Last Night in Sioux City

2025-04-02, Orpheum Theater, Sioux City, IA

Photo by @whatalngstrngetripitsbenmanthe

Bob Dylan does not need to play Omaha, Nebraska or Sioux City, Iowa. I don’t mean financially, though there’s that too. Even when you grant that he does still want to perform for people, he could just play a dozen big cities every year, do a short residency in each, and make the fans come to him. Many of his peers do some version of that. They ain’t gonna play Sioux City.

But he does play Omaha and Sioux City, not to mention Wichita and Topeka and Eau Claire and Peoria—all stops on this spring tour of what the music business would call “B and C markets” (no shots, I live in one too). He brings his music to the people, even the people very fair from any major cultural center. If everybody’s going, I wanted to go too.

For personal reasons too boring to explain, the “obvious” stops for me (Tulsa opening night, or somewhere closer to my hometown of Chicago) didn’t work, so I decided to pick somewhere random—“random” simply meaning somewhere I’d never been and might not have reason to visit otherwise (again, no shots)—and see, what is it like seeing Bob Dylan in the heartland in 2025? Omaha and Sioux City seemed like perfect options, two places I could use Dylan as an excuse to see. The fact that the theaters were both named the Orpheum seemed like a sign (though one is “Orpheum Theatre” and one is “Orpheum Theater”—how do they decide these things?).

Oh, and flights were cheap.

Bob Dylan has only played Sioux City twice before. By chance, I’ve written about both those shows. In 1994, he played a rare Blood in the Tracks three-pack. In 2001, he debuted “Floater (Too Much to Ask)” and high-fived the audience. 24 years later, he was back. And the venue made the most of it. Check out the light display they set up in the lobby:

In keeping with Iowa tradition, the crowd was pumped too, reacting much more enthusiastically than Omaha. No stage-crashing, but I saw a woman playing air-piano along to Bob’s “Desolation Row” solo. Many clapped along with “To Be Alone with You,” and we won’t nitpick whether they were anywhere near on-beat. One particularly loud dude made himself heard during the quietest moments of “Key West” and “Mother of Muses” with “We love you Bob!” and “God bless Bob Dylan” shouts. Bob seemed to be blasting the harmonica extra loud to drown him out. “God bless—tooooot”