Last Night in Alpharetta (by Noel Mayeske)

2025-07-25, Ameris Bank Amphitheatre, Alpharetta, GA

Photo by Duncan Hume

Last night the Outlaw Tour resumed in Alpharetta, Georgia, the same spot the first Outlaw show in 2024 went down. I wasn’t there for this one, but Noel Mayeske was. Noel is a graphic designer who designed, among other things, Pledging My Time! So he’s the reason it looks so sharp.

Over to Noel…

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What a difference a year makes.

A year ago, I attended Dylan’s show in this same modern, breezy amphitheatre, when he first joined Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Tour. Speculation was rife then about where thatinflection point might take him, setlist-wise, after three solid years of Rough & Rowdy Ways immersion. (That was also the show where I met our man Ray in person, after working with him by email for months in 2023 on his book production.)

That 2024 show turned the setlist algorithm on its head, including three songs he still has only played on that one night (“My Babe,” “Cold, Cold Heart” and “The Fool”), as well as a reacquaintance with older songs mostly left behind in the R&RW era.

Last night’s show in the same venue – with Dylan remaining the penultimate act in a traveling circus of acts led by 92-year-old Willie Nelson – yielded few surprises compared to recent Outlaw shows this summer. But we did get a pair of songs not heard in some time – the first proper concert “Positively 4^th Street” since 2013 (not counting the Farm Aid surprise in 2023) and the first “Rainy Day Women” since last year. “Blind Willie McTell” didn’t make the cut this time, but the two-for-one trade feels like a worthy bargain to me.

Dylan often gets critiqued by folks like me for unvarying setlists. But last night, only two songs were repeated from the prior year’s set here – two of my least favorites, “Early Roman Kings” and “Under the Red Sky.” Things have changed.