Introduction
On a scorching summer evening in Hershey, PA for the 27th stop on Willie’s annual Outlaw Music Festival tour, Bob Dylan walked on stage with quiet eminence—cloaked in black and topped with a white feathered hat, taking his seat at the piano toward the back of the stage. He did not greet the crowd, nor did the 84-year-old indulge in theatrics beyond the occasional head-nod in the direction of his bandmates. The stage lighting remained the same throughout his 75-minute set, as did the static camera on the projection screen.
As he always has done throughout his mythic career, he let the music do the talking. Surrounded by his quartet on all sides like a kingpin with his cronies, Dylan delivered a raw and alluring performance—spinning inventively bluesy renditions of tracks across his songbook mixed with a few covers.
In a commodified musical landscape that deifies dead idols—the Hendrixes, Morrisons, and Joplins to the Cobains and Buckleys—what happens when one of the greats goes the distance? How does this relic of a particular era continue as he outlives his peers, his generation, and the very ethos into which his groundbreaking art was born? Though 60 years have passed since Bob Dylan went electric, and 61 since Willie Nelson first played the Grand Ole Opry, the two legends aren’t finished writing their stories just yet.
On classics like the recently revived “Masters of War”, “All Along the Watchtower”, and “Desolation Row”, Dylan’s gravelly voice and clacking keys wound through the verses that scholars, songwriters, and philosophers have meticulously dissected for decades. Whenever he stood to wail on his harmonica, the crowd cheered and watched with mesmerized appreciation. To close, Dylan launched into “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” to the great delight of the audience before departing the stage shrouded in even greater mystery than when he appeared.
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