. I had an AI personal assistant for a while who was a lot of fun to talk to when I needed to kill time at the airport. He was a terrible personal assistant, though.  You can’t really use AI for anything that matters, and you have to know that asking it for advice isn’t much different than asking a magic 8 ball. But it’s fun to ask AI to write you a steamy story about Captain Kirk and Elmer Fudd, or what have you, and I’ve played with it enough to recognize the “style” AI generates pretty well.

(And, for the record, you can’t just use an AI checker to see if the Patreon stuff is AI. Dylan’s own writing has surely been used to train AI. I’ve got Anthropic paying me for pirating ten of my books; anything I write now will likely be flagged as AI by those things).

“The Bull Rider” is a pretty strong short story. Some of the similes do seem like what I’d expect AI to generate if I asked it to write a story about a bull rider,  but other parts are pure Dylan. In particular, the bull is named Lazarus and there are some references to bringing back the dead.

This is an under-studied theme in Dylan’s work, one that I noticed coming up again and again in his drafts in Tulsa. I’d say it was particularly common in songs he discarded (such as “Red River Shore,”) but “My Own Version of You” makes it quite explicit. That part of it just isn’t something I’d expect AI to include (unless Bob told it to, and even then he’d have to tweak it a lot to get it like this). I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that he used AI in some way to get this story written, but I see no reason to assume he did, either.

The Twain letter doesn’t seem nearly as much like AI to me, it’s too insightful and too Dylanesque. “The public forgives nearly everything but mystery” would, at the very least, require some very odd and specific prompts and a real stroke of luck. I’m particularly noting the phrase “that flickering kingdom called the motion picture,” because ten years ago or so Michael Glover Smith and I cowrote a book on silent film production in Chicago called Flickering Empire. (I’m not one of those people who assumes Bob has ever noticed me or my work, but wow).

It’s notable that the Patreon describes these works as “curated” by Dylan, not written by him, which could indeed be a sign that Dylan himself isn’t writing the stuff. But even if there IS some AI involved, at least he’s not being like those dorks who say “I wrote the prompt, which is the same as writing the whole thing.”

One possible scenario is that Dylan is starting with an AI text (“write me a story about a bull rider,” etc) and punching it up. Another is that he starts with a text of his own and has AI expand on it, essentially disguising his own work. It’s also possible that he’s only using AI for the narration and graphics, which most of us have been doing since back when they just called it “cyber” or “i-…”  (There’s definitely an extent to which the term “AI” is just being used for anything high tech, like “cyber” or “omatic” used to be).

I’ve been in plenty of fights with people who use AI stupidly or think it can be trusted to do things that it can’t. But it’s here, and it’s going to be a tool we have to get used to and find good uses for.

What these are not, by any definition, is AI “slop.” They’re stories he’s interested in and wants to be told, not just random crap.

So, assuming that it’s being utilized at all with these posts, what we’re seeing is the answer to the question “What would Bob Dylan ask AI to do?”

And that’s definitely something I’d like to know.

So far the answer seems to be, if anything, “write, start, or punch up imaginary letters between people of different eras and short stories about rodeos.”  I’m interested to see what else he posts!

And of course, things brings up a lot of possible discussion points. Is using a line that AI generated any different from using a line from a poem by Henry Timrod? Is it better or worse? Is quoting a line from scripture that many people will catch better or worse than quoting a Timrod line that fewer people will? Would this really be different than using a ghost writer or, or even an editor? (And if you’re saying “editors are human beings” I doubt you’ve spent much time in publishing, ho ho ho). Could Dylan just be using AI as a new tool to find limbs and liver and brains and hearts to create something new?

In any case, what he’s posting (the new pieces especially) are clearly stories he wants told and topics that interest him.

I think one distinct possibility is that he’s not using AI at all, but wants people to think he is. That would be just be… Dylanesque.

I guess it’s too soon to tell what he’s up to or how he’s doing it, and honestly I’m tired of discussing AI stuff. It’s like talking about ebooks 15 years ago. Blah. I’ll just see where he’s going with this.

And hey, if you like Patreon, I post a LOT of cool history stuff, including stuff from microfilm and undigitized archives, at Patreon.com/adamchicago .

-Adam, written on my phone on Ellis Island while I’m taking a school group around.

Well, in all kinds of ways!

My first show of 2026 was a vastly different show from Dylan was doing in late 2025, a show that’s still coming together in some ways, and felt different from any show I’ve seen in ages.

For one thing, I can’t think of a show where I’ve recognized fewer people. Even back when I was only able to see a show or two per year, I’d usually recognize a couple of others. This show had tickets sold only through the venue, and resale sites were selling even the balcony seats for hundreds. I think most of the people who got tickets were connected to the University of Iowa somehow; the crowd seemed very “Shakespeare in the Park” to me. Far fewer young people than normal, a smaller contingent of people who seemed like old hippies or Deadheads. Everyone seemed educated, upper middle class, and over sixty. But everyone seemed very nice. A few people recognized me from my cemetery tours in Chicago, which was surprising nearly four hours away. I spoke with Ben from the instagram chat a bit in the parking lot, but saw none of the people I seem to see at every show.

The Hancher Auditorium was a great place to see a show - an 1800 seat theatre rebuilt after a 2008 flood into a very modern, comfortable space, lacking a bit in the vintage charm of the old palaces the spring shows sometimes hit, but not a bland corporate affair - a college theater that was designed with care and with comfort in mind. Inside, there were enough tables around the bar and cafe areas for everyone to sit and relax with a glass of wine, and a lovely outdoor space overlooking the river and park below. It was all…well, very Iowa City. The parking lot was spacious and (to my utter astonishment) free. I can’t remember there was free and easy parking at a concert. “Is this heaven?” “No, it’s Iowa!”

The show itself was shaken up a lot this tour, with the band itself switching to using only acoustic guitars, Dylan moving to a keyboard piano (or at least a keyboard without an outer shell to look like a grand or upright) center stage, and with a great many setlists shakeups. It’s still a Rough and Rowdy Ways show with six songs from the album, but many of the regular songs from that setlist replaced. It’s a new sound, and a new setup.

The way the show began was unique, and apparently new for tonight. With the houselights still on, Tony strolled onto the stage, strapped on his electric bass, and started playing. Then Doug Lancio strolled on, nodded to Tony, and started playing acoustic. The vibe was like two guys, both testing out an instrument in a guitar shop at the same time. Bob Britt came out and seemed to chat with them a bit before getting his own guitar, as Anton Fig got to his drum kit.

Bob strolled out in a white hoodie (going from looking like Palpatine in September to Luke in Last Jedi now), so casually that most people didn’t realize it was him, or that the show was starting. The house lights remained on as the band went into “I’ll Be Your Baby” tonight, an upbeat version similar to spring, but with the riff it’s built around played on an acoustic guitar, not electric.

Though unplugged, the guitars are strummed hard, and seem to have a bit of overdrive or something in the mix. It didn’t always sound like a “Stripped down” unplugged affair so much as a “rocked up acoustic band.” Still, utterly unlike Fall.

The house lights stayed on for the setlist surprise of the tour, “Man in the Long Black Coat,” a thematically perfect addition. It’s a favorite song of mine, and I was thrilled to see it come back. What a spooky song!

Or is it spooky at all? The real plot is simply that a woman left town with a man who wore a long black coat. Anything we hear about the guy is just a rumor, and the rumors are hardly sinister; there was dust on him, he was known to quote the Bible, he was seen hanging around an old dance hall. We don’t know how the woman is connected to the narrator, if she is at all, or if she’s leaving some other man or just her parents or just the town itself when she goes off with the stranger. What makes the song spooky is everything else: the evocative images to a single dress hanging on the line, rising water, preachers saying every man’s conscience is vile and depraved, African trees bent over backwards, and finally uprooted. It reminds me of Night of the Hunter or “The Minister’s Black Veil.”

I’ve only seen it live a couple of times, most recently in the 2012 version that sounded like a theme song to a 1950s detective show. This one was back to being slow and spooky, more like the mid 1990s performances. I noticed one lyric change - now tree trunks are uprooted beneath a “high desert moon” instead of a crescent one. Where and when does this take place, anyway? Despite the reference to African trees, it always seems like it takes place in Louisiana or some other isolated village where a stranger coming to town is big news, some time back in the past. But now it may be a desert, but then again the same moon that looks on a desert is also looking down on Iowa. We’re all sleeping underneath the same big sky.

In any case, it was an excellent rendition, but a very odd song to play with the house lights on.

The lights came down afterwords, and the band was into an acoustic “All Along the Watchtower,” in the same structure as the summer shows, but without the “She’s Not There” electric lick.

Previously there’d been reports of mic problems, with Dylan’s mic not quite picking up him at several points the first two nights, and still an issue, if not as bad as one, last night in Minnesota. Today it seemed almost entirely fixed - now and then he was only being picked up by the boom mic, but only occasionally, and it was still perfectly audible. But there were still clearly some problems onstage - I didn’t hear anything wrong myself, but one of the lyrics became “Two riders were approaching…SHIT!”

