Phew! It feels strange to be writing about Omaha, Nebraska (aren't those
two words just beautiful? How they sound? Could Nebraska be the most cool
name of all the states?) from the still of home, knowing our man and so
many drifters are over there in the Midwest, delivering the goods. Our
journey back to Barcelona was as it stressful as it gets, crazy bad
weather in Chicago caused lots of cancels and delays and, after two
changes of itinerary, we ended up boarding our plane back home just about
20 minutes before taking off. It feels as if I had been teleported more
than flown over; my last clear image of an street is most likely the
sidewalk of our hotel in Omaha waiting for our ride to the aiport. Times
are strange indeed.

The last songs we played on our ride from Topeka to Omaha the day off
between both shows, apart from of course Bruce's 'Nebraska' along the way,
were Bob's 'Señor' and 'Where Are You Tonight?'. My partner had never
listened any of them and he told me he thought they were great (I'm not
too proselitist when it comes to Bob), so a beautiful surprise that he
might be a 'Street-Legal' fan, definitely will give it a spin one of these
days for him. Well, the last song of the album contains which is probably
my favourite delivery on ANY Bob album: "If I'm there in the morning,
you'll know I survived, I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!, I can't belive that I'm
alive". That first "I can't believe it" give me the major goosebumps just
thinking about it, it seems a genuine exclamation of a man in genuine
surprise that his self being among the living is a real thing. The line
trespasses from the Oz-ish land of the muses and pours into reality, the
way in which Bob sings the words make them real, pouring off of the page
stuff, acquiring a breath out of the song and the album itself. They say
that every good movie is in a way a making of of itself, and this could be
true for that "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!" line, in that it goes back long before
the first crusade, it speaks of the episode in the Gospel of St. John (the
Apostle) where the Apostle Thomas is doubtful about Christ being
resurrected until he sees the stigmata on Jesus' body, to which comes this
amazing response by Jesus:

Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they
that have not seen, and yet have believed.

In Bob's case, the way in which we exclaims his disbelief in the song
proves he in fact hast just realised he's very much alive, and the mere
thought of all this drives me crazy. Well, coming into Omaha with this
song around and after the most brutal, intense, relentless and exhausting
touring week of my life, in a way I also couldn't belive I was there and
done that but it sounded just about right.

We spent the afternoon of the show day in the amazing Joslyn art museum in
Omaha, located downtown, free to all and hosting a really well scaled
collection of art from the early Italian Renaissance to really good
contemporary art. Lots of Native American art, which was a really nice
thing to check and learn about (from the beautiful textile works to Karl
Bodmer incredible watercolors) and two very Dylan-like paintings that were
apart from each other but in my mind paired incredibly good. It was such a
beautiful way to spend the last day of our tour in windy and chilly Omaha.

Thanks to some fellow bobcats, I had an amazing dead center seat in row F
(was row 9-ish I'd say) in the beautiful and almost centennial Orpheum
Theatre in Omaha. Surely the most classically beautiful venue of those
I've been in this Spring and the one most reminding of previous R&RW legs.
As I say, the seat was a blessing, I could see everything flowing, all at
the same time, Bob standing or seating, all the band, no obstruction
whatsoever, it was a true mortal bliss of a night. Had been a crazy week,
really rough, rowdy and even feverish, and it was as if all fell into
place in that moment, as in the paintings above, as if all the
tribulations, small or great worlds, good roads and bad feelings composed
that perfect image of a Bob Dylan show. It felt too god to believe it, but
there I was, ready to in-joy.

One exact year after my life being on the line by Mr. Cane, aka the Cane
Guy, aka the Crippled Mob Boss of New Orleans (or as I mispelledly
tweeted, the Bob Moss), literally being at the worst time, at the worst
place, another April Fool's show started. Bob treated us with not the
usual and growingly apocalyptic 'Watchtower' but a really gentle and light
rendition of 'I'll Be Your Baby Tonight'. It sounded quite good but, more
importantly for me, it felt good. It was a feel-good song and I was more
than ok with that. Songs that fit these times or, in this case, the
feelings we should seek shelter on these times. Bob stood up, giving his
back to us, and put on the guitar and, for what to me seemed a pretty long
time, he played a few notes while standing, I remember clearly his
guitar's neck pointing at 10'o'clock over his left shoulder and it was
beautiful just seeing Bob Dylan on his feet playing guitar even if it was
only for some seconds before he sat down and played all the rest.

First wholy outstanding song of the night for me was 'Multitudes'. This
new-ish, jazzier arrangement had maybe not clicked that good for me before
Omaha but there they damn nailed it, and it featured and incredible moment
on the last lines when Bob really approached the microphone and went: " I
play BEEEEEEthoven's sonatas...". How he stressed that "beeee" was, as
insignificant of a detail as it is, truly remarkable, as he seemed to be
mixing the name itself with the verb, conjuring the German master to sing
into him maybe.

'False Prophet' has definitely reclaimed the 'original' guitar riff that
had been long lost a whiiiile ago and to me it adds quite an anchor to the
song that seems to make it soar, and Bob definitely enjoys the "lusty old
mule" part. I realised that most surely this is a song written during
Trump's first term so it really could be it's a line about that sorry old
little man.

