Bob Dylan may wrap up Rough and Rowdy Ways tour soon, but it will remain a career-best achievement 

With the announcement of a one-night-only summer show, Bob Dylan may be set to wind down the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour. No point eulogising, though, the man is not dead and the quality backlog of ripped shows from his days on-stage from 1961 onwards is not going anywhere. But there are signs his five-year touring schedule could be coming to a close. Dylan did not tour Rough and Rowdy Ways in the year the album was released; being fenced in by a global pandemic is a fair excuse for not getting out on the road. But what the veteran songwriter has done, not just with the album but the tour too, is reimagine his work, inevitably. What he did deeper than that is highlight how even artists whose careers were at their very best in the 1960s and 1970s can come back stronger. Dylan is no stranger to a comeback, doing so with Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind, and just about every original album he has released this century, but Rough and Rowdy Ways is a rare beast, and we will be worse off without it on stage.  

With the Spring 2026 tour possibly the last we’ll see of Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways, or perhaps even the artist as well, there is a sense of winding it all down. That sentiment lingered at a Royal Albert Hall show in 2024, though, so take this feeling with grains of salt and every grain of sand. There is a finality that stems not from Dylan’s work, but from the age. The sheer facts of life are that we will lose many legends in the years to come. Last year saw the passing of Diane Keaton, David Lynch, and Brian Wilson. Titans in their own way. What lingers as tragic is that these are sudden passings, the artist at hand no longer allowed to tie up their work, to bow out on their own terms. Few can do so, and we may be idealising the works left behind by David Bowie and Leonard Cohen to think any performer can tie up all their loose ends. For Dylan, though, there is a sense of finality to Rough and Rowdy Ways.  

Increasingly, it feels like a swansong not driven by sentiment but by clarity. It is some of his strongest work this century, and it fares rather well when paired with his all-time greats from the past. Listen on through to Rough and Rowdy Ways again, it’s Dylan picking through his memories and the contemporary artists who rose to fame alongside him. His influences, his feelings on events which appear to have shaped his worldview and what he writes on. It’s a dreamy experience for those who are deeply interested in what he has to say about everything, and that much may be why it’ll be his last studio album. It prompted him not only to connect with himself as a writer in a more direct way, as found on I Contain Multitudes and Murder Most Foul, but also to revisit some of his classics with Shadow Kingdom.  

Whatever magic was at play on Shadow Kingdom has remained in place for the five years of this themed tour. A few deep cuts within the set like When I Paint My Masterpiece and Every Grain of Sand match up well with the likes of Desolation Row and It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. What’s crucial about all of this is how their new context, the fresh instrumental arrangement which Dylan and the band give these songs, matches up with what the Rough and Rowdy Ways mood is. A first-time experience in Hull, followed by shows in Liverpool, Nottingham, and Leeds, has profiled Dylan, in the UK at least, as a man who is inherently interested in where his songs can be taken next. Audience doesn’t factor into it, he proved as much with Shadow Kingdom. What matters is that these songs are still living.  

You can read the rest of this feature on Cult Following’s newly launched Substack.