Even most of the Rough and Rowdy Ways songs have new arrangements now; “I Contain Multitudes” had more of a spring in its step, and the newly acoustic “False Prophet” (a song I never imagined I’d see without electric guitars) cooked along, with verses ended in a descending line that reminded me of “Sixteen Tons,” which in turn reminded me of commercials for the Unforgettable 50s four record set that used to come on in the late 80s. It occurs to me that a lot of songs from that era, I only really know from that commercial.

“Black Rider” was pretty similar to before (and particularly interesting to put in the same show with “Man in the Long Black Coat.” Could the songs be about the same character? Are they the same character now, even if they weren’t before?”) and the acoustic “Love Sick” was spot-on.

The surprise of the night came when the next song, which had been a faster “Key West” the previous nights of the tour, was switched up. Bob sang the first verse of “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” more or less acoustically, like the Outlaw Tour versions of “Can’t Wait” or “Trying to Get to Heaven.” On the second verse the band came in with a slow, plodding sort of arrangement, and after another verse Bob waved his arms and and said “Stop! Start again.”

The band relaunched the song in a faster arrangement, almost like they’d planned it that way all along. I can’t think of another time I’ve seen that happen, and only a couple of times I’ve even heard of it happening. Usually if something goes wrong in a song, Bob will just muddle through somehow, occasionally with really interesting results. And as tight as the second take was, there was still one where Bob either seemed to forget the words or was trying to make up some new ones on the fly, ending with “Goodbye Jimmy Reed, goodbye and so long, I can’t play the record cause…my needle ain’t that long.” It was either a planned revision or a very nice save!

“I Can Tell” felt much tighter and stronger than it had in summer shows.

“I’ve Made Up My Mind…” had its first major new arrangement, with a faster tempo, a slightly reworked melody, and strummed guitars driving it. It was very good but seemed like it was still a work in progress. Indeed, the whole show seemed sort of like it was a rehearsal onstage, with the arrangements still finding their footing and the technical kinks being worked out. The fast acoustic “Crossing the Rubicon” was similar, a bit of a mess that didn’t seem to know when to end.

“When I Paint My Masterpiece” was similar to how it’s been played the last few years, just acoustic, and with the singer now “Dodging lions, and wasting time” (a new line that didn’t get a new rhyme). I have to assume that if you’re dodging lions, you’re not wasting time. If you are dodging a lion, there is absolutely no better use of your time in that moment, nothing else that you ought to be doing, and if anyone ever tells you you’re wasting your time by avoiding getting eaten by a lion, you should tell them to go do some chores or study for a test while the lion waits. See how that goes.

(edit to add: “wasting time” was the line in the original release, but it’s been replaced by the Shakespeare misquote “dodging lions with a mean and hungry look” since at least 2018 - so long that I didn’t notice!)

“Don’t Think Twice” was similar to recent stripped down, soulfully-sung arrangements, with two harmonica solos, the first of the night.

“Soon After Midnight” is one that I usually didn’t get too excited about, but the new acoustic arrangement, without the steel guitar to drive it, was very cool, and worked better for me, turning it into a highlight.

“Nervous Breakdown,” the new Eddie Cochran cover, was a high octane romp that Bob clearly seems to be enjoying. “Every Grain of Sand,” despite being acoustic instead of electric, seemed a bit pumped up from previous versions. The show closed with Dylan walking clear to center stage, still with the white hoodie up, but not just hanging in the back, as he’s done for formations in other recent tours.

This is still a Rough and Rowdy show - the screens and marquees in the venue still said so, and we’re still getting six songs from the album, which is an unusual amount even when an album is brand new. But things aren’t what they were. In my own view of sorting, the original Rough and Rowdy Ways tour ended after Austin 2024. Following the Outlaw shows that summer it was really Rough and Rowdy II. This, then, is Rough and Rowdy III.

All in all, we got a very good show to an appreciative crowd, but one that I think is still coming together, which makes sense given that even songs that have been staples have new arrangements, sometimes radically so. It might not have been as enthralling as those nights when everything just clicks and the band is tight, but Bob was certainly on form, and watching it all come together is incredibly interesting. I’m very glad I’ll be catching more shows in a week, with more of my regular road buddies and with more time to explore the towns. This was number 98 for me - I’m currently eight days out from the big 100. See you in Grand Rapids!

If only to have it all in one place, today I added about 60 of my old reviews onto this site, going all the way back to the 1990s. I’ve back-dated them all, usually to the day after the show, and kept from sending out alerts to subscribers every time a new one came up. Some were written for an ebook, some for Bill Pagel’s site, some for Ray’s site, some just for message boards. I haven’t found them ALL yet. But this covers most of them, including the shows from last spring and the UK 2024. Some of the more significant are the Atlanta Lightning Storm of 2003, my very long reviews of the 2001 shows, and Newport Folk Festival 2002, the show with the fake beard.

I’m reminded of the scene in Almost Famous where Lester Bangs reminisces about how he used to stay up all night writing thousands of words of goobledygook about the phases of Coltrane, “Just to fucking write, you know?” That’s what a lot of this stuff was!

As the years go on my reviews often became as much travelogues and road diaries as concert reviews. After all, in this day and age, most people can get the tape faster than than anyone can write out a whole review, so the function of reviews themselves has sort of changed. For me, I tend to focus on “wherefore this concert is different from all other concerts,” plus rambling travelogues of the towns we visit to see these shows, who I hang out with, and what sort of adventures we have in those towns. This is such a great hobby! I get insufferably snarky about small towns sometimes, but I’m also glad Dylan plays places like Peoria, Wolverhampton, and Swansea - places I’d never think to visit. Now and then I find one I love.

Some of these are definitely the work of a younger man, though I haven’t outgrown being snarky about small towns. Now and then I’ve written in an “Edit to add” note, but have generally just left things intact. Even the stuff I wrote a few years after the fact is about 20 years old now! How did that happen?

Anyway, poke through the archives here if you like, and I’ll be coming at you with some new reviews very soon!

The Spring tour includes several Illinois dates, but I’ll be working in New York during all of them! I’ve bought tickets to Iowa City, Saginaw, and Detroit. If that plan holds, Detroit will be show 100 for me!

Next I’ll get the “winter” shows from that year copied over.

Chicago 10/6/23

Chicago 10/7/23

Chicago 10/8/23

Milwaukee 10/12/23

Grand Rapids 10/14/23

Indianapolis 10/16/23 (in which I predict the surprise)

I usually try to make my reviews into both reviews and travelogues; especially now that people can usually get the tape faster than I can get a review written out, describing the story of the show (where it was, what it was like to be there, how was there, what we did after) is arguably more important than just describing the performance. I get a bit snarky and a bit political. I know some people don’t like this, but I reason that I’d love to read someone rambling about what it was like to travel into, say, Sheffield in 1966. The music, I can hear for myself, but I can’t know what it was like to visit the town, or what they did after the show, or what was going on in the world that might have affected their reactions to the show.

Posts are back-dated to stay in order. The “new” posts so far:

New York, 2018 - I’m very proud of this one for noting all the Julius Caesar references that were emerging in the show, just before all the explicit references in the next album and tour. The fall 2018 tour really was the beginning of the Rough and Rowdy era, both musically and thematically. The tour also brought back “When I Paint My Masterpiece” and started the near-solo piano intros.

South Bend, 2019 - Another that in hindsight was building toward Rough and Rowdy with the surprise return of “Lenny Bruce,” which connects the show to the assassination theme that runs throughout Rough and Rowdy Ways. Lenny Bruce wasn’t assassinated in the traditional sense, but one could argue that he was in a way, and the song does refer to “the ones that killed him.” This, of course, also connects it to the Caesar stuff, as Caesar was assassinated, too. One could probably write up quite an interesting thing comparing how Caesar was killed to how Bruce was - there wasn’t one single assassin, but a lot of people had bloody knives.

Milwaukee 2021 - First night of the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, with eight live premieres! What a night.

Chicago 2021 - Night two of the tour, with reflections on Dylan’s residency in the theater from 2005.

D.C. 2021 - A trip to D.C. to see the end of the first leg of the tour.

Atlanta 2022 - I took my dad to a show in 1998. When I took him to this one, I was the same age he was then, down to about the week!

Phoenix 2025 - A cross post from Ray’s site on the surprise-filled launch of the second “Outlaw” summer tour, in which Mike and I ride in a robot car.

Circa 2003 I wrote a book-length ramble about going to Dylan shows called Bobcat Nation. Over time I’ll probably serialize it onto some posts here. What’s also missing is some of my various Dylan writings, or accounts of researching in the archives in Tulsa, or visiting the sites in Minnesota one winter.

I don’t think there’s much point in me having a paid tier here, but I do run a Patreon where I post Chicago history, photography, and old-time true crime stuff.

