The thing about a Bob Dylan gig is that you can try to explain it to someone who’s never been, but you can never quite capture the strangeness, the reverence, or the sheer unpredictability of it. Sitting in my seat before the gig tonight, someone next to me said, “I’ve never seen Dylan before – this is my first time.” I smiled and replied, “This is my seventh. And honestly, even if he plays the same songs he did last year, you still won’t recognise half of them.”
Because this is the “Rough and Rowdy Ways” show – the same tour cycle he’s been on for a few years now – and the whole point is that Dylan does whatever Dylan wants. And, as usual, our phones are locked away in little pouches, which only adds to that sense that we’re stepping into his world, not ours. The setlist barely changes. Everything else does.
He begins with a loose, almost offhand jam before slipping into “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” initially with his back to the crowd, picking a guitar before shuffling to the piano where he spends the rest of the evening. “It Ain’t Me, Babe” follows, one of the greats, sung in that half-smiling, half-distant way only Dylan can manage.
And that becomes the theme: songs you know reshaped into things you barely recognise. “I Contain Multitudes,” “False Prophet,” “My Own Version of You” and “Black Rider” reinforce the truth that late-career Dylan might be the greatest poet music has ever produced. These performances don’t explode; they simmer. The entire night has the feel of something being played quietly in the corner of a plush wine bar — intimate, smoky, half-lit, and entirely on his terms.
Even when he reaches back to “When I Paint My Masterpiece” or unspools a winding “Desolation Row,” he does so as if discovering the songs anew. Nothing is delivered straight. Nothing is nostalgic. Everything is reinterpreted, reshaped, twisted into the version he wants today. The version tomorrow will almost certainly be different.
As on the rest of this tour, “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” becomes the gravitational centre of the night. Time slows. The band tightens around him. It’s hypnotic, drifting, dreamlike – a whispered sermon delivered from behind the piano.
The later portion of the set retains that understated glow. “Watching the River Flow” leans into a jazzy looseness. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” brings the harmonica out – the one moment where the crowd melts into collective nostalgia – before he moves gently through “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,” “Mother of Muses,” and “Goodbye Jimmy Reed,” each one more about mood and tone than volume or force.
He ends, quietly and devastatingly, with “Every Grain of Sand.” The harmonica lingers. He stands. He looks at us. And, as so often, he doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t have to.
After seven shows, one thing remains true every single time: when Bob Dylan walks onstage, an aura settles over the room. It’s not about singalongs. It’s not about spectacle. It’s about presence. It’s about knowing you’re watching someone whose influence is immeasurable, doing exactly what he wants in the way only he can.
Still unique. Still restless. Still Bob Dylan.
