A Killer Bob Dylan Show in Kalamazoo MI - April 16, 2025 (by Michael Glover Smith)

This guest post is by Michael Glover Smith, a Chicago-based filmmaker, writer and teacher. Follow him on social media platforms at @whitecitycinema

I was fortunate to be able to attend last night’s Bob Dylan concert in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the last of six shows I’ll be seeing on the 10th - and presumably final - leg of the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour. Like a lot of stops on this tour leg, Kalamazoo is a small Midwestern city in a “secondary market,” the kind of place that Dylan, bless his troubadour heart, has seemingly always been fond of playing. Also like a lot of the stops on this tour leg, it is fortunately less than a three-hour drive from my home on the north side of Chicago. This means that last night’s show brings the total number of Bob Dylan concerts I’ve seen now to 94 - going back to my very first show in the summer of 1989 (when Tony Garnier was the brand spanking new bassist!) - and the total number of Rough and Rowdy Ways shows I’ve seen to 17.

Michael Glover Smith w/ Graham Gaskell in Kalamazoo

It’s hard not to feel both wistful and a little sad knowing that the Rough and Rowdy era is coming to an end. Dylan exhibits no signs of slowing down, of course, and I have no doubt this tour will be replaced by something equally wonderful in the fall (whether that means touring a new album or reverting to a more career-spanning Never-Ending Tour set a la 2013-2019). But there’s also no denying that RARW holds a special place in Dylan’s long history as a live performer: it’s been fascinating and unprecedented to see him constantly rearranging essentially the same set of songs over five calendar years. Between that first glorious show in Milwaukee in 2021, which I was also lucky to attend, and last night in Kalamazoo, he’s played nearly 250 RARW concerts in many countries across three different continents. In the process, a lot of the songs have gotten full-band workouts as well as the uber-minimalist/near-solo piano treatment and sometimes something in between. Dylan’s also gone through a whopping four different drummers, engaged in some of his funniest onstage banter ever, played a surprising number of cover songs and rekindled his love for the electric guitar.

I have personally experienced profound life changes against the backdrop of this tour: I’ve separated from my spouse, moved into a new apartment, sold my condominium, completed post-production on my fourth feature film, RELATIVE (which I also relentlessly toured and promoted throughout North America), made a couple more short films, taught dozens of classes, began researching and writing a book on Bob Dylan as a filmmaker (20,000+ words down already - booyah!) and made a lot of new friends along the way. And through it all, Dylan and the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour have always been there. These shows have been the most consistent and reliable source of entertainment to nourish my often-weary soul in a post-pandemic world. As the man himself said not long ago, these songs are certainly made for “these times.”

So how does the performance in Kalamazoo stack up? Among the five shows I’ve seen this year, it’s somewhere near the very top. They were all in the very good-to-great range and, of course, my rankings are subjective, inevitably influenced by who I saw the shows with, how close I was to the stage, the acoustics in the room, how engaged the crowd was and, it must be said, whether or not I’d taken a THC edible beforehand. Green Bay will always hold a special place in my heart because I was in the front row that night, close enough to where I could “study the lines in his face.” The crowd in South Bend seemed the most youthful and exuberant (hearing the Notre Dame students roar when he delivered the “Hunchback of Notre Dame” line in “Desolation Row” was unforgettable); but, performance-wise, song for song, from beginning to end, Kalamazoo may just have been the best of the bunch.

The Boys in Formation - Kalamazoo MI - April 16, 2025

Before I talk about Kalamazoo specifically, though, I’d like to offer a few general observations about this tour leg: out of all the bands Dylan has ever played with, I believe this is the one where the electric guitars are the quietest. That isn’t to say that this band cannot rock. Anton Fig has already claimed the title of the hardest-hitting drummer of the RARW era. It’s just that the electric guitars have been mixed lower than usual so that the primary instruments are now Dylan’s piano and Anton’s drums. When Bob Britt is playing electric guitar and Doug Lancio is playing acoustic guitar, which is on most of the songs, it is Britt’s rhythm playing that dominates. This is why some fans are calling “When I Paint My Masterpiece” a new “flamenco” arrangement. In reality, it’s the same old “Puttin’ on the Ritz” arrangement from last year; it’s just that Britt’s playing of the main riff is buried in the mix, allowing Lancio’s acoustic playing more of a chance to shine.

