For the first time in nearly five years, Bob Dylan has dropped almost all of Rough and Rowdy Ways from his setlist.
The veteran songwriter took to the Wiener Stadthalle stage in Vienna, Austria, and performed just two songs from his most recent studio album. Past performances on the Lights of Autumn tour have included at least four songs from the 2020 album. But Dylan has slowly but surely been making room for Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft deep cuts, some of which he has rarely ever performed until now. The Lights of Autumn tour has been full of surprises, and the biggest of them all is perhaps seeing Dylan perform only Black Rider and Goodbye Jimmy Reed for the Rough and Rowdy Ways selection. Dylan had performed False Prophet occasionally on this tour but has seemingly replaced it with songs from Tempest.
A full setlist for Dylan’s show at the Stadthalle in Vienna from tonight (November 11) can be found below.
- Watching the River Flow
- Love Sick
- It Ain’t Me, Babe
- Tryin’ to Get to Heaven
- High Water (For Charley Patton)
- I Can Tell (Bo Diddley cover)
- Black Rider
- Tangled Up in Blue
- When I Paint My Masterpiece
- Not Dark Yet
- I Can’t Seem to Say Goodbye (Jerry Lee Lewis cover)
- Early Roman Kings
- Soon After Midnight
- Million Miles
- Under the Red Sky
- Sugar Baby
- Goodbye Jimmy Reed
- Every Grain of Sand
Sugar Baby and Million Miles, from Love and Theft and Time Out of Mind, respectively, had rarely been performed live by Dylan until this tour. They appear to be relatively solid setlist staples at this point but could be shuffled out as Girl from the North Country was. Dylan will perform several more dates on the Lights of Autumn tour before concluding his 2026 dates.
Dylan has continued to surprise on the Lights of Autumn tour, with heavily reworked instrumentals on Tryin’ to Get to Heaven and lyrical revisions for Blood on the Tracks classic, Tangled Up in Blue. Rough and Rowdy Ways songs which dominated Dylan’s set for the last five years have been dropped, seemingly in favour of Time Out of Mind songs like Tryin’ to Get to Heaven and Million Miles.
Dylan has been changing his setlist slightly from show to show, with the likes of Blind Willie McTell, Tangled Up in Blue, Girl From the North Country, and Spirit on the Water debuting this year. Dylan will play further dates in Belgium (which Cult Following will be covering), Switzerland, and the United Kingdom (also covered by Cult Following).
Fans would have to cast their mind back a little for the last rendition of Girl from the North Country, a classic from Dylan’s discography. The song’s performance tonight is the first since Dylan performed at The Anthem in Washington D.C. back in December 2019. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan cut would feature as a Johnny Cash collaboration on Dylan’s Nashville Skyline album in 1969. Dylan has performed the song more than 590 times since 1963.
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