A handful of changes were made to Bob Dylan‘s Outlaw Music Festival setlist last night, reintroducing Highway 61 Revisited to his set.
The song has featured somewhat frequently in Dylan’s setlists over the last few years, but a show at the Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheatre in Virginia Beach marks the first performance of the classic track this year. It also marked a new cover song being added to the setlist, with Dylan having last performed it in 2002. Highway 61 Revisited and Searching for a Soldier’s Grave replaced the previous two new additions to the set. Dylan had changed the latter half of his show to feature Positively 4th Street and Rainy Day Woman #35 & 12, playing both for the first time this year at a show at the Ameris Bank Amphitheatre on July 25.
Last night’s performance (July 29) had Dylan perform seventeen songs total, with two new additions to the set. The rest of the set is unchanged but features some of Dylan’s best-known songs and a handful of covers, one of which confused audiences on its first performance. A setlist for the Virginia Beach show can be found below.
- Gotta Serve Somebody
- I Can Tell (Bo Diddley cover)
- Forgetful Heart
- Axe and the Wind (George Butler cover)
- To Ramona
- Early Roman Kings
- Under the Red Sky
- I’ll Make It All Up to You (Charlie Rich cover)
- All Along the Watchtower
- ‘Til I Fell in Love With You
- Desolation Row
- Love Sick
- Share Your Love With Me (Bobby Bland cover)
- Blind Willie McTell
- Highway 61 Revisited
- Searching for a Soldier’s Grave (The Anglin Twins cover)
- Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
Dylan made Searching for a Soldier’s Grave a mainstay for his shows between 2000 and 2002, though this is the first time since a show in Seattle, Washington, that he has performed the Anglin Twins song.
Highway 61 Revisited has been a staple of Dylan’s shows in the last few years when not on the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour schedule. Dylan would perform the song in his previous Outlaw Music Festival outings, though this marks the first performance of the song this year. Its most recent performance before this was the Outlaw Music Festival date in Wheatland, California.
It should come as no surprise to attendees that Dylan is adding classic songs to his setlist, with Mr. Tambourine Man performed for the first time in fifteen years at an earlier show on the Outlaw Music Festival tour. Another classic song, The Times They Are A-Changin’ was also added to the setlist, but the two tracks have since been lost in the shuffle.
Dylan played The Times They Are A-Changin’ just once in 2010, at a performance held at the White House. The last public performance of the song was given in Chukchansi Park, Fresno, in August 2009. Dylan also caused some confusion with his Axe and the Wind cover on the first show, with many left wondering what the song was. It took hours for at-home Dylan experts to figure out the cover. The song has featured in most shows since then.
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