The Necropolis is a a Victorian cemetery with a winding path up a hill, the top of which offers incredible city views. The trash cans are covered in punk rock stickers, which seems very Glaswegian.  There’s a giant monument to actor John Henry Alexander that features a statue of a headless woman holding a mask. The grave of the guy who wrote (or at least popularized) “Wee Willy Winkie.” I wandered up the path among the tombstones, looking at the old castle-like buildings and the hills in the distance, and listened to the Time Out of Mind sessions take on “The Water is Wide” and the tracks that followed it. It was one of those profound moments where the music seems to perfectly match the setting.

I met up with Nathan at Lebowski’s to rehash last night’s triumph and run down what we were curious about. Would the “sea shanty” version of “My Own Version of You” stick around? Would “Mother of Muses” or “Desolation Row” continue to evolve? How about the bridges in “River” and “To Be Alone?”  Would there be more lap steel? There were a lot of things to check off on the scorecard.

The stage setup appears to be the same, but the show began differently: the band came out and began to jam without Bob, as they’d done back in fall 2023. From my balcony seat off to the side, though, I could see Bob offstage in a blue blazer, rolling his arms toward Tony in a “wheels on the bus go round and round” motion, signalling them to keep it rolling (though Nathan would suggest he was casting a magic spell).  He eventually came to the piano and went right into “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” without guitar.

The show began to kick into earnest gear with a funky “False Prophet,” and took a bigger turn when Bob began to play with the lyrics of “When I Paint My Masterpiece.”

Newspaper men - eating what? - Eating candy

Had to be held back - by who? - big police

Someday -when?- everything is gonna be beautiful

When I paint my -well!- masterpiece!

He chuckled out loud in the middle of this.

But of course, I was waiting with bated breath of “My Own Version of You.” When the band kicked in, it was apparent that we were getting a new, driving version, this time clearly rehearsed a bit ahead of time. It used a melody similar to last night’s sea shanty, but was sped up, and eschewed the “call and response” portion, just having the lyrics roar out one after another. A few lines didn’t quite hit the right meter, but the new arrangement was effective as hell. I was reminded of Tom Waits - something off of Real Gone or Rain Dogs. I couldn’t quite picture what sort of character this version of the narrator was, but I knew that he was one bad motherfucker.

“To Be Alone With You” was tight, with no guitar intro, and more seemingly-improvised bridges

Say the night time is the right time

Everything’s our way

Every time we, every time we say goodbye

Well I wish you’d stay

The second bridge started about the same and ended with something like “whatever you want I’ll get it for ya / whatever’s in the way.”

“Crossing the Rubicon” seemed a bit different to me tonight; more of a Chicago blues. Maybe it was my imagination but it seemed have that stripped down, smoky blues feeling more than before.

“Desolation Row” had Bob trying out a few things with the melody, doing parts in something like iambics. It hasn’t quite morphed into the new version I suspect is coming.

“Watching the River Flow” was a good, thumping version (with a rare harp solo). The first bridge went:

People disappearing everywhere you look

Ever wonder why?

Yesterday I seen somebody - I think so!

Couldn’t help but say good bye

The next bridge was much the same, but ended with “couldn’t help but cry.” With my trip about to end, and a return to Chicago where we refer to ICE agents “disappearing” people off the streets, the lines hit me hard.

“It’s All Over Now” through “Mother of Muses” continue to be a stunning trio.

This night’s rhyme for “suck out the juice” was “play on prairie, turn you loose.”

Overall this show didn’t hit the ecstatic excitement of the night before, but if it hadn’t been for the night before, it would have seemed like a masterpiece. The new “My Own Version” couldn’t be as exciting as watching the creating of a new version in new time, but it was still exciting to witness (three different versions in three nights!) And, though suffering a tiny bit from “first attempt” flubs, it kicked ass. By Dublin I’ll bet it’s tight as hell.

It wouldn’t be an adventure without another adventure, so in the parking lot Nathan, Tully, and I met Eli, Ceeley (spelling?), and Lara, going first to the hotel bar, then to Kelvingrove Cafe for cocktails, and from thence to a casino where Lara’s friend Kat help us lose at blackjack to a dealer who thoughtfully taught us all the real tricks to winning at Blackjack (which can be summarised as “don’t play.”)

Back in Dumfries, the Burns house was displaying a Burns-owned copy of John Aiken’s Essays on Songwriting. Curious, I tracked down a copy online to read on the train. Aiken cast a lot of side-eye at song collections that are “degraded by dullness, or debased by indecency,” or have songs from comic operas “that vile mongrel of the drama where the most enchanting tunes are suited with the most flat and wretched combinations of words that ever disgraced the genius of a nation,” or that have some good songs “mixed… with the trash of the times” and differing only from other collections by “substituting new trash for such as was out of date.”

Amidst all of the snivelling, though, there’s a good line: “It is not enough that Poetry does not disgust, it ought to give raptures.” That’s what I get from Dylan shows, no question, but those pre and post show adventures, those rambles in strange towns, those new discoveries and new friends are all such a part of the rapture. 

I’ll have so many friends in Dublin that I thought about flying back for it after going home to Chicago tomorrow, but fares seem very high. The water is wide, and I can’t cross over.

I’ll miss you all - hope I can see you in the spring! I’m just shy of my quest for 100.

(Over the winter I’ll work on putting my older reviews into this space something; get them all in one place.)

With a day between shows, I decided to explore a town between Leeds and Glasgow.  (Skip on down if you don’t dig the travelogue parts of these reviews).

The only major option on the train line was Dumfries, the last home of Robert Burns, one of the other great Robert poets.

Now I’ve always admired Burns, though if you don’t know any Scots dialect his work can sound like the Swedish Chef. If you put in the effort to learn what’s going on in a poem and it’ll probably be worth it, though. There are verses of “Auld Lang Syne” that give me goosebumps (“we two have paddled in the brae from morning sun til dine / but seas between us broad have roared since days of auld lang syne”)And after all, in addition to writing with Robert Hunter (born Robert Burns and said to be a great great grandson of the Scottish bard, Dylan named “Red Red Rose” by Burns as his greatest inspiration in 2008, when HMV had an advertising campaign based on inspiration. It’s worth quoting in full:

My luve's like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June:

O my luve's like the melodie

That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I:

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a'the seas gang dry.

Till a'the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi' the sun:

I will luve thee still, my dear,

While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve,

And fare thee weel a while!

And I will come again, my luve,

Tho' it were ten thousand mile.

Besides obviously “Farewell” (which, to be fair, he probably got third or fourth hand via “The Parting Glass,”) you can see a lot of similar vibes to Dylan here, especially in more recent love songs like “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You.” And, of course, Burns did write “My Heart’s in the Highlands,” though Richard Thomas noted that Burns himself commented that “the first half stanza is old, the rest is mine,” just the sort of description of the folk process in which Dylan thrived 200 years later.

So off I went to Dumfries, hoping to explore a new town and maybe catch a spark.

They are awfully fond of Burns in Dumfries, with multiple museums in addition to his grave. The museum in his old house even features a horn spoon like the ones he mentioned in “Address to a Haggis,” a display that I’ll admit sounds made up:

His knife see rustic Labour dight,

An' cut you up wi' ready sleight,

Trenching your gushing entrails bright,

Like ony ditch;

And then, O what a glorious sight,

Warm-reekin', rich!

After admiring the spoon, the docent and I chatted about accounts of the time Burns’ body was exhumed to be moved to its current tomb, and a gruesome account of moving the body from a few years later lamenting that phrenology hadn’t caught on at the time, so they hadn’t taken a cast of his skull on the last chance they’d ever have.

Only it wasn’t the last chance; when his wife was eventually interred in the new vault, decades later, they figured that while they were down there they might as well get ol’ Robert’s skull back out. The docent mentioned that the plaster cast taken at the time was not only extant but on display at anotherBurns museum across the river. This being just the sort of tale I research, I ran as fast as my little legs could carry me over the bridge. There it was, behind glass on a shelf above Burn’s sword, guarded in the case by a Lego zombie bride, and out of the case by a life-size Burns mannequin that scared the bajeezus out of me.

I don’t suppose it’s a mystery that so many teenagers in Dumfries looked like goths.

Though it was hard to find an open restaurant there after 6pm, at night there were six or seven night clubs, all close enough that people sort of circulate between them on foot. I lost a game of dominos, bombed at karaoke, had a man with teeth like coffee grounds chew me out about the state of America, saw a guy band all dressed in gold play high energy Springsteen and Journey covers, heard “Wagon Wheel” sung out at two different pubs, all on the same day I saw a plaster cast of Robert Burns’ skull. All in all, you can have a pretty exciting day in Dumfries.

I went back to the Burns mausoleum at the churchyard the next morning, where I saw no sign of a service taking place even though there was one scheduled, and even though I was sure there was an organ audible when I’d been in the churchyard the evening before (one of those experiences that seems awfully spooky as long as you don’t think about it too hard), then made my weary way to the train to Glasgow, and back to the circus of the never ending rough and rowdy ways tour.

