Bob Dylan Kicks Off His Four Year Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour

Bob Dylan has started his 2021 Rough and Rowdy Ways tour as he travels the world well into 2024.

Like previous Dylan tours this one is also about the now, not the then. Dylan always performs in the moment and ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ is no exception. Eight of the Nine tracks from disc one of Rough and Rowdy Way’ are in the setlist. (The second disc with the 16 minute epic ‘Murder Most Foul’ is not included (so far) in the show. Considering its length, it will be a rare addition if it is at all.

Dylan is never about his greatest hits. There are no chart hits in the setlist unless you want to consider 1979’s ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’ as a hit because it reached no 24 in the USA. Not that it matters. Dylan was never a singles chart performer. His only “pop period (ie: when he was having a run of Top 40 hits) was in 1965 and 1966). His only American top 40 appearances were:

Subterranean Homesick Blues (no 39, 1965)
Like A Rolling Stone (no 2, 1965)
Positively 4th Street (no 7, 1965)
Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (no 2, 1966)
I Want You (no 20, 1966)
Just Like A Woman (no 33, 1966)
Lay Lady Lay (no 7, 1969)
Knocking On Heaven’s Door (no 12, 1973)
Tangled Up In Blue (no 31, 1975)
Hurricane (no 33, 1975)
Gotta Serve Somebody (1979)

Dylan’s first show was 2 November 2021 in Milwaukee.

SETLIST:

Watching the River Flow (from Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol II)
Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine (from Blonde on Blonde, 1966)
I Contain Multitudes (from Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020)
False Prophet (from Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020)
Simple Twist of Fate (from Blood On The Tracks, 1975)
My Own Version of You (from Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020)
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (from John Wesley Harding, 1967)
Black Rider (from Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020)
Melancholy Mood (from Fallen Angels, 2016)
Mother of Muses (from Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020)
Gotta Serve Somebody (from Slow Train Coming, 1979)
Key West (Philosopher Pirate) (from Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020)
Early Roman Kings (from Tempest, 2012)
Soon After Midnight (from Tempest, 2012)
I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You (from Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020)
Goodbye Jimmy Reed (from Rough and Rowdy Ways, 2020)

Encore:
Love Sick (from Time Out of Mind, 1997)
It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry (from Highway 61 Revisited, 1965)

The only variation to the setlist was 5 November in Cleveland when he replaced ‘Love Sick’ and ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh’ with ‘Every Grain of Sand’ (from Shot of Love, 1981).