Last Night in Detroit (by Caryn Rose)

2026-04-04, Masonic Temple Theatre, Detroit, MI

Last night, Bob Dylan played the final of his three Michigan shows this tour. Veteran music journalist and Detroit resident Caryn Rose attended all three, and reports in on the final night.

Rose is the author most recently of a great Patti Smith tour zine which you can get in print here ($1 off with code ROWDY) or as an ebook here. And, if you’re a Bruce Springsteen fan, she’ll be covering his just-begun tour over at Radio Nowhere. Bringing those two people together, she interviewed Bruce about Patti for her last book; read an excerpt with that interview here.

Here’s Caryn Rose on last night’s show in Detroit, and how it compared to Saginaw and Grand Rapids:

---

The Never Ending Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour rolled into the Motor City on Saturday night after previous stops in Grand Rapids on Thursday and Saginaw on Friday. If the room wasn’t officially sold out, it was close to it, and there was a definite big-city energy vibrating through the crowd in the hour or so before the show.

In a subjective, highly visual survey, demographically the audience was a solid cross-generational mix; special shoutout to the 20-something gentleman in the front rows who was rocking a solid Robbie Robertson ’74-era cosplay. (In the interests of full disclosure, I really have no ground to stand on here because I was wearing my Bob polka dots and my biker jacket.)

As he had the previous few evenings, Bob’s appearance onstage was prompt, after Anton, Tony, Bob Britt, and Doug had come onstage in the darkness and begun the opening vamp of “To Be Alone With You.” Dylan walked onstage to a warm ovation and delivered a brisk and energetic rendition of the tune while we in the audience had to listen to it through loud static coming through the speaker stacks. I feel bad for Detroit, because while I had two static-free evenings where I got to enjoy the 2026 version of this Nashville Skyline track, for everyone else here, this might be their only opportunity. The static got fixed by the next piano solo but issues with the mics remained. (More on this later, or it would end up being all I talk about.)

The stage lighting seemed like it was getting brighter as my shows progressed. I sat in about the same basic location every night (6th or 7th row, mostly center or just right of center) so it’s not that it seemed brighter because I was closer (which would be a logical conclusion). I mention the lighting because both tonight and the previous evening, the additional illumination made it easier to observe Bob’s face while he was singing, the expressions he would make, and the various turns (and glares) at the various band members. And it’s weird, because he’s coming out sporting the hoodie-over-a-ballcap combo (I decided tonight that he reminds me of a beekeeper in this getup) so you would think it would be harder to see him and yet somehow you’re still able to closely observe this essential activity you’re here for. It’s really such a gift after having his visage deliberately obscured in various ways over the years.

“Man in the Long Black Coat” has been an absolute treat to hear and, although I’m sure this has nothing to do with its appearance, I’m still giving props to Patti Smith who spent the spring of 2024 teaching herself how to play the song on guitar (and demonstrating her progress for her Substack subscribers) before introducing it to her setlist that summer. There’s something about the song’s simplicity that makes it fascinating and at times, electrifying. Tonight it fell somewhere in the middle, and that’s about where this show falls on the continuum of Bob Michigan Week. The same setlist, the same arrangements, the same basic performances, and yet, three definitely different experiences. But this is why we do this.

It’s always fun to hear the different responses to those opening notes that herald the reconstructed “All Along the Watchtower.” People know what it is and it’s not just the frequent fliers; the shouts and cheers come from the back corners and up in the balcony, the people who are not spending their spring vacation following Bob Dylan around the Midwest.

I was also considering how “‘There must be some way out of here,’ said the joker to the thief” is one of the great opening lines of popular song, how it works so well because we are immediately brought into not just the action of the moment but brought into the heart of the conflict, and because we know who the main actors are in the story. Just the immediacy of it will never not strike me as genius no matter how many times I hear it.

“I Contain Multitudes” is of course next. He’s playing with the choruses, sometimes offering a short piano-filled pause before singing the refrain, sometimes he just keeps things moving. The Indiana Jones lyric gets extra applause. Bob is definitely feeling himself towards the end of the third verse, a man of many moods, he croons, and then seems to deliver “I’ll show you my heart/but not all of it” with a slight frown and a particular emphasis. The mention of Beethoven sonnets gets a nod as he delivers it, almost punctuating the line.

“Multitudes” is still a welcome slot in the setlist but the entire song was troubled by the current situation with Bob’s microphones. At least once during this song’s performance I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat, because I don’t know if the next line is going to be sung on the mic and if I will actually get to hear it. This is the moment where I pray to every available deity that someone who can fix the situation with the microphones would do so.

In case you have not yet seen a show, I will offer a sketch I drew of the mic situation in Grand Rapids since we obviously do not have photographs:

These meaty, verbose songs from Rough & Rowdy Ways are the ones that suffer the most from the boom mic/floor mic configuration for many reasons, none of which anyone reading this needs me to tell them: it diminishes the power of the song because you can’t hear the words, it makes it hard to keep the attention of the audience members who can’t fill in the words in their heads automatically, and it just absolutely sucks as a fan to have to not know which line or word in what song is going to suffer the consequences of the microphone setup.

It is possible to fix this, because there were absolutely zero problems in Saginaw. The sound was fantastic. I heard every word Bob sang, and so did everyone else who paid money for a ticket to see and hear Bob Dylan.