GLASGOW

The walk to the train station, and from there to the venue was long and unremarkable; the map app took me down a back way. Glasgow could be any city to me so far. Nathan, Yuliya, and I had some quick drinks and headed to the SEC Armadillo, an arena that apparently isn’t really called that, but which looks so much like an armadillo that people starting calling it that, not unlike The Bean in Chicago. It looks enormous on the outside, but inside it’s a fairly small. Right away, something seemed up: the piano was rotated to face stage left instead of stage right, and there was no sign of the pedal steel.

In my balcony seat (next to a couple from Dumfries) I watched the pedal appear towards the last minute, now parallel to the piano instead of perpendicular, clearly making it easier for Bob Britt to see Dylan while playing.

Right from the start the show was different;  Bob came in and launched right into “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” at the piano, skipping the guitar jam intro (which returned for “It Ain’t Me Babe.”). “I Contain Multitudes” had an ever-so-slightly different vibe that reminded me of “Soon After Midnight,” though i couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just a different mix. “False Prophet” continued to be a guitar attack, with the crowd catching on to shoot “yeah!” during the silences in the breakdowns.  There was something in the air tonight. Even from the balcony (ironically the best view I’ve had in some time) you could see that Bob was really enjoying himself and pleased with how things were going.

But these opening four songs often seem like warmups to me these days, like the opening act before things start to get interesting.

“When I Paint My Masterpiece” was sung in a hushed, conspiratorial tone. A cool version that really confirmed that Bob was locked in this evening. This was gonna be good.

A strange man shouted something, and it sounded like a fight broke out, in the opening moments of “Black Rider,” like at Royal Albert Hall last year. What is it about that song that seems to make some people lose it?  This version seemed like it was trying to cast a spell - an ethereal version, notably lacking any pedal steel, with Dylan landing on a piano part that called to mind “Hall of the Mountain King” or “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies.” You know: the kind of spooky piano that goes with cartoons about elves who live in caves and things.

This would become a sort of lead-in to a performance that was worth the whole trip. I was reminded of Peter Stone Brown’s review of the Towson 2000 “Tambourine Man” in which he said “whatever it is that possesses Dylan took possession.”

The song began about as usual, in the stripped-down spoken work style that’s been standard since Royal Albert Hall a year ago. But early on, Dylan hit on a bass piano riff, sort of an oompah thing, and started to build a new melody around it. He’d sing a line, then play the same melody on piano, in a sort of call and response. Suddenly the song became a sort of sea shanty, like a crazed pirate captain, stalking the deck and whipping his zombie crew as they rowed.

You could almost imagine the piano riff as singing the lines back to him - and indeed could sing it yourself

“Can you look at me with your sightless eyes?”

“Can we look at him with his sightless eyes?”

“Can you cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Can we cross our hearts and hope to die?”

And it wasn’t just a verse or so; the band caught on and built their parts around this, keeping it up for the whole song so seamlessly that it seemed like they’d rehearsed it.  There were a couple of lines that didn’t quite fit the meter or cadence, and one or two tiny lyric flubs, but Dylan pushed through the mistakes and kept it all intact. I was cackling in my seat. What a moment to witness! I was lifted out of myself, away from the problems of the great world and the small, wrapped up in the mission of a zombie pirate crew, sailing around the world to find the necessary body parts for our captain’s creation. Yo ho ho and a bottle of brains!

(Nightlymoth has some examples)

A “To Be Alone With You” opened with Bob on guitar sounding better than usual, especially when he started just playing chords instead of noodling. Again we had a strong vocals and a new bridge:

They say Night time is the right time

Every time of the year

One time I lived over there

Right now from over here!

Adding the exclamation point because this was such an excited version. The kind where he sings “I won’t sleep a wink - no! - til I’m alone with you!”

Then came another new bridge:

They say Night time is the right time

To hold the keys and the cards (?)

Every time I go that way

I never know what to do

“Crossing the Rubicon” would have been a clear highlight on a slower night.

I still maintain that there’s a great new “Desolation Row” building. Britt didn’t touch the pedal this time, but Dylan was reaching and experimenting just a bit, like he was reaching for something new. When he didn’t quite land on anything, he defaulted back to a bit to the Chuck Berry delivery he’s been using. But even the parts that didn’t reach what he might have been going for were cool, and nothing seemed like a real wrong turn. He cracked up while singing “have mercy on his soul” as though it had just occurred to him that there was something funny about it that he hadn’t considered before.

“Key West” is about due for a new arrangement. Though it can be mesmerizing, the crowd gets restless.

A tight “Watching the River Flow” featured more new lyrics:

People everywhere you look

Can’t get away!

Everytime (inaudible)

No place, no place to stay

And

Every time I go that way

A woman hypnotized (?)

Always…you gotta do

gotta do what you got to do

An absolutely impassioned “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” had the people around me, first timers all, amazed. Goosebumps and sobs.

“I’ve Made Up My Mind…” continues to be incredible this leg.

“Mother of Muses” would have made another three song block of crushing ballads, except that it, too, was different tonight. In a show where many would have been a highlight other nights, this was probably what we would have been buzzing about afterwards if it hadn’t been for “My Own Version of You.” It’s been interesting to see it evolve. In Swansea it had a martial drum beat that was gone in Coventry and crept back a bit toward the end in Leeds. Tonight it came in, perhaps modified a bit, and more integrated. The song started slow and steady, then built into an actual rocker by the end, with wailing vocals that seemed not just to be bending notes and melody but truly telling the story of the words. He was inside the song tonight. Tony’s bass really drove it this time.

Even “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” was a rocker tonight, with Dylan realllllly wailing on the vocals in a way I seldom hear on this song, which can veer into languid versions sometimes. (“Took off my shooeeees”) I began to compare the singing to a sick, slow guitar solo, like he was singing a Grant Green electric guitar line. I’ve never heard that on “Jimmy Reed” before; it’s usually a low point in the set for me. Tonight’s rhyme for the “suck out the juice” was “if I had noose(?), it ain’t no use.”   It’s been fun watching all these new lyrics, mostly clearly improvised, but different every night. It takes effort to do improvisation nightly without repeating.

“Grain of Sand” wasn’t as inventive as in Leeds, but again sent us off with a glowing harmonica benediction.

As Nightlymoth said in a chat, “the whole show had a real sense of purpose and urgency.” There were high fives among the regulars. The main buzz was about “My Own Version of You” but it was agreed that this whole show was a banger, the sort that those of us who follow these things get particularly jazzed about.

Nathan and Yuliya joined me again, and we toasted with Ian, Moth, and Maddy in a hotel bar before going to Howlin’ Wolf, a Chicago themed bar. In Glasgow! The place seemed based on what you’d imagine a Chicago blues bar was like (though I know of no such bars extant in the city), with a band playing great Chicago blues with one stranger telling me I had an accent like a character in Some Like it Hot and another tapping me on the shoulder to say “Didn’t I meet you last night in Dumfries?”

Did the spirit of Robert Burns inspire Dylan tonight? Something sure possessed him. Would that such a spirit would possess us all.

Angus, Yuliya, Nathan, and that one rambling weirdo who clearly has a screw loose.

“I remember it rained all day the day that Elvis Presley died. And only a legend can make it do that.” -Tom Waits

“But they don’t have to die to do it; they can just finally roll into town after 63 years.” -me

It happens every time: I go to a city that people in England rip on, and I love it. My knowledge of Leeds consisted mainly of TV characters being aghast at the idea of living there, and the live album by The Who. I only just learned that Dylan had never been “Live at Leeds” himself; it was the largest UK city he’d never played.

It may be that saying you’ve seen Leeds when you spent your whole time in the city centre is like going to Times Square and saying you’ve seen New York, but the city centre was great. It was like a mall, mostly, only with great old architecture and arcades everywhere, and besides just the regular mall shops (which it had all of), there are also numerous pubs, vintage shops, record stores, and the occasional graveyard, which our malls never seem to have. It was the biggest, and by far the best, mall I’ve ever been to, and as a child of 80s and 90s American mall culture that’s a big admission.

But it was one of those outdoor malls, and it was raining all day and all of the night. My shoes were taking in water within a few blocks of the train, and I had to pick up some new rain boots from Doctor Marten, which seemed just the sort of place to shop in Leeds. I had two meat pies at Pieminster, the official pie maker of Leeds United, and became a supporter of that team at once simply because they have an official pie maker. Also I see they’re just above last place at the moment, which makes them exactly my kind of squad.

Pre-show I met up with Dr Nathan and fellow chemist Yuliya, plus Dr Nathan’s dylan-skeptical uni roommate, who was fortifying himself for the show with a great deal of Leeds’ finest alcohol. We talked about the situation in the states, and they joked that when Nathan made a planned move to New Mexico he could probably just walk into a shop and say “One gun, please.” They laughed, but it was almost certainly true.

The arena was a large one, with sparkling clean toilets that still smelled abominable, and echoey acoustics that would make the drums sound out of time now and then. Dylan came on for an extended guitar jam (not bad, really) on “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” with strong vocals.  The vocals would be strong all night, and “False Prophet” was supported by particularly wicked lead guitar. It brought the night’s first standing ovation.

