A Deep Dive Spring Tour Review! Part 1
A Stunning Review from Bobcelona attending the first 6 Dylan-shows of the Spring Tour 2025! - Part 1 of 2
Feel free to join us today as we return to the first quarter of this year’s Spring Tour, where expectingrain.com user “Bobcelona” (Sergi) was kind enough to share a stunning, deep-diving review in his unique, emotional writing style, covering an incredible trip where he attended six Bob Dylan shows in a row!
This will be a 2-part-series, with part 2 coming in tomorrow!
Enjoy!
No time to think
It's something I've been asked and, more importantly, I've asked myself quite often: why I keep going to Bob Dylan concerts so often? When I look at the cold numbers, it doesn't make any sense: since his return to touring 'after' the pandemic, in Fall 2021, I've attended 103 shows. The first one of those was his first show in New York City in 2021, on November 19th; the last one, his concert in Omaha, Nebraska, on April 1st 2025. I've done the math’s: that's 1230 days, so it means that, roughly, I've been at a show every 12 days. Again, it doesn't make any sense, it's insane to think that during these 1230 days I've seen Bob Dylan much more often than some relatives or friends that also live in Barcelona. In these 1230 days, Bob has only played in Barcelona two shows, meaning I've travelled far away from home to see him on the other 101. My uncle lives within a 5 minute walk to the beautiful venue where Bob played in 2023 in Barcelona and declined my invitation to come to the show. It doesn't make any sense either and it proves we're quite extremist within the family. Yet, despite this insane statistic (one Dylan show every 12 days?!) that I'm equally proud and embarassed about, I can't count the days to see him again in the Outlaw tour in May, when I plan to attend some of the shows in the first leg of the tour. So, again: what keeps me so hooked about Bob Dylan in concert?
The idea of London 2024 not being the end, something I never quite believed but of course always feared, surely was a big boost when the first 2025's dates rolled in, and when in fact the Spring tour proved itself to be just that, a Bob Dylan Spring tour, not any final show in Tulsa or other bizarre ideas, it felt so good. Then, after not thinking twice and planning a trip around the first six shows of the tour (Tulsa to Omaha in six different cities in just eight days) with the main reason for focusing on those shows was the prospect of finally visiting the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, it dawned on me: is it really that important that I keep going, spending all that money, investing all that time, to go see MORE 'Rough & Rowdy' shows? Would I miss it that much skipping a leg? What is the purpose to roam around towns and cities where there's really not much to say about? With all those thoughts in mind, the real thing arrived.
An excruciating 24 hours idly spent in planes and airports passed by between laying in my bed in Barcelona and laying in a bed in a hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma, arriving the night before Bob Dylan kicked off his touring year. Next day, we walked about half an hour to the Bob Dylan Center, crossing pretty much Tulsa's emptied downtown, crossing paths with a really small amount of people, some posh executives near a tall office building on their way up and some rougher characters around charity organization’s on their way down. I always go on a Bob Dylan two week abstinence before the first show of a leg, to get caught a bit off guard and engage easier in whatever Bob is proposing that time. My visit to the Bob Dylan Center made that impossible as the best part of the visit was without any doubt the audio guide you are provided, where you can listen to a remarkable amount of performances while you wander through the place, from an outstanding unreleased outtake from 'World Gone Wrong' called 'I've Always Been a Rambler' to one of my favorite bits: a sampler of live performances of 'Tangled Up in Blue' that span from 1975 to 2014. That 2014 rendition, specially, suddenly struck me and made me feel all again why all the efforts to see a Bob Dylan concert are worth it: just a brief moment of *that* unfathomable certainty that all the focus in life's dignity and beauty can be concentrated in the spoken word, or a piano note, or a guitar riff, and that that instant is happening just before yourself.
Poster for the release of the triple album Masterpieces in Japan on display at the Bob Dylan Center
Tulsa
Now, could Bob provide me again with that feeling? I truly wasn't ready for the brutal intensity of what would unfold over the following nights and days. A few hours later, I took my seat at the Tulsa Theater and, possibly expecting to be surprised on the setlist, as I was in Somerset or Prague in 2024, I have to say I left happy but far less impressed than most of my fellow fans, albeit for great renditions of 'I've Made Up My Mind' and specially a 'Watching the River Flow' that blew my mind as it seemed as if Bob had been waiting decades for that and an 'Every Grain of Sand' that reminded me of Meridian in 2022, which to this date I claim to be my favorite ever live performance.
Bob in Tulsa - Picture by Ricky Salthouse
Despite all this, I was missing something, and it was either my fault or Bob's. Maybe the physicality of Europe 2024 shows, with Bob leaning over the piano or wandering center stage? Maybe the Outlaw tour magical randomness? Maybe that cutting edge, peaky roar of Spring 2024?
Little Rock
There was no much time to think as the next show, a several hours drive away in Little Rock, was just the following night. My seat was a dead center one in the third row of the pit and surprised myself to be seating to a fellow fan which I met, also by chance, in the second Memphis show in 2024. Maybe silver linings? Bob took the stage hatted as in Tulsa but with a less flamboyant dark shirt; in Little Rock, it was decorated with a nice rhomboid pattern that he would also wear the following show in Springfield. The first pricked ears moment came early in 'It Ain't Me Babe', when after soloing at the guitar a bit, Bob threw away the pick and kept playing with his bare fingers all along. That image had some special power from yonder times apart from the "tune up my strings" connection; it brought to my mind that Madonna song, 'Material Girl', because of the "material world" bit. Funnily enough, I've just know that Tracy Chapman, whose birthday Bob congratulated on Twitter a few days later, has in fact a song called 'Material World'.
