Bob Dylan. 3Arena, Dublin, Ireland, 25 Nov. 2025.
Review by Erin C. Callahan, San Jacinto College
In the fall of 2021, Bob Dylan ended his Covid-19 pandemic touring hiatus and began the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour with a setlist comprised of songs from his 2020 album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. Early tour posters advertised a run from 2021-2024, which was an enigma even for Dylan. Unlike the Never Ending Tour, this tour had an end date. Of course, Dylanworld had to speculate: would Dylan stop touring once the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour ended? What would come next? In 2024, I attended the final show of the spring tour in Austin, Texas, anxious that it might be the final Dylan show ever. It wasn’t and, when he announced fall 2024 dates, I arranged to meet friends in Paris for two shows. Then, he announced spring 2025 shows and, after that, fall 2025 dates. This thrilled Dylan fans. Especially in the late stages of Dylan’s career, we are grateful for everything he gives us.
Dylan has a special affection for Ireland. His songs are peppered with references to Irish literature, music, and mythology. He’s drawn inspiration from Irish folk songs, contemporaries like the Clancy Brothers, and poets like William Butler Yeats. I’m convinced there’s a clear allusion to James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake in “Murder Most Foul,” but that’s for another essay. Ultimately, I decided to go to the final show of the Fall 2025 European leg of the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Tour in Dublin when I read the field reports from the shows—new arrangements, encores, covers, and guitar on “Goodbye Jimmy Reed.” I wasn’t convinced that it would be Dylan’s final show, despite the clamor in the Dylan fan community. Even so, I couldn’t resist seeing Dylan in Ireland for my fifteenth Rough and Rowdy Ways show. I secured a ticket and booked my flights. Right after I decided to go, Dylan announced the Spring 2026 tour dates. More good news.
One of the most remarkable aspects of being part of this Dylan community is that every city he plays becomes a kibbutz, especially in the city center and the area surrounding the venue. When I boarded the plane from Newark to Dublin, I recognized someone from one of the online Dylan groups. Waiting in line to clear immigration, I saw more people I knew and met up with my good friend and his family at baggage claim. Later, I met another dear friend and his partner in St. Stephen’s Green. Over the next day and half, nearly everywhere I went, I saw someone I knew from Dylanworld. At Christ’s Church, Trinity College, The Book of Kells, or even at a café, I recognized people who were in town for the show.
Before the concert, we convened at two meet ups to share our predictions and meet other folks in the Dylan community. Two friends agreed that Dylan wouldn’t play an encore. To be contrarian, I said he would. After the meet-up, we hurried over to the 3Arena, a 9,300-seat indoor amphitheater on the banks of the River Liffey. The arena lacked the charm of the classic theaters or venues in which Dylan has played Rough and Rowdy Ways shows, but I had heard the acoustics were good from some of the folks at the meet-up, so it promised to be a fantastic concert.
In this era of Dylan playing a static or stable setlist, those of us who attend multiple performances focus on molecular alterations: a different lyric, a change in phrasing, or an addition, omission, or variation in song order. In this way a setlist that looks the same online or in writing doesn’t quite tell the story of the performance. “Our songs are alive in the land of the living,” Dylan says at the end of his Nobel lecture, “But songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read … I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on a record or however people are listening to songs these days.”[1] Being in the audience at a Dylan show provides the opportunity to hear the songs the way Dylan wants to play them on any given night. In this setlist, the grouping of songs struck me as a plea, whether from one lover to another or as an artist to his audience. What is clear is Dylan’s commitment to this audience on this evening, from the first to final note.
As an opener, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” sets the tone. From the first lines, Dylan’s voice fills the arena with a profound spirit, as if he’s giving himself over to the audience and imploring us to join him. Rather than Dylan offering himself to a lover for an evening, here, he offers himself to the audience. His playful delivery including “ha!” before the final “I’ll be your baby tonight” lets the audience know that this show is going to be fun. Tony Garnier’s bass and Anton Fig’s drums drive the momentum of the song, meeting Dylan’s playful energy.