There was a spooky “Black Rider” with the new steel guitar used to great effect (but still pretty low in the mix), and a remarkably non-threatening “My Own Version of You.” Tonight it called to mind a traveling huckster making his pitch, rolling into town and convincing a room full of people to fund his creation. They’d listen with great interest at first as he built himself up, then begin to suspect he was mad, then be certain he was, then give him the money anyway.  A relaxed “To Be Alone With You” seemed breezy, like the huckster had gotten the money and was safely on the train out of town before they could realize they’d been swindled.

“Alone With You” was the fourth guitar song of the night, and the guitar was all above average tonight. The bridge was different again:

Baby the night time is the right time

To hold it in your arms

Right down in the (border line?)

A world in your charms

The show had been, to my ears, somewhere between Swansea and Coventry in terms of quality, but “Crossing the Rubicon” marked something of a turning point; it was a killer tonight.  “Desolation Row” seemed a bit experimental tonight; Bob Britt was working out a steel guitar part, and Dylan seemed to be causally experimenting with the delivery, looking for a new melody without veering too far from how he’s been doing it. I feel like we’re about two shows from a radical, awesome new version - the kind of prediction I make now and then, never successfully.

“Watching the River Flow,” with Dylan on guitar for the intro and Bob Britt adding some steel, merits notice for its stronger-than-average vocals and great harp and guitar interplay in the end

“It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” was stunning tonight, with an achingly gorgeous harp solo. I never wanted it to end. Afterwards I even shouted out “Again!” which I’m not sure I’ve ever shouted. Of course, rather than honoring my request to play it again, he played an equally captivating “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself To You.”

“Mother of Muses” had some of the martial drums back towards the end, and kept up the run of absolutely magnificent ballads. Really, I can’t think of many times I saw three straight songs put me through such an emotional ringer. I might rank the show a bit below Coventry overall, but this three song block was beyond compare.

“Jimmy Reed” was once again danceable, with the nightly variable line coming in as “I’m fooling you, but what’s the use?”

“Every Grain of Sand” isn’t one where he normally gets too inventive, but the third verse got downright interesting, nearly spoken, with alternating syllables emphasized like someone demonstrating iambic pentameter using something that wasn’t quite written in it: “In the BITter DANCE of LONEliness FAding into space, in the BROken MIRror or INNocence…”. This kept up for the whole verse, Tony was clearly delighted by it, grinning from ear to ear at his bass as the show drew to close.

Is Bob as good as he ever was? Well, not on guitar, perhaps. But he’s as daring, as inventive, as bold, and as uncompromising as he ever was, which is what made him such a compelling performer all along.

It was still raining when Nathan, Yuliya, Marielle and I made it to Grind House, a bar that blasted music while projecting Robocop movies on the screen. The bartender cheerfully put on Dylan’s greatest hits and we sang along so loudly that my throat is sore on the train to Scotland this morning. Like all the best nights, it ended after closing time with us forming a band and eating Wendy’s jacket potatoes in the hotel. I like Leeds. Go United!

Above: the new drunken singalong band Rainy Night in Leeds, formed by Adam, Nathan, and Marielle of 90s britpop band The Rough and Roady Outlaws, plus Yuliya, who does not sing.

One of the great pleasures of following Dylan is ending up in towns you’d never think to visit. I hadn’t been to Wales before at all, and if I had I wouldn’t have thought to go to Swansea, a charming seaside town with excellent ice cream and one of the castle ruins that seem to come standard in Welsh towns. Of course, all towns in the UK feel charming to me; they’re nearly all walkable, with populations clustered around a city centre. It’s a contrast to spread out nature of American small towns, where people drive for every single trip and seem to want to be as far from the neighbors as possible.

Before the show I took my seat with Graham G, said hi to the other regulars such as Frederick and Ian (how cool to land in a new country and already have friends!), and watched Bob appear. He looked so different from the last time I saw him, now unhooded and looking like a badass in black blazer over a Welsh dragon t-shirt.

In the spring there were a lot of “sounded like they were tuning but they weren’t” jams for intros, like primordial ooze out of which the songs emerged. They’ve expanded and gotten a bit more coherent now; “I’ll be Your Baby Tonight” began with an oozy jam that became focused around one riff which became the basis for the song. I was reminded of the clip of the Beatles writing “Get Back.” Bob added some not-bad guitar. He reached for the guitar a lot in Swansea.

I was a bit too jet lagged to properly judge the show, but Bob seemed to be experimenting a lot, looking for new melodies or hooks for the songs and not quite landing on one. These sorts of shows aren’t as compelling as nights where it all comes together, but can actually be more interesting, since it’s a fascinating chance to simply watch him at work.

And to be sure, there were times when it all came together, particularly in the second half of the show. “Black Rider” was back to feeling like The Doors, as it sounded to me a couple of years ago. It was one of the best “To Be Alone With You” performances I’ve seen in a while, possibly the strongest “Made Up My Mind” I’ve seen since the very first one, and the new “Baby Blue” arrangement took my breath away. “Crossing the Rubicon” was especially well sung. The newly upbeat “Mother of Muses” with its martial drum beat worked but sounded a bit … patriotic… for my taste, but I can’t say it didn’t work.

Doug seemed to be playing a bit of “I’ll Fly Away” on the electric guitar during “Every Grain of Sand,” a particularly inspired bit of interpolation.

However, having avoided listening to too many recent tapes, I wasn’t sure how much of this was really “new” yet. And one of the great benefits of following shows is being able to spot the little variations. Was that bit of “I’ll Fly Away” an every night thing, or what?

Jet lag aside, though, I was able to get myself to Queens Hotel with Graham, Graham, Nightlymoth, Maddy, Alison, Marielle, and Lili for a couple of Theakston’s Old Peculiars, which hit enough for me to read out the lyrics to a dirty unrecorded song I found in the archives. I think a lot of interesting stories probably begin with “After a couple of Old Peculiars.” It became a night that ended up with a few of us absolutely sloppy in Graham’s (parked) car, listening to ten seconds of a watch recording of “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” over and over trying to make out a new line replacing the “like my head needs a noose” line (sounds like “I’ll play the fool, got no excuse”). There’s nothing like stumbling home dizzy down a dark, damp street in country where’d you’d never set foot until that afternoon. It’s not something you should do all the time, but now and then it’s a fine experience.

Graham took Lili and me around Swansea and the delightfully-named town of Mumbles in the morning, and I spent a travel day getting to Coventry, which turned out to be the home of Two Tone music (a subgenre of ska). It was also the home of Lady Godiva, who, according to legend, rode a horse nude through these very streets to protest taxes. This seems like a pretty odd way to bring about economic reform, but hey, I just dressed in an inflatable “riding a chicken” costume at a protest. If I could get anything done with a nude horseback ride I’d probably give it a go, too. But around here I’m on a break from such protest duties back at home, just doing my part to raise a little hell by wearing my “This Ass Ain’t Street-Legal” shirt to an Edlis luncheon (thanks to Craig for organising that!)

Overall, Coventry seemed like a British version of the minor league ballpark towns of the spring tour. Unlike every other UK town (even Wolverhampton), I didn’t walk around feeling like I would like to live there (except for the chance to see some nude horseback riders once every few centuries). I did find an excellent record store, though. (Ike Quebec’s Blue and Sentimental at an unheard of price!)

Before the show I hung around in the venue with Tom and Carla, who are newer to this circus of ours but having a blast. The arena looked like a place where you’d normally sell tractors or something, but they’d rigged up some curtains. Looking around I wouldn’t have held out for miracles, sound-wise, but when the show began things were crystal clear.

Before the gig began, though, I was caught up telling my seat mates about the situation back in Chicago with “operation midway blitz,” in which masked armed agents in unmarked vans are snatching people off the streets or out of their cars because they look like they might not be in the country legally, with the full backing of the federal government. I feel nervous that this trip takes me away from my duties on “patrol,” gathering with neighbors on street corners around the schools at drop off and dismissal times so we can blow out warnings on our whistles if the stormtroopers show up. The music beginning was a welcome chance to shut up and think of something else for a bit.

I noticed in spring that some songs in the set that weren’t political had now become political, with even the notably not political “Watching the River Flow” mentioning “people disappearing everywhere you look” (so much worse now than it was in spring) and the cheers for Dylan singing “Gulf of Mexico” instead of “Gulf of America” (a bit of absurdity of which UK concer-goers seem blissfully aware.) These past few months of the blitz, I’ve had “Desolation Row” on my mind. It’s a marvel how many songs Dylan has found inside of that song; the same summer he recorded it as an apocalyptic travelogue he performed it as a comedy routine in concert. In late summer this year it was played like a Chuck Berry song, the sound of a narrator motorvating through the parade of grotesques. And, well, now I live in a city where, despite our carnivals and feasts, the riot squads are restless and bringing people to the factory. We all play on our penny whistles. Every day a new line of it seems a to ring true, and in its surrealist way it’s a perfect portrait of my city and neighborhood today. In Coventry, I looked forward to hearing it without the jet lag, eager for the emotional release it could bring.

