Tonight in Prague (by Matthew Ingate)

2024-10-04, O2 Universum, Prague, Czech Republic

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Photo by Hermann Rechberger

A few hours ago, Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour resumed in Prague, six months after we last saw it (and six months after many of us—present company included—assumed it was done for good).

But, judging from opening night, the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour of Fall 2024 looks quite a bit different than it did before its Outlaw-imposed hiatus. New songs. New band members. Rougher and rowdier.

Matthew Ingate was on the scene and reports in with astonishing speed.

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Note: Current-tour reports usually go out to paid subscribers only—and we’ll have a bunch more of those from Europe this fall, including my three dispatches from the Royal Albert Hall, so hop aboard if you want them—but I’m making this opening-night report available to all.

Now, over to Matthew…

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We're back on the Rough and Rowdy road again. Many of us assumed the tour had wrapped for good in Austin in April with the onset of the Outlaw tour and so had written our wrap-ups and moved on. Anne Margaret Daniel was one of the few who suggested we might not have seen the back of this tour just yet, and, as she so often is, she was proved absolutely right with the announcement of these additional dates. 

So, once more into the breach, then. Given the Outlaw intermission, tonight's show in Prague might have been among the most unpredictable Rough and Rowdy Ways show since opening night, all the way back in Milwaukee in 2021. There were plenty of questions about the show. Who was going to be in the band? Would the songs remain the same, or would anything carry over from the summer tour? Would Dylan be wearing a beanie hat or clanging a little wrench on his microphone at any point? After over 60 years of confounding expectations, what other mad and exciting wonders did he have in store for us?

Dylan's music came out of the Bohemian scene of Greenwich Village, and we're in the home of Bohemia here in Prague. This is a city fit for the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour. It feels like an old, magical place. Presumably there are far nicer and more appropriate venues for the show amongst the city's Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo buildings than the O2 Universum, but, being fortunate enough to be in the front row tonight, it doesn't really matter what the venue looks like behind me. It only matters what is going on in front.

Right off the bat comes the first surprise of the night. With the house lights still on and with no entrance music, a sunglassed Jim Keltner strolls out onto the stage and puts his arms out wide in embrace of the audience before taking his seat behind the drum kit. So, no new drummer tonight, then. Tony Garnier, Bob Britt and Doug Lancio soon follow and then the other Bob shuffles out to the piano at centre stage wearing a dazzlingly emblazoned blazer and a shirt underneath with gold sequined collar and cuffs poking out, all of which sparkle and flash in the stage lights. 

Surprisingly, there's no Donnie Herron replacement on the steel guitar as was rumoured, and so the songs will sound different once again from the last time we heard them. But it's not the usual notes of Watching the River Flow that open the show, but the familiar chords of All Along the Watchtower instead. The sound in the arena is surprisingly great, and Bob doesn't take any time to warm up like he sometimes does, but is on top of his game right out of the traps. 

This is far from the first time I've seen Dylan live [he wrote a whole book about it! —ed], but the way he's come out and started with such a white-hot delivery, such a focussed intensity and with such an iconic song, has made me feel as excited as if it really was my first time seeing him.

Everything is tight, everything is loud, everything is full throttle. It's an amazing start to the show. That excitement keeps up as Bob leads straight into It Ain't Me, Babe. For the first verse he is in balladeer mode; it's reminiscent of those gorgeous Don't Think Twice’s from 2018. Bob strains beautifully into his upper register for those “no, no, no”’s. The band then comes in for a fun uptempo few verses. 

Next up is the first Rough and Rowdy Ways song of the night, I Contain Multitudes, and the first time we really feel the difference without the steel guitar. Any absence is made up by Bob's extraordinary piano playing; he really has started playing so incredibly beautifully in the last couple of years.