Bob in Little Rock - Picture from video by Madeleine Nathalie
Well, that image put me on a maybe specially attentive mood and the first true shot rang at 'My Own Version of You'. Up to the last two London shows in 2024, the song had navigated between what I'd call the spooky arrangement (kept loosely for most of the tour) and the party arrangement (mainly in Summer and Fall 2023); in London, though, Bob introduced a super stripped down arrangement that blew our collective mind: suddenly, that was a song that could make you cry, a romantic plea that reminded me of what I thought the song would be about when I read its title when the album came out in 2020. By suspending the menace and enlarging the notes at the lines' ends, the song suddenly acquired a lamentation essence that made it really emotional. It was no more a song that threatened with the to be created creature but cried about what it took to get there, it was done with tears. Then it came the Little Rock rendition and there I was truly shocked: the arrangement was quite similar to London's but the vocal approach was as if Bob had found a way to finally merge the laughter and the tears and raise above any passing emotion, his voice growingly turning almost into a metallic command, as if we were actually those the song was talking about, his hand pointing at the audience when "YOU got what they call the immortal spirit". I would call the rendition the tightrope walker 'My Own Version of You', as Bob proved again why sometimes you just have to let the words to their work and they'll walk you through that invisible line towards where they are directed. To me, Bob's truly surprising move, which I realized during the Little Rock show, was not as much as he was working on the songs' surfaces but on their cores, aptingly forging them from the inside out, as if he had taken his own 'Rough and Rowdy Ways' set to its literal limit (2021-2024) and from here the job was to get into the whale's belly and carve his way out with Homeric purposefulness. I remember leaving the show with that fulfilling feeling of worthiness, of rewarded effort and definitely looking forward to how the tour might keep unfolding, and the cherry on top that night was meeting again, really unexpectedly, a bobcat from Hamburg that I met in London last year.
Springfield
Then, the morning of the Springfield show, after a beautiful day off at the Ozarks, I received a message from my mother telling that my grandma had passed away. She was 88, born in Huelva, south of Spain, in 1936, just a few days after the start of the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, around the war's ending, escaping from the retaliation of the victor fascist rebels, my grandma's mum moved with her and her siblings to Barcelona, and a bit later her dad joined them.
The timing of the 24 hours surrounding my grandma's passing was one of the most surreal things I've experienced. Couldn't stop thinking about her and my family yet at the same time it felt as if it wasn't true, just some story that happened to somebody else. My mum told me that the passing was on March 27th at 11:30pm, so that meant 5:30pm in Arkansas. I knew automatically what I was doing at that moment: recording a video from the road on our way to Eureka Springs, a beautiful town in the Ozarks, along the sound of 'Murder Most Foul'. While my partner went to sleep early, I stayed awake a few extra hours, lights the dimmest it could be, just listening to some Bob songs, crying out of nowhere with 'I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You' and with a self-encore 'Murder Most Foul'. Well, in hindsight maybe it wasn't that out of nowhere.
When I received the message of my grandma's passing, we were at the quite stunning Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas on our way from Eureka Springs to Springfield (Missouri), where Bob was playing a show that night. Apart from the more classical museum display indoors, the museum also has some works displayed outdoors in a beautiful forest setting (similar to Bob Dylan's 'Rail Car' displayed in a vineyard in Provence). In fact, our main draw there was Frank Lloyd Wright's Bachman-Wilson House, a 1954 Usonian style house originally built in New Jersey and relocated in Arkansas in 2014 after the museum acquired it. I received my mum's message when we were about to tour the house and my companions told me it was ok if we skipped it but I decided on the spot that I could cry in a while and also because I'm sure my mum would be glad I didn't miss the house as one of the nicest memories travelling with her was when we visited Wright's Fallingwater House in 2024. Not skipping the Bachman-Wilson House was in the end a blessing in disguise as we were alone inside the house, a heaven-like setting where I allowed myself to tour it with tears. After the visit, I called my mum, spoke with the family and on we went to Springfield.
While resting that afternoon in our accommodation, a beautiful inn set in an old house a couple of minutes off walking from the show's venue, I posted about my grandma's passing on expectingrain. Despite some people there actually know me, I post with an alias so I felt more comfortable than posting about it on other social media with my real name. I don't know why I did it, maybe just because I use to write Bob's reviews with quite some personal stuff in them and it would have felt strange to not do so. A few minutes later, I received a private message from a fellow poster on the forum offering me a front row ticket he could not be using. That night, I had tickets for both me and my partner in the balcony, a bit further back than usual, and my partner told me to not even hesitate and accept the offer, he would be more than ok on his own (his first time!) in the balcony. Looking back, I cannot express how much I'm grateful for that offer, as it turned out our balcony seats were way worse than what I had expected and the songs came across quite badly up there, so it's moving to realize I could feel my grandma so close to me that night solely thanks to the help of a complete unknown.
Bob in Springfield - Picture by Emmett Shaw
I don’t have much to say about the Springfield show to be honest, I think its surroundings speak much better about it than whatever I can say. Even the most remarkable memories I have are connected to them, as for example when, for the first two songs, being at front row and due to the stage height and Bob remaining sat, the pitch black piano resembled an ominous coffin before Bob stood up in 'I Contain Multitudes' as if he was rising from the underworld to tell us the stories. Or when in 'Desolation Row' I felt quite pumped up and cheered big time the "or else expecting rain" line (obviously if not for expectingrain I wouldn't have been in that privileged spot that night) to the point I was pretty certain and sorry I distracted Bob. 'Key West' was extremely moving ("death is on the wall") and, while I was fully expecting it, I was nonetheless emotionally caught off guard by how the line "lot of people gone, people I knew" affected me. It was great to sit side by side with a fantastic fan I just had met in person in Tulsa and to share the post-show glow up and emotions with her.