A friend and I decided pretty close to the date to drive the 50 minutes
from KC to see Bob & band at the Topeka Performing Arts Center this past
Sunday evening. We have friends, newlyweds (sorta) who live in a tiny
hamlet just about 15 minutes away, out in the countryside, Grantville,
Kansas, named for the General. We had a cookout with our friends and their
parents, watching the chickens run around with their Rooster, General Lee,
while their cat, General Grant, looked on, licking his chops.

After a breezy dinner in the late afternoon sun, we retired to the bonfire
in a corner of their lot and warmed ourselves up with a couple of Coors
Banquets, and then, as the sun began to settle on the ol' prairie, we
headed on into town.

I'd never been to a show of any kind at the TPAC, so I was pleased to
see the art deco styling of the entrance on the west, as we pulled out our
phones to show to the ushers and prepared to get wand'ed and Yondr'd.
Once we were inside, it wasn't as big as I was worried it would be. Our
tickets were dead center, but way in the back, in the balcony. So we
couldn't really see Bob (or anybody). After a little running around,
getting our steps in, we took our seats and within 5 minutes, at eight
o'clock sharp, the house lights dimmed, and the band began to vamp on
the now expected "All Along the Watchtower."

I was happy, in one sense to hear Bob playing guitar again, but he's got
two great gunslingers on hire to handle that stuff, and his electric
playing has never been much beyond plinking. He's waaay up in the mix,
though, so anyway. I give him points for playing guitar at all, but he
shouldn't feel obligated. And I guess he might agree, since after Slot
Two's "It Ain't Me, Babe," it never reappeared.

I really love the addition of Anton Fig on the drums to this band,
especially the RARW tunes, which included the next two offerings, with
able readings of "I Contain Multitudes," and a kindler, gentler
"False Prophet" than prior legs I've heard on this (now apparently
un-)bounded Rough & Rowdy Ways Tour. Then, a long, beautiful harp solo
introduced "When I Paint My Masterpiece," with its rearrangement to
the tune of "Puttin’ on the Ritz," or whatever the name of the song
actually is. I can't help wondering it it's some sort of
foreshadowing, with a wink, to the song after next, as I can't seem to
hear that tune without chuckling as I recall the late, great Peter Boyle,
as the Monster, and Gene Wilder, tap dancing to the tune in Mel Brooks'
classic, "Young Frankenstein."

Masterpiece had the crowd really going, by this point. Then, another song
I have always wanted to like more, "Black Rider" was up. And man, Bob
and the boys delivered THE finest version of this tune, of the ones I've
seen on this tour (three or four shows, now is all for me). I've always
thought the vocal on this song didn't lend itself to any real sort of
melody, but they put some real flesh on the bones, so to speak.

Speaking of flesh & bone, next up was what may be the standout tune of
this show, for me, and one where the addition of Fig on drums & percussion
was really evident. Fig accompanied Bob's macabre vocals with various
very light touches, almost depicting the rummaging around the parts bin to
construct his creation, with some of the finest, lightest drumming and
cymbal work I've ever heard. He didn't outshine Bob's vocal, but
really added to the lyrics. As the song faded to a stop, Bob made a
comment I couldn’t entirely make out, something about these songs
(assuming he was referring to all of the RARW songs, but especially the
magnificent version of "My Own Version..." he'd just completed)
being really apt to these times. Maybe someone else closer caught the
actual quip. It got a reaction from the crowd, as it showed Bob could feel
the crowd's appreciation for the performance, and he was acknowledging
it. Pretty good for a Sunday night in Podunk. But, I get the feeling Bob
doesn't really recognize _anywhere_ as 'Podunk.' That's why we
Podunkers love him. He may not look back, but he's never forgotten where
he comes from.

There followed a very fine version of "To Be Alone With You," then a 
v e r y s l o w burn, very bluesy version of "Crossing the Rubicon.” Bob
& the boys played it as slow as a blues song could probably go and still
work, but it really worked, seemingly wringing all the emotion out of the
fabric of this song's lyric.

You could feel the first timers who'd finally plunked down their chunk
o' change to see the great Bob Dylan, but who maybe weren't exactly
bobcats breathe a sigh of relief that they recognized "Desolation
Row." All which is not to denigrate his rendering of this great classic.
It's interesting to see the choices Bob has made to slide some of his
older, great tunes into the mix with this darker, sparer palette that is
the RARW catalogue.

This was followed by a languid, sprawling version of "Key West," a
song that initially got a lot of accolades in the early reviews of the LP,
and of the early legs of the tour. Maybe it's the fact I'm from Podunk
and don't get out much, but this song's never hit me the way it has
for so many others. I get the beatific vision of the lyric about "...on
the horizon line...," and all that. It was an elegant performance. My
friend voiced some of my own misgivings about this song: 'sort of
Bob's version of a Jimmy Buffet tune, and I DO think that has a fair
bit of truth to its popularity. Not everybody's been there, myself
included. So maybe that's on me. It's not out of the realm of
possibility that this is, in fact, Bob nodding to Jimmy, though. It's
clearly more than that, but I think it's possible that accounts for a
lot of it's good press. I still think it sits a bit awkwardly in the
company of the other RARW songs. Your mileage may vary...and probably
does.

I don't wanna sell the next tune short. There's definitely more there
than meets the ear, but man...Bob loves him some "Watching the River
Flow!" According to bobdylan.com, 733 appearances since its 1978 live
debut.  That averages out to a not intolerable sixteen times a year, and
I'm sure some years it was leading the average more than others. I've
seen it a fair number of times in my forty years of seeing Bob perform. It
was fine, but I wonder if this isn't just Bob giving the boys a chance
to lighten up a bit for a few minutes. Maybe for Bob it's still the
rejection of the 'voice of a generation' it's purported to be.
Bob's always been a bit of a wax nose for his wide-ranging fans.
That's as constant as any river's flow.

