Bob Dylan – The Roving Blade Review

With the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour not dark yet it is worth returning to the best performances Bob Dylan gave on this recent tour. Three years’ worth of global travel, delivering the smooth results of his 2020 masterclass. The Roving Blade has it all. Or at least the performance of the traditional Irish folk song at a set in Charlotte, North Carolina, does. Dylan is a careering knife, a sharp object who can cut through the crowds with his somewhat controversial decision to bar phones and electronic devices. Considering you are listening now to a live recording of a no electronics show, we can see how well that has gone. Listen in to the full performance and fish out the song allegedly first found in The Irish Robbers’ Adventures in 1788. Dylan provides the US crowd with cover after cover, and this, just his fifth performance of the classic track, is no exception to quality. 

What a way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. A song about life on the road. A beautiful, acoustic performance twenty years on from the last time Dylan performed the song. Little has changed in the interim. Dylan is still a figure of interest, and The Roving Blade could just as well be about him, had it not been written up about the early ramblers who made their way to the United States. A stunned silence is carried over the audience and with it comes a chance for Dylan to express his love for a song which has received little love from other artists. Norman Blake may have covered it once. But Dylan appears fascinated by it and fits it into shows as and where he can, so long as the context is correct. He is the roving blade and there is no mistake about it.  

The Roving Blade and the wider sections of this tour date showcase the improvements to Dylan’s voice. He has been hit with the criticisms of a weaker, warbling voice but therein lies a charm. Moments of strength still shine through and for The Roving Blade, there is an intensity in the stripped-back style. Just Dylan and a piano, making good on the drifting tour artist. Now suited to life on the road and seemingly unable to create great works without the constant shuffle of new towns and experiences, Dylan has, like it or not, become the character of The Roving Blade. He does not go robbing on King’s highway, but Dylan does stand as a “wild and wicked” youth. Did he not garner such a reputation in his heyday? 

One of the best to do it and a song which seems rather fitting, with a Robin Hood-like strike of disappointed parents and robbing the rich. Dylan does not exactly take from the rich though his ticket prices would certainly edge him towards daylight robbery. But if the trade-off is hearing some of his finest songs and the odd cover of a traditional piece then it is fair game. The Roving Blade is one of those sudden, exciting pieces of live performance. Something so out of the blue and demanding. A necessary glance at his long and winding career, how it got him to this point and how it all ties neatly together with a look at himself through the words of a man bound to the 18th century.