Last Night in Bowling Green

2026-04-16, SKYPAC, Bowling Green, KY

Photo by Graham Gaskill

A rocking Rough and Rowdy Ways show? A year or two ago, the idea seemed impossible. The trend lines, for a long time, moved in the other direction. Circa 2023, 2024, I remarked more than once that it seemed like Dylan should just do a solo piano tour. Every song was slow and subtle (and often stunning!), led entirely by his piano. The band added the quietest of accents, at times barely playing at all.

Things, as a wise man once noted, have changed. Dylan’s first show ever in Bowling Green, and the smallest venue of the spring tour, was the highest-energy and highest-tempo Rough and Rowdy show I’ve seen since the early days. Having not spent much time with this tour’s tapes yet (I’ve been busy diving deep on a new anniversary series, starting tomorrow!), I had not appreciated until seeing it last night how dramatic a shift he and the band have made. This started last year, a bit more of that Outlaw energy transferring over, but has progressed dramatically.

The funniest part is, this change has come at the same time as this has become an entirely acoustic show. The guitars, at least; Bob Britt and Doug Lancio don’t touch an electric instrument all night. “Acoustic” usually implies “quieter,” but the opposite has happened here. Back in 2021, Bob Britt would bust out a Flying V guitar—usually the domain of tongue-wagging hair-metal guitar solos—to play soft accents on “Key West.” Now that he’s on an acoustic guitar, he’s suddenly rocking out.

You get that from the opening moments, which come through loud and clear on this tape. Drummer Anton Fig walks on stage first and starts bashing away. Then Tony Garnier enters and his bass begins rumbling along. Then the two guitarists walk on to play the riff, and finally Bob enters and starts jamming along. It makes for a fiery way to start the show. (Not to mention easily the best part of “To Be Alone with You,” which otherwise suffered from a extreme case of mumble-mouth that thankfully cleared up partway through the next song.)

Listen to how the show starts, and as you do picture the musicians walking onstage one by one:

The all-acoustic guitar setup seems to have inspired some dramatic new arrangements, notably on “I Contain Multitudes” and “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,” plus the best “Crossing the Rubicon” I’ve ever seen. Both “Mind” and “Rubicon” have been relatively impervious to dramatic new arrangements up until now, so it’s fun to hear them reimagined. I think this is the first time ever “Made Up” has not built to that long held note before the title line (“Been thinking it oveeeeerrrr…”). The new music has him singing the melody entirely differently. “Rubicon,” meanwhile, was the only song where Fig did not play for extended stretches. Until, that is, that instrumental bridge. That bit used to be Dylan slamming piano chords; now it’s Fig, like an unseen new contender hurtling in off the top rope, suddenly bashing the hell out of the drums.