MANKATO 鈥� Why Mankato? Why anywhere?
Having sold his song catalog in 2020 for an amount estimated at over $300 million, Bob Dylan could comfortably park his touring convoy and spend his days staring out at the Malibu surf, or or doing whatever any other reasonably fit 83-year-old might choose to get up to. He must have learned cribbage in Hibbing, right?
ADVERTISEMENT
Instead, Dylan is continuing what fans have affectionately called a "Never Ending Tour" since it began in the 1980s, with the singer-songwriter booking one road trip after another regardless of what the traditional music industry album-promotion logic might dictate. The result has been that Dylan, one of music's most famously reclusive and enigmatic figures, is also oddly accessible 鈥� on his terms.
Friday night at the Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center (capacity 6,500), every mobile device brought by the sellout audience was encased in an opaque padded pouch, making Dylan's show a "phone-free" experience. The entire concert was performed under nearly unchanging low light, basking Dylan and his four-piece band in a twilight glow and leaving the rest of the arena in total darkness.
Then there was the set list. Characteristically, Dylan leaned into his newest material, with over half of the 17-song set drawn from his most recent studio album, "Rough and Rowdy Ways" (2020).
Even so, Dylan skipped that album's most acclaimed song, "Murder Most Foul." recently ranked it one of the 10 best songs of the decade so far, along with Low's "Days Like These.") Of course, that song is a 17-minute ballad about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, so the young children falling asleep at Dylan's show might have thanked him for the omission.
The crowd was notably multi-generational, as the artist's long career stretches to encompass listeners who have cumulatively witnessed over half the nation's history 鈥� from Dylan's Duluth grandmother, born in 1879, to kids at Friday's show who might have been born during the Biden administration.
Kids who more typically watch Ms. Rachel videos than Bob Dylan clips might have been present so their parents could tell them, one day, "You were there."
Supported on rail-thin legs as he stood playing a piano at center stage, Dylan is the embodiment of a living legend: the only popular musician to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. He didn't bother to show up for the Nobel award ceremony, but there he was Friday night, live and in person in Mankato.
ADVERTISEMENT
Just as experienced fans weren't expecting Dylan to play the hits, they similarly weren't holding their breath for a shout-out to the state where the artist was born and raised, despite Friday's gig being his only scheduled appearance in Minnesota this year. It was also Dylan's first show in Minnesota since 2019, when he played 鈥� you got it 鈥� Mankato.
Dylan only spoke once, to briefly introduce the members of his band. Dylan's sidemen have been so stalwart that the big news on this tour is the presence of a new drummer, Anton Fig: a longtime member of David Letterman's house band and a past Dylan collaborator.
Fans might have reasonably wished Dylan would pick up a guitar for a song or two, but no dice. The headliner remained behind his piano, his most typical tour perch for the past two decades, even while playing guitar briefly during "It Ain't Me Babe." (Dylan has explained that choice by saying he hasn't been able to find a keyboard player who can perform in exactly the style he wants.)
Dylan's instrument drove the sound, with his band members sometimes pulling back into a quiet rumble of instrumental color 鈥� as in the spare "Black Rider." On other songs, the band snapped into a pulsing beat 鈥� as in Dylan's current interpretation of his bleak classic, "Desolation Row." That number landed so lightly on Friday, one attendee near the front was even moved to jump up and dance in the center aisle.
The title of "Rough and Rowdy Ways" is somewhat ironic, given the album's largely autumnal soundscape, but there in fact is a calculated roughness to the material, and not only in the timbre of Dylan's infamously rasping voice. As a lyricist, Dylan still has a peerless gift for seemingly offhand musings that can quickly open into an unexpected moment of reverence or a razor-sharp rejoinder.
That album set the tone for Friday's set, with the band eschewing precious flourishes and Dylan himself playing a handful of searching harmonica parts in his urgent signature style. Although he cut a slight figure at the piano, he proved just as capable of pounding the keys as he was during his
Songs often emerged as if out of the mist, band members sounding to be tuning their instruments and noodling around until suddenly a hook locked in.
ADVERTISEMENT
When Dylan did dip into his vast back catalog, it was for some of the more laconic songs in his oeuvre, among them the sweetly romantic "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" (with a slow, theatrical build to open the set) and the aptly titled "Watching the River Flow."
In a set that left entire eras untouched, Dylan leaned gently into the period in the late 1960s and early '70s when he sidestepped critics' expectations that he continue to produce one world-changing album after another. Instead, he wrote understated yet substantial songs that helped shape the genre known today as Americana.
There was a time when Dylan was known for drastic reinventions of his songs' arrangements, continually turning his catalog inside out. That tendency has waned, but he still likes to mix it up, as in Friday's syncopated take on "When I Paint My Masterpiece." Even some devoted fans didn't seem to recognize the song, known for its sighing arrangement by The Band, until Dylan enunciated the title phrase.
Dylan tends to steer clear of direct political commentary these days 鈥� see the recent biopic, "A Complete Unknown," for the backstory there 鈥� but his fans haven't forgotten where he stands on the country's increasingly divided ideological spectrum. They made that clear with loud cheers at a lyric that would have been unremarkable just a few months ago. In the song "Key West (Philosopher Pirate)," there's a mention of the Gulf of Mexico. Suffice it to say that when it comes to referencing that body of water, Bob Dylan is not yielding to
"A Complete Unknown," made with arm's-length participation by Dylan (he didn't meet with star Timoth茅e Chalamet, but dispatched supportive sentiments to "Timmy" via social media), captures the iconoclastic posture Dylan has taken for his entire career.
It gets complicated to maintain that posture when you, yourself, become an icon, but it must be a little easier onstage in Mankato, Minnesota, than at a splashy celebration for the opening of the (Dylan did not attend).
Over 60 years after leaving the North Country for parts East, Dylan makes his occasional returns as a journeyman musician. He was firmly in that mode Friday night, although only Dylan could have filled a small-city arena for a hushed evening of cryptic songs arranged as if for a nightclub at the end of the world.
ADVERTISEMENT
Setlist
"I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" (from album "John Wesley Harding," 1967)
"It Ain't Me Babe" ("Another Side of Bob Dylan," 1964)
"I Contain Multitudes" ("Rough and Rowdy Ways," 2020)
"False Prophet" ("Rough and Rowdy Ways")
"When I Paint My Masterpiece" (written by Dylan, first recorded in 1971 by The Band)
"Black Rider" ("Rough and Rowdy Ways")
"My Own Version of You" ("Rough and Rowdy Ways")
"To Be Alone With You" ("Nashville Skyline," 1969)
"Crossing the Rubicon" ("Rough and Rowdy Ways")
"Desolation Row" ("Highway 61 Revisited," 1965)
"Key West (Philosopher Pirate)" ("Rough and Rowdy Ways")
"Watching the River Flow" ("Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II," 1971)
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" ("Bringing It All Back Home," 1965)
"I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You" ("Rough and Rowdy Ways")
"Mother of Muses" ("Rough and Rowdy Ways")
"Goodbye Jimmy Reed" ("Rough and Rowdy Ways")
"Every Grain of Sand" ("Shot of Love," 1981)
This article was updated at 8:17 a.m. April 7 to add information about Dylan briefly playing guitar. It was originally posted at 11:42 a.m. April 5.
The Trust Project
