“There was a Never Ending Tour, but it Ended.”
Guest Post by Matthew Ingate on the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour '21-'24
Matthew Ingate is the author of Together Through Life: My Never Ending Tour with Bob Dylan (Available at Amazon). He’s been to a bunch of recent shows and shares his thoughts below.
“There was a Never Ending Tour, but it ended.”
Bob Dylan, 1993
So, too, it now seems, has the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour 2021-2024.
For almost 35 years it felt like the only thing that could join “death” and “taxes'' in a list of life's certainties was that Bob Dylan would be appearing in concert somewhere in the world in any given year. It took a pandemic and a total global shutdown of the live music industry in 2020 to keep him off the stage - and it was not for the want of trying; both a 14 date spring tour of Japan and a summer swing through North America had to be cancelled - for the first time since 1983.
When the world tentatively started to re-open in 2021, there were still a lot of question marks over whether we’d get to see Dylan again. Surely an artist who had performed over 3,000 concerts on the Never Ending Tour would be itching to get back on stage as soon as possible, but would it be safe to do so any time soon? Especially with the prevalence of a virus that could do particular harm to a man of Dylan’s age? If he played in America, would restrictions lift in time to allow for us international fans to travel to see him? Then came Shadow Kingdom (an appropriate name for the times we were living in; a ghostly vestige and blank mirror of our former lives), a not at all live “live stream concert”. Would this be what Dylan's ‘live’ work would be from now on in our post-pandemic world?
We needn’t have worried. Since his return to the stage in Milwaukee, WI on November 2nd, 2021 Dylan has barely let up. In the two and a half years since, he has played just over 200 shows across 132 cities and 18 countries. It’s not been quite as World Wide as some would have hoped (there’s been no tour leg in the land Oz, nor have we seen a stop in Luxembourg or Hungary and Bob - I’m ready for a trip to South and Central America when you are!), but the 202 concerts that have were the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour have made it one of the greatest tours of his career, and a showcase for one of his greatest albums.
That first night felt like such a relief. To know that Dylan was on stage somewhere, even though I wasn’t in the same room or even on the same continent, was to know that no matter what else was happening in the world, at least some level of normality had resumed. Thanks to the photographer Duncan Hume, posting a live setlist on Expecting Rain, those of us who were still unable to travel to the US could tune in and see a slew of debuts taking place. A live stream even momentarily popped up on Twitter in time for us to watch a blurry, out of focus Dylan introduce his band.
Once travel restrictions were lifted I made my way straight to New York City and the Beacon Theatre to see the first leg of this tour and felt the huge relief and exhilaration at being back where I belong after so long away - in the crowd at a Bob Dylan show. Since then, I have been lucky enough to have been at a further 20 Rough and Rowdy Ways concerts - so 22 in all - or about 10% of the tour, altogether. From the first leg up to the last, it has been a privilege and a great spectacle to have watched this show morph, transform, shift and grow over time.
Just over half of all the Bob Dylan shows that I’ve been to have now been on the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, so it will be strange to be in the room with him again and potentially not hear Mother of Muses, I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You or I Contain Multitudes again next time out. Indeed, hearing these songs so many times and in so many different iterations has made listening to what is an incredible album in Rough and Rowdy Ways quite a disorienting task. Every time I put it on I think “this isn’t the right order that these songs go in!”, “Well that isn’t how My Own Version of You goes!” or “When is Gotta Serve Somebody” coming on?”.
Thanks to this tour, I’ve also been lucky enough to head back to some cities like Nashville, New York, Dublin and Philadelphia and others; to some incredible new places such as Carcassonne, Orlando and Oxford and also to some truly memorable, unforgettable and life-changing places for the first time like Tokyo and Memphis.
It’s also led me to meet a wonderful array of fellow and like-minded Bob fans. Since the pandemic, it’s felt like the number of us who travel from city to city and follow the tour around has grown; the amount of shows we’re all seeing has rapidly climbed and we are all making the most of the time we have left on the road with Bob, and making up for time lost to the pandemic.
After years of crossing paths and attending plenty of the same shows without actually bumping into each other, I finally met every touring Dylan fans hero Sue Osborne. Surely only Bob and His Band have been present at more Rough and Rowdy Ways shows than her?