Once Dylan invites the audience to share the evening with him, he establishes clear boundaries with the second song of the evening. “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” final track on 1964’s Another Side of Bob Dylan, is another throwback to Dylan’s early career. In this version, the instrumental introduction stretches for nearly two-and-a-half minutes, about a minute shorter than the entire album version. There’s also an extended interlude between verses. Dylan’s delivery throughout, but especially on lines like, “I’ll only let you down,” maintains the playfulness of “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight.” Through Dylan’s voice and the arrangement, he and the band suggest that bringing expectations to this show or to Dylan’s work more broadly will end in disappointment. However, if you can meet Dylan where he is and accept what he is willing to give, you’ll have an enjoyable experience. When he sings the chorus, Dylan’s voice sounds joyful, as if relieved to be so clear and candid. The music of the arrangement and the band’s accompaniment strengthen this feeling.
After inviting us to join him and abandon our expectations, Dylan begins to define himself as an artist. The first song Dylan sings from the Rough and Rowdy Ways album, “I Contain Multitudes,” collapses time while also meditating on mortality and creation. I’m always moved by how delicate this song sounds, especially after “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” but this arrangement also has backbone through Anton Fig’s percussion and Dylan’s piano. The sonics balance the complexity of the figure described through the lyrics. If Dylan was telling us who he’s not in “It Ain’t Me Babe,” here, he tells us who he is—the refracted fragments of a kaleidoscopic identity. Even in the heavier moments, when the cadence of the music darkens and he threatens to show “only the hateful parts,” a softness comes through in his phrasing. Bob Britt’s guitar, especially at the bridge, beautifully punctuates the interplay of light and darkness. The audience is fully engaged, bopping their heads with the rhythm.
“False Prophet,” always a rocker with a bit of a dark edge, shifts the mood, but develops the central theme of the setlist. Taken from Billy “The Kid” Emerson’s “If Lovin’ Is Believin’,” the opening guitar riff leads us into this song with a swagger. In this performance, however, Dylan’s voice doesn’t have the same bravado as in other shows on the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, most memorably for me in Memphis in 2024. Here, his delivery of “You girls mean business / I do too” and “I’m the last of the best / You can bury the rest” come off as facts rather than boasts, especially as he elongates the vowel in the word “do.” It is sung through the perspective of an artist with a clear sense of his worth, regardless of outside expectations or labels placed on him. The closing lines of the first verse have always played as a companion to the final lines in “Wicked Messenger”: “And he was told but these few words which opened up his heart / If ye can’t bring good news don’t bring any.” In “False Prophet,” the singer suggests that he attempted to bring good news, but he was overwhelmed by the response. Dylan sings, “I know how it happened / I saw it begin / I opened my heart to the world / And the world came in.” When coupled with the double negative “ain’t no” before “false prophet,” these lyrics and Dylan’s fire and brimstone delivery suggest discord between art and its reception.
Dylan presses on with this theme, exploring art and its reception through the perspective of the artist. “When I Paint My Masterpiece” is a fun interlude between the weight of “False Prophet” and “Black Rider.” Dylan first introduced the current arrangement, to the tune of Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz” or “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” by the Four Lads, in March 2024. The recycling of the tune from Berlin to Dylan parallels the cycle of Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, which is reinforced by the repetition of the melody throughout the song. Dylan’s staccato delivery punctuates each line to emphasize his commitment to pursuing artistic greatness. His piano playing on this song is a standout and my favorite of the show. In a setlist built on late-career meditations on mortality and artistic creation, Dylan remains hopeful for a future when he will have created his elusive masterpiece. It suggests that at this stage in his career, he feels he hasn’t fully realized his artistic potential.
Dylan’s phrasing on “Black Rider” in the Dublin performance is softer than others I’ve seen. Even so, this performance isn’t as moving as the first night in Paris in October 2024, which brought me to tears. Bob Britt’s guitar in Dublin mirrors the echo effect of Dylan’s voice to heighten the mystical atmosphere of the song. It also increases the audience’s sympathy for the singer. When he holds the vowels, elongating them, in the line, “I’ll forget to be kind,” it foreshadows the coming violence as the tension in the song increases. Dylan ultimately breaks the tension and the cycle of violence, vowing to sing a song for the black rider on “some enchanted evening” and ending the song with a short musical coda.
