Bob Dylan – Nashville Night One Review

A year on from a masterful Bob Dylan performance, it is only right to return to it. His first night in Nashville is a resounding one. His time in the Brooklyn Bowl is not too different to other performances from the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, but it has a few pieces of brilliance. Those sleight-of-hand moments make up the main reason we return to gigs of the past. A few choice blues moments, a neat Johnny Cash cover and a set comprised of pre-summer changes. The Outlaw Tour mixed things up a bit for Dylan, but Nashville provided one of the last nights to hear a setlist he had played for two years. Jack White and T Bone Burnett in attendance, and mentioned by Dylan in a rare spiel to the crowd. A nice tribute, but not the point. 

Crash through those cries of “we love you, Bob,” and into a defiantly different Rough and Rowdy Ways experience. It is only by going back to these recordings that the instrumental changes reveal themselves. A deeper piano boom for Nashville Night One is where the opening differs. Just a few words from Watching the River Flow elicits a volatile reaction from the crowd. Those screams are essential to any great recording – though not enough to overwhelm the man on stage. Dylan sounds divine here. A fantastic recording and also a moment of clarity for his Rough and Rowdy Ways material. Reduced instrumentals for Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine are an astonishing effort. It highlights Dylan as a vocalist more than anything but still leaves some room for playful piano work and tempo changes. Those elongations are a stickler for some, for others a monumental next step in old material.  

Whatever the case these are moments where Dylan finds himself pairing the music of his past with that of his future. Rough and Rowdy Ways is a broad enough project, leaving plenty of room for those tones and strengths of previously overlooked material like Every Grain of Sand and Gotta Serve Somebody. Those reductions continue on Key West (Philosopher Pirate), where instrumental work from a usually booming Tony Garnier and Donnie Herron takes a backseat. Genuinely beautiful piano work from Dylan is the game-changer here, and it lasts for more than a few songs found within. It continues when the rest of the band come back swinging on Gotta Serve Somebody, a moody blues number readied and evolved by Dylan, whose religious period has stuck around for the modern-day tours. Rough and Rowdy Ways certainly has faith running through it.  

Recontextualising those decades-old songs is a way of getting to the roots of Rough and Rowdy Ways. It works a treat here. Tender moments, displays of real brilliance in a set which rarely wavered, bar a few covers. Big River, a cover of the Cash classic, is a nice addition here. Even the crowd hollers, which just settle in as entitled chances to throw generic words at the man on stage, feel gentle and at least well-placed. What reaction do they expect from Dylan? A man notorious for not speaking to the audience all that much is unlikely to say more than “thank you”. Irrespective, this is one of the finest Rough and Rowdy Ways performances out there. Start here if you missed it, or if you miss it.