At these shows, I’ve also crossed paths with a wonderful cast of Dylan fans including Ray Padgett, Michael Glover Smith, Laura Tenschert, Anne Margaret Daniels, Stu Levitan, Melanie Young, Constantine Sandis, Malcolm Hamilton Barr, KG Miles, Allison Rapp, Steven, Simon, Adam, Michael, Sergi, Peki, Graham, Irene, Chammy, Henry, Erin, Marcus, Tony, Elizabeth, Kait, Caroline, Paul, Bill, Micah, Gary and all the rest. It’s been a pleasure to get to know everyone, to share these moments with them and share these experiences with other people to whom this music and performances have and do mean so much. I’ve got nothing but affection for all those who sailed with me.
Owing to the Yondr pouches, I’ve found that waiting in your seat for the show to start without a phone in your hand has led to more pre and post-show discussions with the other fans in the room than before, too, the best of which came this year in Orlando with an elderly couple who had just moved up from Key West and mentioned beforehand that they didn’t know what the setlist was going to be, but that they hoped they would hear some songs from the new album and preferably with some new arrangements thrown in. It’s what I wish every neighbour had said before the show.
As well as leading you to discussions with your neighbours before the show, the Yondr pouches also help you focus during it, as well. With no thought in your mind of capturing a quick photo (they’re always grainy and blurry anyway), you can give yourself over to the evening's events and be completely present in the moment.
If this is the end of this tour, then it may also be the end of the line for some of these songs on stage. If it is the last time that we’ll hear songs like Key West or My Own Version of You, then it has been worth going to multiple performances just to see the myriad ways that Dylan can get inside them and make them new again; take them apart and put them back together. These ones, in particular, have taken on many guises. Some nights they’ve worked and some nights they haven’t, but he’s never stopped trying to reach the heart of what each song is and there aren’t many, or maybe even any, other artists who are so frequently reinventing their songs like this and willing to take the chance that the whole thing might just fall apart.
On the face of it, the setlist has been pretty static for the entirety of this tour - indeed, Dylan even broke his own career long record for the amount of consecutive nights that he played the exact same songs - but that doesn’t tell the full story of what has been happening on stage.
To give an example of how creative Dylan and his band are and have been, listen to My Own Version of You from the first and second nights in Orlando. One night, it was a bluesy, almost menacing slow burner and the very next night it was an upbeat, barreling number rolling along with the punches. Then, less than two weeks later I saw it again in Nashville and it had once more morphed completely, this time stripped totally bare and down to its bones. About as sparse as a piece of music can be whilst still being called a song.
My Own Version of You - Orlando March 9th 2024(Spot)
My Own Version of You - Orlando March 10th 2024 (Spot)
My Own Version of You - Nashville March 26th 2024 (Gravenb)
Almost every song has had many different versions and arrangements over the course of the two and a half years. Some have had one-off versions that were tried on stage and never played the same way again whilst some have had slower evolutions and metamorphosed from one stage in their evolution or song cycle over a period of days, weeks or even entire tour legs.
In fact, every song from Rough and Rowdy Ways has had multiple new arrangements, except for Mother of Muses which has remained largely faithful to the album version, aside from a short while on the Euro Fall tour in 2022 when it was given a short instrumental intro of either Oh! Susanna or Shenandoah some nights (on other nights this instrumental flourish would come at the top of the show, or, alternatively not feature at all) but was otherwise performed faithfully to the record.
Similarly, I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You nearly made it to the end of the run without a new arrangement - although unlike Mother of Muses it has differed from the album version throughout it’s life on stage; Bob stretches out the end of each verse to an impossibly long, and impossibly gut-wrenching degree which is surely an example of some of his greatest and most emotive singing from anywhere across his entire career - but during this most recent run of shows, it’s dropped right down in tempo and now comes complete with a beautiful harmonica intro.
As well as new arrangements, a lot of the material Dylan has been playing has undergone lyric re-writes as well. For a while, Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I Go Mine) seemed to have a dummy lyric in the second verse where Dylan would rather mumble a vague rhyme than figure out what he wanted to sing, but has now settled on a new set of lyrics whilst To Be Alone With You, I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight and Gotta Serve Somebody have all received more coherent, and more drastic, rewrites.
Whilst most of the new songs have been altered musically, there have only been a handful of rewrites for the material from Rough and Rowdy Ways itself - a couple of lines have been tweaked across I Contain Multitudes and I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You whilst Crossing the Rubicon - the last track to make its debut from the album - has had some more dramatic additions, including a short lived verse that referenced Marcus Argentarius and made even Dylan’s Juvenal reference in Black Rider seem juvenile. More recently he’s switched out the profane with the profound on this one with another new verse.
