Bob Dylan is 85 this May and still touring – what’s your excuse?
Bob Dylan kicked off his 2026 tour on Saturday night at the Orpheum Theater in Omaha, Nebraska, and it was quite the shake up for die hard fans.
He’s been doing the same ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’ tour since November 2021, and just when fans thought they could probably know what to expect, Dylan’s up there saying “sike!”.
He played only six tracks from the album (as opposed to the usual nine), and decided to trade out the grand piano worth a house deposit for a teeny-weeny keyboard centre stage.
He also got his guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio to get rid of their electrics and do the whole set acoustic, instead.
An electric guitar sat sadly on the stage, waiting, wishing – but Bob just never picked it up.
He then took a Berghain-like approach and banned fans from their phones to play a rendition of Eddie Cochran’s 1958 classic track ‘Nervous Breakdown’ for the first time in his long, long career.
Somehow, the audio leaked and ended up online, as it always does – which you can check out below.
Someone will end up in trouble for that one.
Dylan flicked another cover into the setlist; Bo Diddley’s ‘I Can Tell’, before whipping out his 1989 track ‘Man In The Long Black Coat’ for the first time in 13 years.
Whether or not Dylan was treating Nebraska fans to a very special treat won’t be confirmed until tonight when he picks the baton back up for a gig in South Dakota.
He’ll keep on darting around the US for the next month before wrapping up in Texas on May 1st.
The veteran performer is certainly showing no signs of slowing down, so fingers crossed an Australian tour’s at the top of his next agenda.
