Songwriter’s songwriter Bob Dylan has a long history with our fair Music City. Starting with 1966’s Blonde on Blonde, he made several albums here that proved pivotal for his career, for the city’s music scene and for popular music in general. Much more recently, he bought a historic former church building in SoBro that is set to house the distillery operation for his Heaven’s Door whiskey as well as a music venue and art sanctuary.
The 2020 announcement that Dylan sold his songwriting catalog (and an announcement made after this post was published that he sold his catalog of recorded music, too) might lead you to expect that the Nobel laureate might be ready to stop touring. However, the pandemic prevented him from getting on the road with songs from his latest studio release, 2020’s Rough and Rowdy Ways.
That is, until now. Word has come that His Bobness and his band will play the Ryman on March 23. Tickets are set to run $69.50 to $129.50, and go on sale right here on Friday, Jan. 28, at 10 a.m.
Rough and Rowdy Ways was Dylan’s first album of original songs since 2012’s Tempest. It followed three albums of vocal pop tunes from the 20th century, a good many of which had been made popular by Frank Sinatra. And it sounds like Dylan’s honestly having a lot of fun throughout Rough — even on “Murder Most Foul,” the 17-minute single that preceded the album’s release.
And in what you might argue is the mark of a great Dylan record, other artists have found something that they wanted to interpret in the songs. Nashville’s own Emma Swift included her version of “I Contain Multitudes” on her 2020 Dylan tribute album Blonde on the Tracks. While you wait for that ticket link to refresh, take a listen to both of those tracks.