These new shows have become so oriented around piano, voice and drums that I would say this is the closest Dylan has ever come to fronting a band that might be termed “jazz.” Which is fascinating considering how RARW started off as something much more diverse, showcasing Donnie Herron’s talents as a multi-instrumentalist, and offering a tour through different musical genres, including a nightly outing of a single “traditional pop” cover, the awesome electric guitar rave-up of “Gotta Serve Somebody,” etc. But with Donnie now gone, the cover songs gone and most of the arrangements scaled back to something more skeletal, the RARW shows have taken on a new quality of intimacy and intensity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the performances of what I’m calling the “Big 3” songs: “My Own Version of You,” “Key West” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Each of these songs is played in “free time,” with Dylan dictating the pace through his singing and piano playing and Anton masterfully providing “percussion effects” as accompaniment, usually at the conclusion of each line delivery, in the manner of “Murder Most Foul.” On each of these songs, Dylan assumes the role of spoken-word poet/orator and the live audiences I’ve seen these shows with have all, impressively, hung on his every word. These songs are always highlights every night.

What made Kalamazoo special though, is that even the songs that I think of as sometimes being “filler” were great. “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” can feel like a perfunctory opener, as many attendees, perhaps slowed down by the relatively recent Yondr-pouch phenomenon, are still finding their way to their seats during it. Not so last night. I knew Bob was in a good mood when he reached for the electric guitar at the end of the first song. Last night was his first time playing guitar on this John Wesley Harding chestnut during this leg of the tour (though he did also play it during “All Along the Watchtower” when that was the show-opener). Watching Dylan play long, nasty, bluesy solos on somewhere between one and four songs per night has also been a high point of the tour. Not just because of the novelty of seeing him play but because his style of playing has become more ambitious. Dylan now sits on his piano bench with his back to the audience like Miles Davis and plays guitar while facing Anton’s drums. These are not the same-old “repeat the same three notes” over and over style of solos that have characterized his guitar playing since the ‘90s but rather fluid lines that follow the melodies of the original songs more closely.

“To Be Alone with You” is another song that I don’t typically find exciting but that was outstanding last night. This time it was the singing that made it. Dylan got into a groove where he would emphasize and draw out the penultimate syllable of each line: “I’ll hound you to DEEEE-eeeath / That’s just what I’ll DOOOO-oooo.” It was magical to behold but also characteristic of his playful approach to his phrasing throughout the whole show. The single biggest vocal highlight in this regard was probably “Desolation Row” though. The South Bend version was fantastic but Kalamazoo topped it. Dylan did a thing I love that I haven’t heard him do in a long time: he sang the song in two “different” voices. He would sing one line “normally” then follow it up by singing the next line in a pattern of descending notes, ending in a low register. He would keep up this method of alternating line deliveries for about two whole verses. It was absolutely thrilling to see and hear, as if he were walking a vocal tightrope for a long time without ever falling.

Finally, the last of the unexpected highlights was “Watching the River Flow.” This song is the kind of mid-tempo blues shuffle that, when played night after night, can occasionally sound like Dylan is on autopilot. Again, not so last night. This version began with a great and lengthy harmonica intro. Then Dylan put the harp down and sang the song with commitment while pounding out the rhythm on his baby grand piano. Then he finished by picking up his Fender Stratocaster and playing his third and final guitar solo of the night. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Dylan play harp, piano and guitar all on the same song before but it was unbelievably cool to witness. As with South Bend, this show was in a college auditorium and there were a good number of students in the audience (mixed in with the usual Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers like me). Perhaps it was just my imagination but I’d like to think that Dylan’s feistiness on a number like this was his way of repaying the audience for the energy and enthusiasm that we were showing him.

In addition to introducing his band, we also got a brief bit of “Bob talk” early on, always a good sign: Dylan told us that he was playing “all the hits” tonight after a stunning version of “My Own Version of You.” (He had also said something similar in Peoria.) This particular performance of MYVOY saw him sing a whole verse, the “Julius Caesar” one, where he dramatically played one chord on the piano for every line he sang. Towards the end of the song he was practically rapping the words, much to the delight of the audience. Everyone, undoubtedly including those who hadn’t heard it before, seemed spellbound at its conclusion. So the remark about playing the hits was, of course, a joke (perhaps sparked by Dylan having read any number of recent newspaper reviews that have claimed he is doing the opposite). But he was also, in a way, telling the truth: the RARW songs may not be “hits” yet but, as Dylan continues to insist on their importance by playing them at every show, they no doubt one day will be.

All in all, it was a beautiful night to cap off a beautiful run of shows. Big thanks to Graham for meeting up with me beforehand (and for the lovely bumper sticker!) and to the rest of the merry Bobcats, including but not limited to Adam, Henry, Kait, Caroline, Sue, Bailey, Mark, Gary, Madeleine etc, that I met up with over the whole whirlwind eleven days. See you all next on the Outlaw tour.