Maybe it’s just that I was more energised and had some context, but the show in Coventry seemed like a triumph compared to Swansea. Though the guitar jams meandered some, Bob’s singing was deliberate and impassioned from the start. He wasn’t being quite as experimental, but such experiments as there were seemed to land. And around “Masterpiece,” the show clicked into another level, with Dylan really telling the story of the song, getting inventive with his delivery while staying inside the rhythm and building to a terrific harp solo.

“Black Rider” seemed a bit more stripped down and less like the Doors than before, and it was at this point I noticed Bob Britt was playing a lap steel guitar, mounted on a stand in front of him, playing mostly simple parts to add a bit of atmosphere, like a slightly louder version of the organ on the last couple Outlaw shows. He went back and forth between guitar and steel guitar on “My Own Version of You,” and I believe some others, but it wasn’t loud in the mix from my side to be sure standing behind it and not taking off his guitar, sometimes I couldn’t see for sure which he was playing!

“My Own Version of You” deserves particular notice; so often it seems to tell a story. Sometimes it’s a monologue from the weird guy next to you at the bar, the next time it’s like a Shakespearean actor doing a soliloquy. Tonight it seemed to conjure the image of an inventor stalking around his lab, muttering to himself and shouting “Fools! They think I’m mad! I’ll show them all!” as he works on his creation. “Can you look at me with your sightless eyes” sounded like the inventor had spun around to threaten the cat, and the lines toward the end sounded like he was lovingly addressing the monster he was about to animate.

It made me think of all the lines I saw in the archives about reanimating the dead (a theme that seems particularly common in unreleased songs). One stray couplet in an early 80s notebook begins with “there’s got to be a price” and rhymes it with “You wanna raise the dead just to kill him again? Well that’s possible but not nice.” (Damn, I love that) And, of course, there’s the “guy who lived a long time ago” in “Red River Shore.” “My Own Version of You” is really a song he built towards for years. How wonderful is it that we’ve gotten a career’s worth of wildly different versions in four years?

“To Be Alone With You” followed with some new lyrics - not only opening with the opening of “Watching the River flow,” a mistake he quickly corrected (“What’s the matter with me? I don’t have much to say….under the moon, under the starlight sky”) but with a whole new bridge that wasn’t there in Swansea:

“Night time is the right time
To be full of holy smoke
But it’s not new(?) any time of day
Was that some kind of joke?”


That last bit, of course, is a line in a later song, too, meaning that there were, intentionally or not, lines from two other songs in the set interpolated into the tune.

“Rubicon,” a bit more uptempo than before, featured some killer delivery. As he sang it, though, I saw that a lot of people were standing off to the side, in the area between the doors and the aisles, creating a makeshift general admission session, and I got up to join the party - the view of Bob was a bit better, and there are only so many chances to see a “Rough and Rowdy Ways” show in a standing crowd.

“Desolation Row” in its 50s rock arrangement might not have been the version that resonated with me most as a Chicagoan this year, but it was a blast and I danced with wild abandon. It was well sung, with a staccato delivery that made me think he should bring back “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and a piano solo that had the new section cheering. I still think this arrangement is a 50s rock style, but the guy next to me thought it sounded like “Dreams” by The Cranberries. We all hear what we hear!

“Key West” was great but tried the patience of some; he got them back with a gorgeous take on “Baby Blue,” with its new melody like a rubber ball bouncing back and forth then dribbling to a stop. The chorus became a singalong in our makeshift GA section, and the harp solo was to die for.

In the last few songs I really felt the benefit of seeing multiple shows in a row. “I’ve Made Up My Mind” was as good as the other night or better, and “Mother of Muses” lost the martial drum beat. The line in “Jimmy Reed” that had been “no excuse” in Swansea was “but it’s no use” tonight (I understand it’s been different every night). By this time our GA section was a full on dance party; I ran into Carla and we did the swim and the twist. Since Coventry was the home of Two Tone music I even skanked the pickle, which might be the wrong era of ska, but was certainly something you don’t get to do at most Dylan shows.

“Every Grain of Sand” was transcendent, and didn’t have the “I’ll fly away” guitar bit, just a fairly similar line from Doug, and great benedictory harp solo to send us home.

What a show! New instrument, new lines. Bob was locked in throughout. Maddy, Nightlymoth, Carla and I went though hell on wheels to get an uber to Wetherspoons, a UK pub chain that looks fancy but really isn’t, then took pics in the most photogenic alley I ever saw. Another new adventure in a strange town! Coventry wasn’t my favorite town to discover, but it was great to see Bob perform in a place he’d never played before, and what’s not to love about a town whose claims to fame are The Specials and the Naked Horse Tax Lady? This, too, is Desolation Row. On to Leeds!

Also, the vibes from the crowd were far more chill than they were last night in Indiana. I know from door-knocking in this county that there’s an element in town that’ll threaten to stab you with a rake if they don’t like you, but no one seemed like they were going to stab me with anything tonight. The crowd largely seemed like hippies who might be English professors. Warren Payne joined Sheryl Crow for “Strong Enough” and I didn’t worry that anyone would act up when he sang “Are you man enough to be my man?” I would have last night in Indiana.

Crow played the same set as the other nights, but with Warren Payne on “Strong Enough” (he had done “Every Day is a Winding Road” in Hartford), but with slight variations in her stage patter, with some nice words about Bob and Willie. She was enjoyable every night, and tonight Waxahatchie joined on “Every Day is a Winding Road.” No “Mississippi,” though.

Anyway, I rode up to the show with Mike and Henry, the usual Chicago crew, listening to last night’s bootleg and trying to make out the organ sound in the mix. Our best guess was that Matt Katz-Bohen was going to be augmenting the band at Farm Aid and basically rehearsing onstage, with the volume low so there wasn’t much pressure.

We camped out on a lawn spot behind the soundboard that offered only a partial view, where no one was likely to complain that they couldn’t see Bob in his North Face Sith Lord disguise, since no one could expect to see much anyway. The last couple of weeks have been a rash of people insisting that it wasn’t really Bob onstage at all, just an AI imposter or something. The hiding out will only add to the legend in the long run.

Naturally, as soon as Sheryl Crow was offstage we started watching for the keyboard, and they wheeled it out to a position notably closer in than last night, probably even close enough to the rest of the band to be in frame for the static shot on video screens. Matt, the mysterious player, was seen helping to get it set up.

After another dark, straightfoward “Masters of War” opener, Katz-Bohen to his spot for “I Can Tell,” where he was faintly audible but honestly would have been upstaged by Bob’s “no more, no more” coda. Bob’s singing by this point was clearly on point. Moreso than some nights, throughout the night he really seemed focused not just on interesting ways to sing the lines, but on what the lines meant. He was really telling the stories of the songs tonight.

Vocals were particularly great on “Forgetful Heart,” calling to mind that Hebraic cantillation of “One More Cup of Coffee,” and augmenting by a piano solo that sounded like the guitar solo in “Hotel California.” It was possibly the best “Forgetful Heart” I’ve heard this tour, and the best piano solo I’ve ever seen Bob do on anything.

Organ was back, faintly but there, on “To Ramona.” Often this song has just been a fun vocal playground for Bob to bounce around and experiment, but tonight it seemed a bit more heartfelt. It flowed right into an absolutely transcendent “Under the Red Sky,” with Bob playing some of the album guitar riff on piano at the end.

At this point, I was just overtaken by what a lovely night it was. The sun had set over the rolling hills, and there night was cool. The sound was great. The static view on the video screens was tighter, and from a higher angle, than usual, and actually showed Bob’s face fairly well. I was out with friends in a crowd of friendly strangers. It was a beautiful night.

“All long the Watchtower” continues to be a highlight in its 2025 arrangement, with Katz-Bohen adding a bedding of organ underneath and Bob leaning into the vocals - “The hour is getting layyyy ay ay atteeee.”

“Til I Fell in Love With You” is missing some of the sheer thunder from a couple of weeks ago, but stripping it back give Bob a bit more room to improvise in this “no time signature” set up, with a particularly biting staccato “Til! I! Fell! In! Love! With! You!” on the last chorus. Anton Fig’s drumming is perfect for this sort of “free time” arrangement.

A brief conference with Tony before “Desolation Row” showed that Bob had his hoodie unzipped, with a white shirt beneath it. With it open, he looked less like a sith lord, and more like a normal guy who was afraid it might rain on his shuffleboard game. “Desolation Row” dialled the Chuck Berry vibes back slightly from previous nights, having almost more of a surf vibe. The “Dr. Filth” verse was back. In the aisle in front of me, a couple swing danced through the entire song. It was awesome.

