Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways, Athens Review

What a treat it has been for those who have been to the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, or listen in at home to these collected bootleg recordings. It feels like just yesterday security was frisking a bag filled with Wings records. But the day of putting your phone into a plastic wallet later smashed open on a bollard outside the Bonus Arena in Hull was two years ago. The times are always changing, as Bob Dylan warned listeners in the 1960s, and from there we are left chasing the high of glorious nights. Sitting next to those who claimed to know Tony Blair, chattering away about following Dylan on tour, a bold move when tickets were £100 a pop. But listening back as the first cracks of warm weather appear is a stellar way to spend a late-March evening. No better recording to select from than the BennyBoy release, Athens 2024.  

Listen to the river flow then, on one of the more recent recordings of Dylan’s live sets. Expectedly tight work from a man who has proven all he needed was a swing to rhythm and blues. With swinging new sounds for the likes of Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine), the intensity for classics brings about reinvention. It can be heard best of all on Shadow Kingdom, though this addition here, the clarity of the vocals echoing through The Classic Center Theatre, is tremendous. I Contain Multitudes, for all its instrumental sincerity, has Dylan wander off, his vocals slipping into inference or gaps of where the hardest-hitting lyrics should, particularly in the usually powerful line ripped from its title. 

The likes of False Prophet and the twinkling piano notes to indicate the start of When I Paint My Masterpiece are bordering on perfect. With string sections and a blues rhythm detailed through this one, the burning wonders of a Dylan live set are brought right to the front. There comes the swinging tunes of a man with a new burst of energy for his live performances. Black Rider still has the rushed appeal, the repetition of its title track marks the conversational horrors with a quarter of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It feels eerily like the Scott Walker essential, The Seventh Seal, in its live form. Dylan at his best, as is displayed by this piece here, provides a vitality and urgency to materials which shine a light on his well-documented past. 

This live show may go down in history, and not just for its Johnny Cash cover. Big River feels like a nice precursor to Mother of Muses. It is as close as Dylan has to a true muse now his best works are safely locked in. Paying his respect to the greats is a wonderful occurrence and Big River is no stranger to the historied live shows Dylan so frequently partakes in. The chances of hearing it live and in person are slim, but thanks to the wonders of smuggling small pieces of technology into gigs which they are prohibited from entering, we have another slice of exceptional cover work on our hands. Keeping pace with these live shows is not necessary, though it is still a consistent surprise to hear covers, quality takes on classic songs and at its core, a lively Dylan with renewed energy spilling from the stage.