"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" was a late set stunner. And of
course, the crowd loved this one. This, again, is one of Bob's great
classics that, with the arrangement for its place in the RARW setting, is
so beautiful. And Bob's reading of the song is affecting. He knows this
could be the last time every time he sings it, and so do we.

I went into this show expecting "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself
to You," would be the highlight, and there was nothing to really
criticize in this reading of the song, but I found myself comparing it to
the really outstanding "My Own Version..." from earlier in the set.
Nothing to complain about this one at all, and its neighbor, "Mother of
Muses," But when I saw him perform these at The Tulsa Theatre a couple
years ago, both struck me as really poignant statements of Bob, of thanks
to his audiences, and about what animates him, even today, and of course,
the realization of what a long, strange trip it's been. They're both
still that, but maybe he was feeling more melancholy through these two
songs a couple years ago. This time around they were both great, so maybe
it's just me selling these two a bit short. I felt them more acutely a
couple years ago in Tulsa, though.

It hasn't happened to me at a Bob show in a while. Back in the early
90s, when GE Smith was in the band, I often struggled to pick out a song
from time to time. And I'll admit, I hadn't spun RARW (the LP), or
listened closely to a lot of the boots of his recent shows before this
one. So I really had to rely on the setlist after the fact to identify
"Goodbye Jimmy Reed," which had been one of the big blues stompers,
along with "False Prophet" from the early portion of the 2021-2024
sorta never-ending tour. Mostly for that reason, I think this one was the
weakest offering of the night.

The finale, "Every Grain of Sand," though really made up for it,
showcasing Bob's swelling flourishes on the baby grand, as well as
beautiful singing and phrasing in this great song. Bob finally came out of
the shadows, not too close to the front of the stage, though, acknowledged
the crowd, and then made his exit.

Bob really seemed "on" tonight in Topeka. I never regret being in the
same room with him. I'm glad he's still treading the boards for us
night after night. If I had the means and time, there's no way I'd
miss the show in Sioux City, IA coming up. That's likely to be a great
one. Break a leg, Bob! May you stay forever young!

Bill Burns
Kansas City

My feet are so tired
My brain is so wired
I'd like to disconnect these cables
This place don't make sense to me no more

I wish there was any truth in what I could do or say but the truth is that
I can't explain it too much, just press on it, know my song well and hope
you might find it interesting. I could stop on the sudden change of
phrasing by the syllabe in each line of the last verse in 'Watchtower'
which turned the song altogether into a deconstruction yet at the same
into even a mythical remembrance of Apocalypse.

I could stop on how the flamenco fit 'Masterpiece' and my mood like a
glove, as this acoustic driven rendition rhymed so movingly with my
recently passed grandmother, who was born in fact in the South of Spain,
where flamenco comes from, and whose father (my great-grandfather) had to
come over to Catalonia when she was merely three due to the rebel troops
of Franco heavily persecuting union members or progressive citizens down
under. Persecuting means in some cases, like it happened to one of my
great-grandad's cousins, torturing them to death, emptying their eyeballs
while alive in order to get fellow union members' names and then throwing
their bodies into ditches where some of them still lie, unnamed and
unlocated. Of all places in the world, it had to be in Kansas where my
grandma came back as (a) song.

The "songs for this time" commentary just put the whole thing and myself
on the page of indelibility. Isn't this Bob's first clear comment about
the present times in many, many years during a show? Suddenly it was as if
he was embedding his show in the 'now', adding layers of relevancy to what
it could be easily bypassed as some stagnant couple of hours. Instead, in
a great exercise of foreshadowing, Bob got out of character and embodied
the lines "I know you're aive, baby I am too". Again, a connection between
form and content, so quick and constant that the friction, as in those old
zoetropes, produces something new: an illusion of reality.

Once the show becomes the real thing, it's unstoppable. And in Topeka it
was just like that. Bob seemed in such a complete command of the situation
and above any influence of heavy emotions that he went his way while the
band went theirs. It was a show of complete cohesion yet Bob was always in
a hurry or too short, unbalancing the songs by the tiniest beat so their
hidden textures would transpire, deepening in every cranny to take them to
really genuine palces, peeking into that realm from which we could only
receive a new version.

I felt I was amongst the first ones to cheer the land of Oz line though I
was a complete foreigner and it felt a bit strange, but in a way I was not
in Kansas anymore, I had went already far away from there.

Bob's piano playing kept getting more and more interesting, suddenly
stopping the melodies quite often to hit a new one in the keys, often
simpler and plonkier, and proceed through the song's new pace, both
narratively and musically. Take an outstanding 'Baby Blue', where in the
end he substituted the beautiful piano rainy tingling by a kind of
geometric, slow mathematical progression of bass notes, to the point I
remind it as slowly stopping the sound of music, halting the incesant
rotation and, suddenly, it all fell into silence, time stopped for a
second that is still going on. Comparatively, the piano in 'Jimmy Reed'
worked the other way, as if breaking down the song into many sides and
angles, turning it into a cubist painting that could look good while
totally being another thing.

'Every Grain of Sand' was so intense, so beat-driven, so experimentally
conservative that when it ended I walked slowly to the rail with the
security one of the securities would block my path. Instead of that, no
one in the first row had gotten near the stage yet so there I stood, the
closest possible to Bob, thanking him and doing the heart symbol in my
hands, acknowledged by a couple of his nods and gazes. Oh yes, I was not
in Kansas anymore.