On top of the music and the lyrics, Dylan's vocal also shifts and explores new ground night after night. He is singing as well as he has done at any point in the last 25 years and has used his full arsenal of voices over the tour; his gruff bluesman’s bark, his gentle and heartbreaking croon, his country twang and his almost spoken word proselytising. He has dragged phrases out and he's rattled lines off. He’s toyed around with landing a line on the beat, rushing every syllable before his band can catch up and hanging on to a line as long as humanly possible while they vamp behind him. Often, he has done all three in a single song. He's been a menace, a romantic, a threat and a saviour. He's been a trickster and an elder statesman. He’s been lusty and he’s been sweet. He’s gotten low down and he’s flown high. Night after night, he has demonstrated the phrasing that makes him such a unique, accomplished and effective singer.
And it’s not just the arrangements, lyrics and vocal deliveries that have changed and developed over the course of these shows, but both the staging and personnel, as well.
Doug Lancio and Bob Britt joined at the start of the tour, replacing long-time band members Charlie Sexton and Stu Kimball on guitar and have both grown into their roles (although I have never seen any other musician get The Look from Bob Dylan as many times as Bob Britt. If Dylan meant it when he sang that “no man see’s my face and lives”, then Britt is on borrowed time!).
At first, they seemed be alternating in the position of the lead guitar role but that now seems to be firmly in the hands of Bob Britt while Doug Lancio mainly brings a more subtle shading to the troupe, and by the end of the tour was playing a hybrid acoustic rhythm with some beautiful flourishes added in for good measure.
On one notable occasion during the London Palladium residency in 2022, Bob Britt returned home to Nashville for a family commitment for a night, leaving Doug Lancio to - very ably - pick up both lead and rhythm duties by himself on guitar.
X-Pensive Wino Charley Drayton took over from Matt Chamberlain on drums from the start of the tour until the end of 2022’s European run and was a great addition to the group and fascinating to watch. He brought a lot of subtle inventiveness to the group; switching between sticks, brushes and mallets whenever the mood required and even had a chain on hand to drag across his snare drum to give Black Rider an even eerier edge than normal. From the spring 2023 tour of Japan, Jerry Pentecost was behind the drums and brought his own versatility to the programme, and has been a great watch at times as well, as he dramatically windmills his arms to pound the toms in the more raucous moments. His fills are a great sign that Bob is about to let loose on the piano, and when he’s particularly creative with them Dylan will often respond with a glissando up the keys before heading into a solo.
With all that happening on stage, the backdrop has been an evolving and changeable feature, too. For the first half of the tour, the band were lit from underneath with huge, raised square lights which, combined with the huge red velvet curtain that boxes the band in made the proceedings feel like a live production of Twin Peaks.
At times on the 2023 tour, the audience were treated to a peek behind the curtain with an exposed stage wall draped with wires, ladders, buckets or stacked with crates and other materials which gave the impression that Dylan and Co were just having a jam in their garage. At other times, the rear curtain was only partially lifted so nothing was revealed. There have been some showman flourishes, as well, as some shows began with a lowered curtain hiding the stage from view which would rapidly rise out of sight dead on 8pm to reveal that the band were already on stage and starting their song.
In all, the Rough and Rowdy Ways has been unprecedented in Dylan’s career.
He has been a performing artist, in some sense, since the late 1950s and a recording artist since 1961/2. Never before has he toured a single release for this long, putting a new album at the front and centre of his work in this way and building his show around it like this. The closest and most recent comparable example was the Slow Train tour in 1979, but that tour didn’t last nearly as long or travel nearly as far.
More than a footnote at the end of a storied and legendary career, where he could easily please his fans by wheeling out his greatest hits and most loved favourites, Dylan is proudly showing off one of his greatest releases night after night, making sure that we are listening to the artist that he is now and not the artist that he was 50 or 60 years ago. He is still as restless, creative, groundbreaking, innovative and alive as he ever has been and the experience of going to see him perform is all the better for it.
He is showing us his craft, he is showing us how his songs can sound; how they can be taken apart and plied and played with and how you can create a new work from an existing piece. How you can find new ways to express the same sentiment and how to find new sentiments to express with the same songs when put together differently.
On paper, the show has not changed much since that first night in Milwaukee, but really has become an entirely different beast. He might look like he's standing still, but he's moved a million miles.
In some ways, and especially by Never Ending Tour standards, the consistency and the commitment in each of these shows has also been unprecedented from Dylan. For those with ears to hear them, there are plenty of shows from the NET that are hard work to listen to; some periods where it is a real slog through muddy waters to get to the moments of undeniable and unexpected beauty but there was not a bad show on the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour. Dylan's level of commitment, application and performance has been consistently of the highest level. Some nights of course rose above the others, and perhaps the highest heights don't seem as high in contrast to the relative lows, but at no point has he dropped below anything but brilliant.