The new arrangement of “My Own Version of You,” which Dylan debuted on this tour, is a rhythm-heavy swinger that focuses on identity construction and the persistence of self-creation. Dylan doesn’t sing as much as he talks through the lyrics, taking fragments from art, culture, and history to create a carnivalesque figure. One of the fragments is Leon Russell, whom Dylan vows to play piano like. This reference creates a throughline from the two songs in the set produced by Russell—“When I Paint My Masterpiece” and “Watching the River Flow”—to “My Own Version of You,” in which Russell is esteemed for his musical genius. The music rises and crashes behind Dylan’s narration, signifying a storm to produce the lightning necessary to awaken the creature. Bob Britt’s solo takes over with a sinister riff bolstered by Tony Garnier’s bass line. This arrangement plays with the Prometheus myth warning of the dangers of assuming godlike creative power. The band slows to bring the song to a gradual end.
The gentle conclusion of “My Own Version of You” provides a pathway for Dylan to take us back to the 1960s and Nashville with the next song in the set, “To Be Alone with You,” the final track on Nashville Skyline. The song has been fairly standard on the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour since 2021, but this version features more of a swing than previous arrangements. Dylan’s vocal comes in almost like a whisper and steadily grows in confidence and volume. The shift in his phrasing and tone from “My Own Version of You” is another example of Dylan’s expertise as a vocalist. On this song in particular, his voice sounds great. It’s clear and any debate about whether he’s singing “hound” or “pound” in the line, “I’ll hound you to death,” can be settled. It’s definitely “hound.” Dylan’s baby grand is the lead instrument on this song, supported by Anton Fig’s drumming and Bob Britt’s guitar playing. During the jam session in the middle of the song, the audience was grooving along, many on their feet dancing. Even the security were bopping their heads and clapping with the band—the first time I’d ever seen security invested in a Dylan show.
The crowd is already up and enthusiastic after “To Be Alone with You” so when Bob Britt plays a slick blues intro riff to “Crossing the Rubicon,” we’re rapt. That riff changes the energy in the room and in Dylan’s vocal. He modulates his phrasing as any great blues player would. And, when he takes the lead on baby grand, playing honky tonk trills, the crowd erupts. “Crossing the Rubicon” is a highlight of the evening leading into the high-energy arrangement of “Desolation Row.” The version of “Desolation Row” is the same one Dylan and his band debuted during the Outlaw Music Festival tour in the summer of 2024. The momentum of this arrangement drives forward with an urgency that meets the uncertainty of our current political climate. The speed of it thrusts the listener from one lyric to the next before they have time to process any of it.
The set continues with a change in tempo and tone with “Key West (Philosopher Pirate).” This song has always seemed like a reflection on innocence and aging. It positions Key West as an ethereal place where youth, mortality, and immortality converge into one reality analogous to home. As Dylan sings of lost sanity, of finding immortality, and of a pre-adolescent wedding, we hear echoes of “today, tomorrow, and yesterday too.” This stripped-down performance makes Dylan’s vocal the primary focus, signaling the solitary experience of aging and dying. Again, the audience listens to Dylan attentively, holding most cheers until the end.
“Watching the River Flow” provides another bridge to Dylan’s early career. As noted earlier, Leon Russell produced the original track in the same session Dylan recorded “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” during a fallow period. The song ironically depicts Dylan as a singer who has lost his voice or feels uninspired, questioning what’s the matter with him. He resolves to patiently sit and “watch the river flow” until he finds his voice. In this setlist, it seems like an antecedent for “Mother of Muses” in which Dylan pleads for divine inspiration. This performance brought the audience back to its feet, dancing and clapping their hands to the extended instrumental introduction.
The sequence of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,” and “Mother of Muses” plays off each other and seems to develop that singular idea—an artist’s statement—with a bit more focus. More than an artist’s statement, these three songs serve as a history lesson. “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” was Dylan’s farewell song to the folk community, most notably in his Newport 1965 set. Dylan’s vocal in this performance in Dublin gives me chills. His sincerity makes this lament about moving on more impactful while his harmonica lifts the song to another level, bleeding past, present, and future in a single sound.