The sound had more problems in Grand Rapids and it was my first show so I probably noticed them more, but you know what? For most of the people in the audience, this is their only show. Maybe this doesn’t bother other people as much as it bothers me, but it is painful, it is like nails on a chalkboard. Just when you settle into the vibe or the flow of the song, suddenly there are missing words, phrases, sometimes verses. Bob sits down and pulls the floor mic towards him, and sometimes it helps—but sometimes he does this and then turns his head away from the mic. Sometimes he does this and the boom mic picks it up, sometimes he stands up and sings into the boom mic and voila, here is Bob Dylan singing!

::steps off soapbox::

“False Prophet” is fine but not exceptional. The audience seemed impressed by “Black Rider,” and an attentive, respectful silence fell into place before Bob even began singing. He is impassioned in the introduction, Anton using brushes to give some texture to the rhythm, and the whole number felt like it benefited from more substance and definition. “Love Sick” was super popular and Bob seemed really into it. “I’m sick of love, I’m luvvvvvv sick,” he tossed off just like David Johansen would. I always appreciate the enthusiastic hoots from the audience that punctuate lines of this number.

“Jimmy Reed” felt a little off-kilter, and Bob gave one of those sideways glances to Bob Britt and all I could think was, can you imagine getting one of those looks? It would turn my insides to stone, instantly. Doug Lancio was watching even more closely than he usually does, if that is at all possible.

If you remember, keep an eye on Tony Garnier as he energetically counts in “I Can Tell.” This and “Nervous Breakdown” are always so much fun and so enjoyable to watch because Bob is clearly enjoying himself, and it seems like the band relaxes into things a little bit more than they usually have the opportunity of doing. It has been an utter joy to sing “I KNOW YOU DON’T WANT ME NO MORE” with Bob Dylan every night. It’s also interesting to consider the juxtaposition of “I Can Tell” coming right before “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You.” Tonight this number is particularly gorgeous. I love that this song survived the cut. But man, it is hard to listen to him sing, “I hope that the gods go easy with me” some nights.

“Rubicon” lands well, starts off a little off-kilter but I decide Bob is freestyling until he finds his way into the song. Bob’s piano work here, especially on the outro, felt especially strong. So when they next head into “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” he is absolutely cooking, and that tempo continued into “Forgetful Heart.” It was bold, heartfelt, precise. Which is why it was particularly infuriating that one of the two people sitting behind me used this number to express what seemed like her frustration in being forced to sit through this Bob Dylan set. She tried to imitate how she felt Bob was singing. I did not have the energy to tell her that there were only a few songs left and I would appreciate it if she could just…not do that. (The previous evening I had to listen to two men next to me discuss playing stand-up bass at a conversational volume, because one of them had taken lessons, so he felt qualified to critique Tony Garnier.)

Bob’s drinking vessels are gray. Are they Solo cups? They must make gray ones. Springsteen has black ones. (He also has black tissue boxes and all cable ties onstage are black.) I was grateful to see that the guitar I labelled “Elijah’s guitar” (that’s a Passover reference) is still sitting behind him, but had to burst bubbles when audience members pointed it out.

“Soon After Midnight” lost a little steam. Bob moves the floor mic over like it is impeding his range of motion before engaging in what was a lovely interlude on the ivories. He had such a big grin singing “Nervous Breakdown.” This one remains bulletproof, even though I had hoped (fine, dreamed) that we might get some kind of Detroit-specific cover choice.

And now, of course, the benediction of “Every Grain of Sand,” which felt oddly appropriate the night before Easter, even though I’m not quite sure it possesses the same grace I have found in it during previous shows. I didn’t sneak out early because it looked like Bob was checking his pockets and making eye contact and given that he didn’t play harmonica during “Masterpiece,” I wasn’t sure we’d get that here and that the signals meant “no harmonica.” But then he stood up and there was a glint of silver and here it was. The crowd roared, Bob comes very close to the edge of the stage, there’s that dramatic cut to black and we’re stumbling out of Masonic in the dark while everyone else is cheering and hoping for just one more. Of course they are; they just saw Bob Dylan.

When I was driving to Grand Rapids, I was thinking about the purpose of these essays that we write about these shows. How each leg starts off with answering the question of, What is Bob doing, and how is he doing it? And once we establish that, the next aspect we need to address is Why is Bob doing this in this particular fashion? We’ll never know (unless someone from the band spills the beans in the future), but I have developed a theory as to why this is the electric-piano-and-acoustic-guitars tour.

My theory is that he is happy with his voice. Maybe something changed, and he seems to be singing better and clearer, and with reasonable power in his instrument. But maybe not enough power to deliver effectively over electric guitars, or not enough to sustainably offer the same level of power throughout the length of a tour. And maybe he has decided that this is a way to let people hear Bob Dylan songs with vocals that are both more melodically recognizable to the general population and alongside a more muted instrumentation that lets the vocals shine brighter than they might have previously.

I don’t know, but I love that Bob Dylan still gets out there and offers us these zen koans that we have the opportunity of considering and thinking and trying to come up with answers. I love that I might be completely wrong, but I love more that at age 84 he is still making us think.

2026-04-04, Masonic Temple Theatre, Detroit, MI

---

Thanks Caryn! Get her Patti Smith tour zine in print here ($1 off with code ROWDY) or as an ebook here. And follow her Springsteen tour coverage at Radio Nowhere.