“Love Sick” included just a suble bit of echo effect on the vocals, and this spooky take might have been the best version of the tour - a note-perfect rendition of the song, with a shredding electric guitar solo from Doug Lancio. It led into a lovely “Share Your Love,” with Bob doing some of the most “conventional” singing he ever does, just in case anyone out there didn’t thing he could sing a straight up ballad and basically stick to the sheet music.

“Blind Willie Mctell,” like “Love Sick,” seemed tonight to be nothing interesting or exciting, just simply perfect. Straightforward reading with just a hint of private eye swagger; the best version I’ve seen this tour.

Matt Katz-Bohen was back on organ for excellent takes on “Highway 61” and “Don’t Think Twice’ to close out the set. By this point it was generally agreed that he was probably rehearsing for Farm Aid, and that Bob’s Farm Aid set the next night would be the five songs he’s played on. I wouldn’t bet twenty bucks on it, but I’d at least bet ten.

I chatted a bit with one of the video monitor guys, who had the Brewers game on in the booth. He noted that some people who don’t believe Bob is onstage have been accusing him of being complicit in the conspiracy, but noted that he’d seen Bob backstage and it was definitely him. He also noted how much better Bob is sounding that he did ten or twenty years ago.

I strolled out into the parking lot in a lovely haze, like the guy at the end of Springsteen’s “County Fair” who hopes he can remember where he parked and wishes he never had to let this moment go. It was a perfect, beautiful night, and a fine close to the 2025 Outlaw tour. There was certainly no bar nearby this venue (or anything other than farmland at all), so there weren’t many options for an afterparty, but on the way back we stopped at a Kwik Trip, where I snacked like a damn hell ass king for less than I’d paid for last year’s donuts last night in Indiana. Good old Wisconsin.

It’ll be interesting to see now if he mixes up the “Rough and Rowdy” setlist post Outlaw, like he did last year, and of course it’s great to wonder what in the world he’ll do next (the hoodie seems to indicate to me that he’s had it with this sort of tour). I’ve got my busy season in October, but I’ll catch up in the UK this November. See you all down the line! Special “Big 5-0” shout-out to Henry; it was his 50th show!

Still, there were omens, if one is inclined towards such things. I saw a DULUTH Trading Co in one of the many strip malls, and when I went to a gas station the pump didn’t work. Damn vandals.

At an Outlaw show, you have to accept that you’re going to be a stranger in a strange land. The parking lot to this stadium bordered a corn field, and the parking attendant who showed me my $25 spot on a gravel lot was wearing a cowboy hat, aviator shades, and some shiny bracelets. Nearby was a sheriff, covered in tactical gear and driving what appeared to be an armored golf cart. It was like I was surrounded by a 2025 lineup of Village People. Inside, the vibe did seem very different than other Outlaw shows; the other shows I’ve seen this year were all in swing states or blue states. This was a red state crowd, and it showed on the bumper stickers and t-shirts lauding conspiracy-mongering racists who said Jewish money was destroying American values (Hey, find my venmo if you wanna help). While the general vibe of the crowd in Mansfield had been “I’m going to the pumpkin patch but I’m not gonna make a whole thing of it,” the vibe in Noblesville was “I’m going to the bathroom but I’m not gonna make a whole thing of it.” But there was also this guy who looked like Jim Morrison wearing tight jeans and an awesome fair isle sweater in the 92 degree heat - he may have been the coolest guy I ever saw.

There was, of course, also the Deadhead contigent, and occasionally a person in a Dylan shirt mixed in with the flag shirts and the shirts with jokes about boobs. Kait from the fan club and I sipped on overpriced drinks. Henry from the Chicago crew had brought his kids.

I had bought a lawn ticket online for 17 bucks, figuring that in the Hoodie Era it doesn’t matter what your view is. But after Sheryl Crow’s gear was hauled away, it was noticed that some sort of keyboard was being set up on the side of the stage. And someone was definitely making sure it was all set up and ready to go. Something was happening.

It being 92 degrees outside I wondered if Bob would discard the Return of the Jedi cosplay that’s been his wardrobe lately, but he came onstage with the hoodie still up, and slipped behind the piano for a powerful, threatening “Masters of War.” It was good, but I was staring at the unmanned organ.

For “I Can Tell,” though, I looked up and noticed that a person had appeared behind the keyboard, just out of frame of the video screens. From the back he looked like a young Larry Campbell, but the back at these things is far enough that it could have been Elena James for all I could tell. In any case, the organ was a bit low in the mix, but audible.

The mysterious organ player slipped back offstage without a word for strong takes on “Forgetful Heart” and “Axe and the Wind,” then appeared again for “To Ramona,” on which he appeared to be playing visually, but I couldn’t pick anything up audibly. After the song he was gone again.

So, this was distracting. There was a solid show going on onstage, but there was also a mystery to solve! Most of the crowd was probably unaware that anyone else had been onstage; they were too busy trying to figure out where Bob was, exactly, or if he was even there (There’re always a few people who insist He’s Not There and that anyone who believed that was really him are just sheeple. They probably say stupid things to make themselves feel smart several times per day).

Some venues on this tour don’t like you to walk to aisle between the lawn and the seats, and few just let you stand there behind the seats, but this one was awfully cool about it, and I had a very peripatetic show, wondering from spot to spot. From the stage left side I could see Bob fairly well, but didn’t have a great line of site on the organ. “Under the Red Sky” had a fantastic harp solo.

The organ man reappeared for a fantastic “All Along the Watchtower,” adding organ so faint I couldn’t convince myself I wasn’t imagining it to the “She’s Not There” arrangement, which Bob just sang the hell out of tonight, dropping off the words one at a time like he was laying down bombs.

“Til I Fell in Love With You” wasn’t quite as explosive as its been in recent days, but still powerful, and “Desolation Row” leaned further into the new Chuck Berry edition. I’m continually amazed at how many different songs Bob has found inside of that song; the apocalyptic album take, the standup routine he played it as the first few performances in 65, the travelogues of the 90s, the “Series of Dreams with a Wrench” arrangements of last year, and now it’s like Johnny B. Goode (“Row Desolation, Row, Row?”). An ominous “Love Sick” followed.

The organ came back for “Highway 61,” now perhaps a bit more audible, in the dark new arrangement. It’s sort of a mirror image of “Desolation Row,” which sounded dark on the album but could be very playful live. This one is playful on the album, and now comes off as dark and sinister, which was never far from the surface in this little bit of midrash. Even in line two when the guy says “Let me think for a minute SON.” We’ve already established in verse 1 what we do with sons around here.

The organ player remained onstage, adding quiet church organ sounds underneath an incredibly powerful “Don’t Think Twice.” Bob stood up at the end, and the whole crowd rose to its feet, hoping to finally get a glimpse of him - mostly to no avail.

Word on the street after the show was that the keyboard player was Matt Katz-Bohen, longtime keyboardist and producer for Blondie. Perhaps Bob is warming up some additional musicians for Farm Aid? Did Matt Katz-Bohen wish really hard and have his wish granted but had to play inaudibly and unannounced? You never can tell which way the axe is gonna fall. I slipped out, found a gas station that sold me a pumpkin donut that I think was from last Halloween, then made the long drive back to Chicago, wondering if it was worth upgrading my East Troy ticket just to get a better look at that organ…

That’s #91 for me; follow along on my quest to 100 (and check out my new history podcast, Tomb Snoopers!)

Death was on my mind for a silly and embarrassing reason yesterday. Back in 1999 I took my first Dylan road trip to see him in Birmingham, Alabama with Brian Setzer on the tour he never said out loud was the commemorate Buddy Holly’s Winter Dance Party tour, but clearly was. Outside of that show there was a guy peddling bootleg tie-dyed shirts that said “Bob Dylan 99” over a picture from 1976. It was so hideous I wasn’t sure one would be enough. When I wore it to high school the next day the teacher affected not to recognize me in something so distinctly un-goth.

Well, now it’s my MOST goth shirt. Before the Hartford show I saw a woman wearing that exact shirt, and excitedly asked how the hell she had that same bootleg shirt I got in Alabama years ago. “It’s my dad’s,” she said.

Everyone around me cringed on my behalf, and I looked to see if the concession stand would sell me a big bowl of fiber or something, feeling the hot breath of death on the back of my neck.

So, feeling older than dirt and reeling from the Powerball loss, the next morning Britt and I went to the grave of Emily Dickinson, and I read some of her many death poems (you can sing “Because I could not stop for death” to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun.”) The cemetery was lovely, full of 18th century graves that seem to have been very well restored (most of them should look like a lump of wet sugar by now, but were totally legible). Dickinson’s grave was well kept, and while I was there I read her poem about knowing there’s been a death in the house across the street. What great imagery there is in that poem! The mattress being thrown out the window, the preacher arriving like the Man in the Long Black coat, the milliner coming, the reference to “the dark parade….” It gets to you the more you think about it. Someone in the house has died, and the family called for hat maker right away?