When pushed by Larry Sloman as to why Blind Willie McTell wasn’t on Infidels, Dylan supposedly said “Oh, Ratso, it’s no big deal. It’s just an album. I’ve made 22 and I’ll make more”. Dylan’s presentation of his latest masterpiece does not indicate that he feels it’s just an album, but one that he wants us to really listen to, to really understand and experience. It also shows us that the most important facet of his work is his live performance. This is where the songs come alive, where they breathe and contract and expand and burst.
For the longest time it seemed unlikely that we’d see many setlist surprises during these shows, as they were so heavily focussed on showcasing both Rough and Rowdy Ways and the Shadow Kingdom selection, but that surprise factor that so many cherish in Dylan’s live work did return in a big way. It started in Summer 2022 when he introduced a couple of Grateful Dead covers to his set, but they soon made way for the Sinatra-era hangovers Melancholy Mood and That Old Black Magic only to reappear in spring the next year in Japan with a flurry of further Dead covers.
By the time he got to Europe in the summer, they were still going strong and as well alongside versions of Not Fade Away, Stella Blue, Truckin’ and West LA Fadeaway was a one-off, wonderful run through Van Morrison’s Into the Mystic in Alicante. Both the final night in Japan and in Europe saw one of the most staggering, haunting vocals as Dylan covered Bob Weir’s Only a River.
Things got even more fun in the fall with a bunch of regional covers on the US tour including Kansas City in Kansas City; a top and tail couple of Chuck Berry tunes in St Louis and the triumvirate of Fathers and Sons in Chicago, Muddy Waters (40 Days and 40 Nights), Howlin’ Wolf (Killing Floor) and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (Born in Chicago). Perhaps the greatest tribute of all was Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me to the End of Love in Montreal.
In true Dylan fashion, as soon as it was reported that he was playing regional covers in the national press, they ceased to appear so by the time I got to the States to see him in Philadelphia and New Jersey, the chance to see him cover a Philly Soul classic or The Boss were slim-to-none.
On the final, and in my opinion best, Rough and Rowdy leg in 2024 the covers came back: Walking By Myself, Roll Over Beethoven, Big River, The Roving Blade, On the Banks of the Old Pontchartrain and Jambalaya (On the Bayeux), Across the Borderline. Interestingly, the number of songs that Dylan covered on this tour (30 different songs in all), is higher than the number of his own compositions that he performed on it (22).
There are likely plenty in the crowd who would rather hear Dylan sing Like a Rolling Stone, Mr Tambourine Man or Maggie’s Farm as faithfully to his album versions as possible, but give me the chance to hear the greatest custodian and interpreter of American song singing Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Nick Gravenites or Muddy Waters alongside almost the entirety of his latest, and one of his greatest masterpieces? I know what I’m picking, and It’s not even close.
And so, with what in time will surely come to be seen alongside the combative 1966 World Tour, Rolling Thunder and Gospel outings (not to mention various NET years and periods) as one of Dylan’s greatest ever tours coming to an end, the standout moments from the 22 magical shows that I saw?
Hearing Dylan’ playfully tell the audience member who called out to request Pretty Boy Floyd that they were at the wrong show and should be seeing Springsteen instead, way back in New York in 2021.
Hearing Every Grain of Sand at every show, Dylan’s most perfect song on the human condition. Written half his life ago and now delivered with the wisdom of each day that has passed since. It’s a fitting show-stopper to any show.
Every Grain of Sand - New York City November 16 2023 (Blue Chair)
The never ending pause Dylan takes between the lines “when you go your way” and “and I'll go mine”, particularly in Amsterdam when the gap was especially ostentatious.
Dylan actually running back on to the stage and looking almost embarrassed at the thunderous reception he was receiving at the end of the final show in London in 2022 when the audience simply would not stop cheering for him, even pressing his arms out in a gesture as if to say “that’s enough now, come on!”.
The way Dylan messed up a piano line during That Old Black Magic in Dublin and took off in a fantastical, jazzy direction way up in the high notes - a motif I’ve never heard him repeat or attempt.
Hearing Not Fade Away in Tokyo and the hair-raising response from what was otherwise a subdued (but still enthusiastic) crowd, and the first verse of Brokedown Palace which was as unfathomably beautiful as it was fleeting.
Brokedown Palace - Tokyo April 14 2024 (Spot)
Getting to our seat in the stunning castle venue in Carcassonne and realising we were close enough to the stage that we could almost touch it and would be able to see every muscle move in Dylan’s face as he sang and played.