Leaving the folk community liberated Dylan from representing a particular movement, point of view, or agenda that might limit his artistic expression. Doing so, he committed to his artistic development and, arguably, to his audience. In “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,” Dylan affirms that commitment. His vocal on this song is always delicate, ethereal. In this performance, he combines melodic singing with sing-song speaking through this lovely waltz led by Bob Britt’s guitar. Completing this triad within a setlist that seems to focus on Dylan’s relationship to his art, “Mother of Muses” becomes a meditation on his creative process. The lyrics appeal to the muses to help him fulfill his commitment to a life of artistic creation. He implores the mother of muses, “sing to me” to inspire his heart and mind, and “Show me your wisdom, tell me my fate / Put me upright, make me walk straight / Forge my identity from the inside out.” Then, linking this song to “Watching the River Flow,” he asks the mother of muses, “Take me to the river, release your charms.” I always feel sad at the end of “Mother of Muses.” I love the song and look forward to hearing it, but I also know that it sits near the end of the setlist and that the show is almost over. All three songs center on movement—moving on, traveling from place to place, or traveling home.
Before “Goodbye Jimmy Reed,” Dylan introduces the band and says, “These aren’t easy songs to play, but this band is playing pretty good. Don’t you think?” Some version of this introduction has been standard for most of the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, but it always makes me laugh. Perhaps it’s Dylan’s acknowledgement of the challenges of working with him and his songs. At most shows, Dylan introduces Tony Garnier last to allow for the audience’s extended applause. At this show, he introduces him second, after Doug Lancio. The band then bursts into the penultimate song of the set with an opening lick that brings everyone to their feet. This arrangement has more swing than the album version and some of the live arrangements I’ve heard since 2021. In this performance, Dylan changes the lyrics in the verse, “I’ll break open your grapes and suck out the juice / I need you like my head needs a noose.” He replaces “I need you like my head needs a noose” with “but what’s the use?” This slight alteration changes the tenor of the lyric from rejection to resignation. This song is a companion to “False Prophet” in tone, tempo, and energy. Both songs marry religious imagery with musical history, suggesting transcendence or salvation through both.
“Every Grain of Sand,” perhaps Dylan’s most profound meditation on redemption and salvation, has been the closer for most of the Rough and Rowdy Ways shows since the tour began in 2021. It’s a confession of human frailty in which Dylan’s vocal performance is balanced, hovering between vulnerability and self-confidence as the speaker in the song chronicles and assumes responsibility for his mistakes. The melody is simple and repetitive with Dylan soloing on piano, then on harmonica to end the song. Just as he did on “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” he leaves the audience with a sound that connects performances across time and space.
As Dylan and his band play the final notes of “Every Grain of Sand,” the crowd notices that the musicians aren’t leaving the stage. What happens next is transformative. For the second time ever, Dylan plays “A Rainy Night in Soho.” The first time he played it was the opening performance of the Outlaw tour in Phoenix last May. This night in Dublin, arguably as a tribute to the late Shane MacGowan, the song also becomes a love letter to the city and to the Irish people. The crowd erupts as they recognize the distinctive, descending opening melody. Then, Dylan sings. His vocal is so tender and loving, all around the audience is in tears. In an emotional swell, Dylan stands up at the piano and the audience stands with him as if tapped into the same energy source. In that moment, the venue becomes something more—more intimate, more communal—and sings along. Dylan’s frequent changes in arrangement and phrasing typically make a sing-along like this one nearly impossible. On this night and in this performance, however, Dylan gives the audience that experience. We sing with him and with each other. It’s magical.
I’m always surprised by and grateful for Bob Dylan’s generosity. At 84, he continues to create art through his live performances. Every show is its own experience in its energy, phrasing, arrangements, and sometimes in the surprise of an encore. Through his art, music, and performance, he has also created this community so full of love for Dylan and for each other that everything else seems to fade. The exchange of ideas and the shared experiences is sustaining.
This concert on this night in Dublin was a manifestation of Dylan’s love for Ireland and the Irish. The energy and focus of this performance were different than anything I’ve witnessed at other shows. And as the audience gathered on the street outside to join an impromptu sing-along, I realized that the Irish are as eager as ever to reciprocate.
[1]Dylan, Bob. “Nobel Lecture.” 5 June 2017. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2016/dylan/lecture/ 1 December 2025.