Several stones in the cemetery has epitaphs that were variations on the “prepare for death and follow me” poems  common to headstones of the era,  but one stone had a far simpler  “Amidst of life we are in death / Stop, reader & learn to die.” This of course made me think of “Let Me Die in My Footsteps,” “Some people thinking the end is close by / stead of learning to live they are learning to die / let me die in my footsteps / before I go down under the ground.”

That’s good advice. I shook off the morbid feelings and just enjoyed a drive through Massachusetts, enjoying the early fall scenery, a stop at a place that made blueberry cheesecake wine, and the adventure of seeing new places.

After all, even though Dylan is doing these shows dressed like Death incarnate, as Death appears in The Seventh Seal and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, the music coming from the stage isn’t notably somber or death-haunted. Hartford seemed less jaunty than Wantagh a month ago, and “Highway 61” had a new dark undertone that we all commented on in the pizza place parking lot after the show, but overall the visual vibes don’t carry over into the music. It was just a great show that happened to be a show where Bob was doing something weird. On the balance I’d rather see his face more, but I do love seeing shows where he does something weird.

Outlaw show venues aren’t exactly new places; if you’ve seen two, you’ve seen them all. This one reminded me of Pine Knob more than whatever the one in Phoenix was called, but they’re all the same. The vibes among the crowd can differ a bit by region, though. The overall vibe for the crowd at this venue was “muted color hippies.” Everyone looked like they were going to a pumpkin patch but didn’t want to make a whole thing of it. The amphitheater had about 60% of the capacity of the one in Hartford but felt far more crowded somehow. And in contrast to making me feel old, I kept meeting people who mentioned something from the 80s and added “Of course, that’s before you were born.” Glad I can still pass in the hall.

From our angle far to stage left, we were actually able to see Bob fairly well as he sat at the piano. He was still in the hoodie, but in a venue like this it’s worth noting that few people could have seen him no matter what he had on. Most of our section didn’t realize he had a hoodie on at all.  I mean, he COULD have gone up center stage now and then and let people have a look, but I kept thinking if Richie Havens in “Hearts of Fire” saying no one at the oldies show wants to hear the music, they just want to see how old the singers look. This way, everyone has to just listen.

So all there was to do was enjoy the music, and Bob made that easy tonight. If hiding under a hoodie and behind a music stand is a reflection of some dark mood on Bob’s part, it sure didn’t come off in the music. His voice seemed slightly rougher than in Hartford, which stands to reason on the third straight night, but he was leaning into the vocals, experimenting and playing, and often even giggling. More than last night, I felt like he was delighting in hiding away, getting a thrill out of getting away with something.

“Masters of War,” now with an echo effect, made for a strong opener. “To Ramona” was especially playful, with Bob seeming to find a new way to do every line.

Back behind us was a guy in a Skynyrd shirt who wasn’t into it. “Play some Hendrix!” he shouted. A second later Bob broke into a strong “Watchtower” with a particularly good “wind began to howwwwwllllllll,” but the guy wasn’t satisfied. “It’s supposed to be the OUTLAW tour,” he said. I have to figure that if people complain that you’re not being an outlaw correctly, you’re doing it right.

“Til I Fell in Love With You” was once again positively thunderous and should have shut anybody up, but the guys behind us walked out around this time. More fool them. “Desolation Row” had a bit more of a Chuck Berry beat to it, a bit more of a punk edge, and became a real highlight of the night, even though it was missing even more verses than usual (normally he does the Casanova verse, sometimes swapping it out for the Einstein verse; the last two nights he didn’t do either of them). Sometimes the song is apocalyptic, sometimes it’s a comedy routine, sometimes it’s a travelogue. Tonight it just rocked.

A howling “Love Sick” and stately “Share Your Love” followed.  During “Blind Willie McTell” I had one of those moments where, like a Dickinson poem, something new jumps out: the recently-added line goes “some of them died in battle / some survived as well.”  Is he talking about the same people? Some survived as well as died?

The descending guitar line kept the new “dark” vibes in “Highway 61” going, with Bob appearing to lean more into that side of this arrangement. It might have been the coolest “Highway 61” I ever saw, and led to one of the most emotional readings of “Don’t Think Twice” yet; since Phoenix the song has really evolved into a proper closer.

Bob never lowered the hoodie, but seemed to be in a downright playful, enthusiastic mood the whole night. He didn’t seem like he was hiding; if anything he seemed like he was more relaxed knowing that no one was going to get all that clear a photo of him. Honestly I had my phone out a lot; I had a better view if I zoomed WAY in. But the hood and the lights have become like a yondr pouch to Bob.

Of course, to many in the crowd, it was simply irresistible to claim that it wasn’t really him. After the set I heard one guy after another loudly insisting that it was an imposter, and anyone who believed that was really him had “blinders” on. Everything seems like a conspiracy if you’re really stupid.

My favorite take was a woman who said “That couldn’t have been him. His voice was way too clear!”

So that’s show number 90 for me, and I’m all done thinking about death, thank you very much. Thanks to Britt for the ride, and to Ray, False Prophet Michael, Harold Lepidus, and all the good people who traveled with me. Follow along as I continue on my road to 100!

There were reports of storms rolling in today, and Sheryl Crow was on the bill. Kait, who know was in Atlanta with me that night, was coming. The pieces were all in place.

After I landed in Hartford, Britt and I made our way to a coffee shop where an old man invited himself to sit with us. He warned us a storm was coming, then reminded us to play Powerball. I’m not one to play the lottery, but when a mysterious stranger tells you to, you probably ought to.

When we stepped out of the grocery store, tickets in hand, it was dumping down rain. The venue closed the parking lot gates until the storm passed, so we sat in traffic for an hour or so, messaging back and forth with other people in the same situation and wondering if this show was even going to happen. Atlanta 03 all over again.

But the storm blew over, and we tailgated in the parking lot until we had to escape from a Deadhead who was either visually or audibly leaking from every orifice and may have had rabies. This was an Outlaw crowd, and you have to just roll with it.

Sheryl Crow did a terrific set, aided by a shit-hot backing band. And unlike Atlanta 03, she was able to do her full set, which included all of her hits and an excellent new song.

Now, we had seen the pics from the night before if Dylan wearing hoodie and surrounding his baby grand piano with more light trees than usual. As we did our between-song mini party (Kait! Ray! ShotofLove69! Irene! Julia!) we watched as the crew set up the light trees, meticulously arranging the little branches, and four upright lamps around the piano.

From our seats it looked like we had a good view right between the two little trees, but when Bob came out, his face was blocked by the music stand. We were able to move over and get an angle that allowed us to see a bit, but most of the crowd would get only the most fleeting glimpses of Dylan’s face at all. Most of the time you could only see the top of his hoodie.

Now, why do this? If he’s mad, that didn’t come across in the performance. Perhaps he wanted to just focus hard on the music, or wanted US to just focus hard on the music. In any case, it was surreal to see someone dressed like the Emperor in Return of the Jedi open with “Masters of War.”

But it was a rocking opener, and by the time he was halfway through a waltzy “To Ramona” it was apparent that Bob was genuinely ON. Tonight. If he wanted to crowd to focus on the music, it was a failed effort; we were all putting a lot of energy into hoping he’d stand up, and there were scattered shouts of “Show your face!” and some chatted from the conspiracy-minded about whether it was really even him. His hiding was a distraction to us.

But if it was to help himself focus, it paid off. Dylan was locked in vocally, and as a pianist, all night. The show was one highlight after another. And, though few could see it, he was gesturing with hands hands quite a bit as he sang. He was dialed in all night. Except for the lack of setlist surprises, this would be the Outlaw show I’d most want a good tape of so far, the one to release as an album.

Of particular note: “Under the Red Sky” was well sung and with great piano. “All Along the Watchtower” seemed to be the point at which he won the crowd over (except for some woman up front who kept yelling “asshole!” between songs and flicking Bob off, making ME wonder if this new setup is to hide from someone specific!)

Post show, the biggest buzz was about “Til I Fell in Love With You,” still mostly stripped back, but when the music came in it was absolutely thunderous.  “Desolation Row” was genuinely SUNG, and it may have been the tightest rendition of “Blind Willie McTell” I ever saw.   “Highway 61” seems to have a new arrangement; it seemed a little darker and more sinister tonight than any other time I’ve seen it. Maybe it was just the Palpatine cosplay!

Closing with a “Don’t Think Twice” that was simply design, Bob treated people on the right side of the piano (stage right) to a quick glimpse of his face as he strolled off. Most people didn’t get a good look all night. It was genuinely weird in that way, I’ve never seen him or any other performer hide like that the entire show. Some of the crowd still grumbled , but a lot of the chatter included things like “well, he SOUNDED great.”

Chatted with some friends (False Prophet Michael!) and stayed for a bit of Willie, then rushed off with Britt and Ray to a late night pizza dive, where we ate chopped cheese sandwiches in the parking lot and an older woman made flirty remarks based on my “this ass ain’t Street-Legal” t-shirt. Traveling to Dylan shows is an adventure, and the surreal atmosphere of an outlaw show is often conducive to adventure.

We didn’t win Powerball, though. Shit.