The instrumental break in False Prophet that night when the band crashed and modulated into what felt like a new dimension; wonderfully disorienting us and blowing our minds before snapping back into the verse as if waking from a dream. I’ve eagerly awaited that moment in the night ever since.
Every single version of I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You and Mother of Muses that we’ve been lucky enough to see.
Each transcendent, inspired and inspiring, humbling instrumental take off in I'll Be Your Baby Tonight, when the band kick off from the surf-rock riff and push out into orbit.
The way that Dylan was toying with the audience in Philadelphia - having hidden behind his piano and with his hat blocking his face all night, finally standing up to join us in dancing along as he sang Goodbye Jimmy Reed and realising the reception he received just for standing. Sitting out of view again and then bouncing up for each instrumental verse.
The almost flamenco style piano that Dylan played throughout I Contain Multitudes on the first night in New Jersey in 2023 and really, the staggering way his piano playing has developed over the course of the tour. Whilst he’s always been a unique and enjoyable player, he has begun to perform on the instrument on another level on this tour; whether he’s locking in to a musical phrase with the wizard multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron, pounding out the rock & roll triplets or launching into an audacious single note solo that builds into playing about every note he can, he has added flourishes to his playing you won’t hear anywhere else in his career here.
Every gleeful delivery of the line “You know what I mean? You know exactly what I mean.”
The entirety of the two shows in Orlando and seeing and feeling the euphoria of Michael Glover Smith running towards me down the middle of the road after the show, watching him leap into and punch the air and exclaim with joy at what a spectacle we’d just seen and speechlessly embracing; knowing that that show had made someone else feel so for real, someone who feels the way that I feel. Being moved to tears standing outside that venue knowing I’d just seen a show so good that it shook me to my foundation, and knowing that there were others around who felt the same.
The hilariously brilliant Istanbul (Not Constantinople) version of When I Paint My Masterpiece, which shouldn’t work but absolutely does, which prompted the man sitting next to me to lean in and say, “I don’t recognise this one, what could it be?”.
When I Paint My Masterpiece (Istanbul Version) - Orlando FL March 9 2024 (Spot)
Later that night, feeling the same confusion when the band broke into a new arrangement of Gotta Serve Somebody that it took me until the chorus to realise even was Gotta Serve Somebody and realising that after all these years, I was finally getting to play a version of “What’s that song?”.
Finally making it in to the official Bob Dylan Fan Club.
The stop-start breakdown version of To Be Alone With You in Nashville that felt like the entire band were walking along a tightrope and were about to fall, or like a train going too fast for the tracks that it was on but managing to hold on to the rails just when it seems most improbable and which highlighted what a monumentally talented and entertaining band of musicians they each and collectively are. The feeling of profundity at watching such masters of their craft at work, and seeing that they - like everybody else in the room - had their eyes entirely glued to Bob Dylan to see what he was going to do next.
The chaos of the first night in Memphis - when the band came out and started playing with Bob nowhere to be seen, and the adoring and grateful roar he received as he wandered out halfway through the opening song, before spending half of the show bemoaning his ear monitors to the sound technician at the side of the stage, even leaving the stage entirely while his band vamped on a solemn My Own Version of You (and even muttering “Shit, it’s worse!” into the mic when he came back on) and yet somehow getting better and better as the night wore on.
At the second Memphis show, realising that Dylan was playing guitar off-stage on Watching the River Flow and then the way he beat up his piano all night with abandon once he made it into the spotlight. Once again, the instrumental break in False Prophet but this time, solely down to Dylan’s piano as in the final two breaks he thundered down the keys; maniacal, hellish, cascading, demonic and so, utterly inspired. Without even knowing it, I leapt to my feet and held my head in my hand in disbelief that anything could even sound like this.
Sneaking into the front row before the end of the night and mouthing a “thank you” to Dylan, and receiving a nod and a smile back before he took his final bow and headed off the stage.
Collectively these 22 shows have been among the greatest nights and experiences of my life. If indeed, as it seems likely, the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour 21-24 has come to an end, then being able to thank the man responsible for them in the final moment of my final show, well, nothing could have closed up the book with a more perfect ending.
Thanks Matthew! Order his book of more ‘On The Road With Dylan Stories’ at Amazon. Reach him “@t0mbstoneblues” on Twitter.
What a great summation of the RRW tour. It has been an incredible ride and no doubt will be remember as one of the great tours. So fortunate to have witnessed and absorbed 10 shows on this tour.
great write-up. Thank you from all of us who couldn't be at 22 shows :) ( ahem, I have met Sue Osborne )