With nearly five years of Rough and Rowdy Ways live performances, it is easy to access recordings of the show. Even with those Yondr pouches, the public has managed to capture all those wild moments, every breath from Bob Dylan, for personal use. Being at a show is an experience rarely replicated by the live album, official or not, but Rough and Rowdy Ways: Live is an exceptional document. This is what fans who cannot find the time to see Dylan on stage can use to hear those changing arrangements, the ever-present thrill of spontaneous performance. Though the core may be the same, the instrumentation and vocal changes made around those pieces on stage are clear. A studio album should be amplified and adapted on stage, and Dylan has done that to all but one of the Rough and Rowdy Ways songs these last four years.
What Dylan adds is the conviction of a voice amplified by the bigger stage, the occasion of an arena. But it is not the songwriter who brings out the best in these songs, not really. With firm hands like Tony Garnier sticking around for so many years, it is down to his work to whip the new instrumentalists into shape. What separates each Rough and Rowdy Ways show is the possibility of fresh notes, the shock of a new route through an old favourite. Though those moments are frequent, particularly with the adaptation of When I Paint My Masterpiece to this slowed groove, this rock-adjacent, rhythm and blues showcase, it is the contemporary material which is pulled apart most of all. For a man who has constantly pulled apart his greatest hits, Dylan sounds relatively satisfied with the fundamentals of his latest efforts. What makes Rough and Rowdy Ways so special is the drifting feeling Dylan and his band create.
I Contain Multitudes features this best of all. Fast cars, fast food, and days spent painting, the placidity which Dylan deals with is backed by the understated guitar work. Softly played, never threatening to overwhelm Dylan’s vocal work, but always present alongside those delicate bits of percussion. Listen to it rise, and you can hear why the live developments are often on par with the studio piece. There is no greater spiritual lift than hearing an octogenarian musician develop his thoughts on the last sixty years through slamming a piano and bidding farewell to blues giant Jimmy Reed. Dylan offers plenty more than the passing gig-goer would suggest he does, because Rough and Rowdy Ways does not play ball with the arena expectation. No screens, no phones, it all feels a bit small-scale. But where there is demand to hear Dylan, there will be expectations of matching the size of the arena.
He is better suited to the halls his heroes played, the small theatres and dive bars, but if a song like My Own Version of You can fill a ten-thousand capacity venue, then why stop him? This live compilation, unofficial it may be, is the closest we will ever get to a contemporary live album release from Dylan. Shadow Kingdom scratched an itch for classic tracks, but those who want to hear the modern turn from Dylan on contemporary songs, those pieces of music which reflect on a lengthy career which will join the historied figures he sings of, then there is no greater experience than Rough and Rowdy Ways: Live. A bit of an underwhelming choice for My Own Version of You, but you would be hard-pressed to find better renditions of Goodbye Jimmy Reed and Crossing the Rubicon.