The show was, to put it some way, more classically beautiful, so to speak
as the venue, and less pointy or peaky as Wichita or Topeka, so it felt
such a soothing, embracing evening, for me it was a perfect way to say
farewell to our guys until not that long in the outlaw future. Sadly
though, 'Masterpiece' lost quite a bit of its flamenco edge and, despite a
really meant last verse (clergymen in uniform!) and beautiful harp, I
missed the Topeka rendition, while I also of course like to be proud that
maybe I was in that one-off.

A big, BIG highlight of the show was 'My Own Version of You' (btw, great
'Black Rider' again, if more similar to other nights, but the echo came
back I think in Wichita and has stayed since!). As I wrote in, I think,
Tulsa, the song has retained the melodic and romantic approach of the last
London shows but with a really important different: it has been stripped
out of its tenderness, so now its a really edgy meditation on all those
dark issues, mournful and heartfelt if you wish but much more liminal
instead of directed. Well, in Omaha not only it continued on that path but
by the end, on the long last vese, Bob, instead of his usual flow with
piano here and there and the band floating around, introduced between each
line a literal two key piano riff that kept coming back at the end of
almost each line: "Stand over there by the cypress tree - tan-tan - where
Trojan women and children were sold into slavery - tan-tan -" and so on.
It was Bob at his most wild and obssessive and the song really was
mindblowing, with Bob even chuckling a bit in the very last lines.

I'm not sure if it's one of the main reasons that to me make these current
shows so special and that obssesses me so much about them is how they seem
to be mysterious objects, contradictory and against the rules of an
expected spectacle: they start strong, super rocky but progress slowing
themselves down, putting you into a very strange yet focused mindset in
which you can feel something's happening but it's happening so fast and so
everchanging that not even the slowing down allows you to fully grasp it.
The show revolves around the 'Peggy-Sue-esque' 'Desolation Row', now
departed quite even from that, if still preserving its full cinematic
force (the song felt again like a great western, maybe more Fordian than
Hawksian this time) and then a practically solo 'Key West' where
everything stops. Putting those songs back to back, separated not only by
almost a lifetime but specially by a public assessment of their importance
and place in the artist's career, is for me the most powerful statement
Bob dares to do these days. Also, if the show slows down as it goes down,
the songs operate the other way within themselves, they often start soft
and quite and by the end turn into these powerful, really fiery vocal
delivery things, the words just being written in your soul (check
'Desolation Row' last verse in Omaha or the "I'd like to help you" part in
'Key West').

'Baby Blue' featured two (I think they were two) spectacular harp solo and
specially the vocals felt really true, as if Bob's psychological approach
goes also growingly personal as the concert goes on. My brain reacted
heavily at the geometrical focus of the song: the crazy patterns in the
sheets, the folding sky, mirroring the blankets on the floor and the
carpet down under... I know these are lyrics decades old now, but in
Omaha, maybe also beacuse of the focused arrengement, it just felt so
right, how it everything rhymed so beautifully impossible.

In fact, the landscapes described in 'Baby Blue' (sheets and sky, blankets
and carpet) have their counterpart in the plains and prairies, mountains
and sea in 'Made Up My Mind'. Bob seems to be singing about, indeed, the
great world and the small. A gentleman from Utah at my right cheered Salt
Lake City when it was called. It seems as if, through and through, the
reasons of this setlist and the big picture it can form and it confoms are
only graspable when going into little details while at the same time
reflecting on the feeling of it all.

I loved that 'Goodbye Jimmy Reed' featured a couple of revised lines!
Thanks moth for the tape as I only could catch it in part during the show:

They threw everything at me, everything in the book
How could I survive, don't know what it took

In Topeka I think Bob already attemped a change so this seems to be pretty
deliberate. It kind of reminds me about some lines in 'Pay in Blood'.
Omaha's 'Jimmy Reed' was one of the best of the current tour, with Bob
fully engaged and I specially loved the clockwork of all the musicians in
delivering a zoned in rendition. Those new lines are definitely ones that
I can relate to after this brutal Spring leg.

Last but not least, not least by any means! Beautiful, really, 'Every
Grain of Sand', with the added touch that Bob sang "in the years of my
deepest need", which rhymed in a way with 'My Own Version of You' while
I'm not sure that was some kind of mini flub as then he messed a bit the
"when a pool of tears" line so maybe that was just a years/tears
misplacement. What truly shone though was after the vocals were over, when
Bob actually grabbed the harp for the usual solo and, without even trying
to blow, he put it down and went for the piano instead. Instead of his
expectable tingling thing that has capped off beautifully many shows, he
did something quite different, as those breakdowns he had been doing in
other songs and other shows, he seemed to be trying to crack the song
itself or deconstruct it, I can't find better words for it, and to me it
felt so amazing that, almost 84 years in, he is still so restless.

As I exactly also did one year ago, but in a very different mood and
context, I also had a bourbon with some friends to wave see ya to the
tour. Things will be different the next time we meet, and ain't that
beautiful?

Not his best night. He seemed bothered by something in or under his jacket
and fidgeted with it often. He also had trouble with a wandering microphone,
often far enough away that we missed entire lines. The piano was mic'd too
high which didn't help when he hit a clunker (which he did) or when he was
noodling to find the beginning of the next song. As mentioned in other
reviews of this leg the reworkings of Masterpiece and Desolation Row were the
highlights. The R&R songs all seemed to be the same song after a while. I'm
reminded that just 9 months ago he put on a stellar show during the Outlaw
Music Festival. I think we'll all benefit when he retires some of these R&R
tunes and goes back to the catalog. Still, I left the house. I saw the show.
I'm glad I did.