Cavortin’ in Williamsport - April 22, 2025 (by Anne Margaret Daniel)

This guest post is by Anne Margaret Daniel, a writer and editor who teaches at the New School University in New York City. Follow her on social at @venetianblonde.

Williamsport, Pennsylvania was an almost five hour drive for us. Interstate 80 being under construction, with ghastly times showing up on all phone maps, Janet and I cut up to the 84 and mainlined to Scranton, thence down the 81 before hanging a right through state forests and parks, beautiful valleys and hundreds of blooming serviceberry and wilded pear trees—blizzards of white against the early spring lime green. We got to our hotel, which was also Bob and the band’s, nice and early—in time to smile at the tour buses as we parked, assembled our bags, and stretched in the hot sun.

The Genetti Hotel opened in the same summer in which The Great Gatsby takes place, that sweltering mid-Atlantic summer of 1922. It is comfortably ancient like your grandmother’s house, mid-century Modern furniture here and there mixed with old fancy Chippendale replicas, red patterned carpets, and a very grand ballroom with many chandeliers. Rita Hayworth, Jackie Gleason, Carl Sandburg, the real Robert F. Kennedy, dozens of famous baseball players, and countless participants in the Little League World Series have stayed there—suites are named for many of the celebrities. We loved the Genetti, and also the fact that it is next door to the Community Arts Center—which opened under the name Capitol Theatre in 1928—and also the fact that both are located on West 4^th Street.

Dylan’s show was at 8. It was 5:15 when we left the hotel. We walked up and down West 4^th, window shopping, basking in the sun, before we stopped into Otto Bookstore, because any trip to Williamsport must include a stop at what is said to be the oldest independent bookstore in America. They opened in 1841 and are going very strong. The shop was full of people, both locals and visitors going to the concert. Most of the locals were going to the concert too. Otto was sponsoring an open mic night, and three men were performing Dylan songs while we shopped. One spied my Levon Helm Studios jacket, commented on it, and the next song they launched into was “Up On Cripple Creek.” A dozen of us sang along, in one of the happiest moments I’ve had on a concert tour.

Pre-show supper was at Bullfrog Brewery, right across the street from the theater. Janet had a Billtown Blonde, I chose a Hellbender Red Ale—and, suddenly and gorgeously, there on the sidewalk were Sue, and then Pat! Nachos arrived. We relaxed, took marquee photos, and watched the audience start to file in. Soon people appeared on the balcony level, two stories above the street, where tall gaslights were already lit and flaring. We scanned the ranks above for friends: there was our own Nightly Moth, the man in black, flitting along the outside balcony. Graham arrived at the restaurant, and there were hugs all around. It’s wonderful how many old concert friends made it out to rural Pennsylvania for the 250^th, and perhaps last, night of the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour.

Community Arts Center, Williamsport PA (by Anne Margaret Daniel)

By 7:30 we were in the building. I was a little uneasy about the level of crowd noise, as people swarmed the merch table and partook fiercely of libations from the loge / balcony level bar. Turns out I was right to worry. That wraparound bar stayed full the whole night, and there were no doors and not even curtains separating the loud drinkers from everyone in seats. Ushers did nothing to help with this, and indeed talked loudly among themselves during some songs. A large guy in a St. Patrick’s Day t-shirt, with a reddish beard and baseball cap clamped firmly to his head, volubly engaged both ushers and passersby in one of the balcony entrances. Nothing could induce him to be quiet. Far worse was the awful woman in the orchestra, over to the right-hand side. “Like A Rolling Stone,” she screamed. “Play something we know,” she screamed. She screamed between songs, and during quiet songs, of which there were many. She screamed at the start of the two best songs in the show, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “Key West / Philosopher Pirate.” Someone finally silenced her, but far too late; I did not see how, but I was grateful. She is the reason we should be able to bring duct tape into all concerts, and risk no liability for applying it. In her case, I wished for a steel plate, rivets, and a heavy hammer.

So: an overall lousy audience experience, but a fabulous show. Bob picked up his guitar a few times, including on “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” but kept to the keys most of the show—keys, and that gorgeous harmonica. He played beautifully, sometimes with his left hand as his right stayed on the piano. As always, it’s like hearing him sing, but even more so; we are literally listening to him breathe. At no time is Dylan more connected to his audiences than when he plays that harp—and you can feel it, sense it in the intense reaction and happy applause even from an audience in which many listeners were disengaged, apathetic, or just plain didn’t get it overall. The harmonica on “When I Paint My Masterpiece” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” were as fine as I’ve ever heard him play.

Dylan on Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour by Paolo Brillo

Goodbye, perhaps, to all the Rough and Rowdy Ways album’s songs, except for one, being played in the same set. They received sweet adieux from their maker: a swirly “False Prophet,” a spooky echoing “Black Rider,” a brilliant “My Own Version of You,” the slow inexorable march of “Crossing the Rubicon,” the hymnal back-to-back of “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself To You” and “Mother of Muses,” the rollicking sexy “Goodbye Jimmy Reed.” Whatever comes this summer when Dylan and his band are on tour with Willie Nelson’s outlaws, we won’t have all of them. I’ll miss the litany of the Rough and Rowdy tracks; but it’ll be nice to look forward to “Little Queenie” or “Deep River” again, or whatever else Bob pulls out of the bottomless bag, from covers of musicians he loves to his own matchless oeuvre.

“Playin’ only the hits tonight,” Dylan grinned, at the end of that sparkling “Key West.” Yeah, I thought. You are, and they’re from all across your long career, a career that is still going. What’s he up to, now that he’s off the road for awhile? I know what I hope. I hope he has a good rest, and also that he’s finishing up recording a bunch of new songs. Maybe the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour will give way some time this autumn to a tour in support of, dare we hope, a new and unannounced studio album—up and down the West Coast, across the top of the Midwest, down into the South, and fetching up in New England and New York as we all give thanks, and then head into Christmastime and Hanukkah and holidaytide. Maybe this is just me being greedy. We shall see. That’s a grand thing about being a Bob Dylan fan: we shall always see; and, quite often, be both pleased and surprised.

Anne Margaret Daniel teaches literature and humanities at the New School University in New York City. She has written on topics from Oscar Wilde's trials to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bob Dylan, and contemporary music. Her edition of Fitzgerald's previously unpublished short stories I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories was published by Scribner in 2017; and her Norton Library edition of The Great Gatsby in 2022.

She is currently at work, with Jackson L. Bryer, on an edition of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald's selected letters; and on a book of essays about Bob Dylan.