{"id":368182,"date":"2026-06-20T08:12:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T08:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/368182\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T08:12:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T08:12:16","slug":"bob-dylan-is-absolutely-cooking-on-the-road-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/368182\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Dylan is absolutely cooking on the road right now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SANTA BARBARA\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Sixty-one years and a day after he laid down the epochal \u201cLike a Rolling Stone\u201d in a recording studio on Seventh Avenue in New York City, Bob Dylan shuffled onstage on the other side of the country dressed so fine<\/a> in a dark jacket with the hood pulled over his head.<\/p>\n

The hood, which Dylan has been wearing even for shows without the cool coastal breeze that blew through the Santa Barbara Bowl on Wednesday night, has lately become an object of online fascination; one guy on X last year wrote<\/a> that he was obsessed with the rock legend\u2019s \u201cnew dripped out look,\u201d and I have to agree: Though there are great hooded-Dylan photos going back decades, his current wardrobe \u2014 as seen nightly against a velvety curtain lighted from below \u2014 is a vibe through and through. (His Bobness forbade photographers from shooting Wednesday\u2019s show, which means you\u2019ll have to consult social media for a glimpse.)<\/p>\n

Dylan\u2019s drip isn\u2019t the only thing putting him into the viral bloodstream of the internet. In March, he launched a Patreon, where he\u2019s posting short stories and apparently AI-assisted installments in an audio series called \u201cLectures From the Grave\u201d; this week, he contributed his thoughts on aging to a widely shared New York Times op-ed<\/a> pegged to President Trump\u2019s 80th birthday. In my social feeds, at least, quotes from Dylan\u2019s piece \u2014 \u201cYou\u2019re an old king from some vanished country,\u201d he wrote \u2014 kept turning up next to clips of Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet celebrating the New York Knicks\u2019 NBA Finals win \u2014 an oddly poetic interleaving given their history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All this stuff is cool; I admire veteran culture-shapers who figure out how to adapt to a new information environment. Yet one of the reasons it\u2019s fun to encounter Dylan on Instagram is because you can still encounter him in the flesh. And at 85, he\u2019s absolutely cooking on the road right now.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s show was the first in a handful he\u2019s playing around Southern California this week, including a gig scheduled for Saturday night at Palm Desert\u2019s Acrisure Arena. For years after the release of 2020\u2019s pulpy \u201cRough and Rowdy Ways<\/a>,\u201d Dylan said he was on the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour; this month, though, he started selling T-shirts that describe his latest run of dates as the Long Hot Summer tour \u2014 precisely the sort of taxonomical quirk to get Bobheads going in the comments.<\/p>\n

The concert, which ran about 80 minutes, mixed four cuts from \u201cRough and Rowdy Ways\u201d with older Dylan songs like \u201cAll Along the Watchtower\u201d and \u201cTo Be Alone With You\u201d and covers such as Bo Diddley\u2019s \u201cI Can Tell\u201d and Eddie Cochran\u2019s \u201cNervous Breakdown.\u201d But the whole thing felt like one continuous dream state, as Dylan \u2014 accompanied by a four-piece band dressed in dark colors to match the boss \u2014 croaked, gasped and crooned from behind an electric piano he played like somebody knocking the keys with his arm as he reaches for a drink.<\/p>\n

\u201cFalse Prophet\u201d was a raunchy blues while \u201cWhen I Paint My Masterpiece\u201d rode a luscious rumba groove; \u201cCrossing the Rubicon\u201d and \u201cI\u2019ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,\u201d both from \u201cRough and Rowdy Ways,\u201d got arrangements completely different from those on the album.<\/p>\n

To the astonishment of many a Bobhead, Dylan\u2019s guitarist Doug Lancio was replaced in Santa Barbara by Julian Lage, the youngish jazz star known for his work with Gary Burton and John Zorn. (Dylan said nothing about the change, nor about anything else, from the stage; a spokesman for the singer said he had no word on whether Lage was a permanent addition to the band.) Lage\u2019s playing was tender and spooky, not least in \u201cTryin\u2019 to Get to Heaven,\u201d where every 30 seconds or so the chords would go in some direction I could never have predicted.<\/p>\n

The result was a spectacle of emotion \u2014 you\u2019d have to have tried not to get swept away by \u201cI Shall Be Released,\u201d which closed the show \u2014 but also of belief in one\u2019s craft. Onstage as on your phone, Dylan was searching for new limits Wednesday \u2014 a lifer grinding toward the sublime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTA BARBARA\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Sixty-one years and a day after he laid down the epochal \u201cLike a Rolling Stone\u201d in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[134513,7363,149323,149324,149321,48,52,51,47,50,49,2369,5274,14310,112219,149320,5875,1860,149322,20295,430],"class_list":["post-368182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bob-dylan","tag-country","tag-four-piece-band","tag-hood","tag-julian-lage","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-new-york-city","tag-release","tag-road","tag-rough","tag-rowdy-ways","tag-santa-barbara","tag-show","tag-sixty-one-year","tag-wednesday-night","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}