A Deep Dive Spring Tour Review! Part 2

A Stunning Review from Bobcelona attending the first 6 Dylan-shows of the Spring Tour 2025! - Part 2 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 was a 2-part-series, you can check out part 1 here!

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We were entering that phase of the tour in which you start getting used to moving from place to place and in fact we were amidst a triplet: Springfield-Wichita-Topeka. After dry flat-ish rolling hills and the stunning Ozarks, we fully entered the Great Plains: tenths of miles of straight roads, imposing horizon lines, beautiful clouds and the sense of surrealness growing within me as those empty spaces, with mostly nothing but nothingness everywhere you looked and scattered farms echoed my odd feeling of realizing I now had no grandparents anymore, while heading to Wichita to catch Bob Dylan. My only knowledge of Wichita comes from a fantastic 1955 western movie of the same name directed by the great Jacques Tourneur. I don't remember that much about it apart from the fact that I absolutely loved it and that I watch it on a sleepless night during the pandemic.

Wichita - Picture by Robb Feinstein

Wichita's show was important to me because it would be the only show in which my partner and I would be seating together, on incredible left side, but almost center, seats in row 2, which allowed us to completely see Bob all the time, whether he was seating or standing. That night he took out his shiniest gowns and wore black shirt with a V-shaped crystal-like embroideries over the chest and also around the collar. The man looked gorgeous as hell, it really was quite a sight and I couldn't believe our luck when we could actually see him strumming the guitar and even more when, during 'It Ain't Me Babe', after playing the guitar, he leaned to his left and innocently played both the keyboard and the piano for half a minute or a minute as if he was searching for something while playing both sides. It always mesmerizes me those moments in which you can see the unperforming Bob, where there is not even a song traversing him, just a man on a stage, collecting his thoughts and collecting himself, as limbs and liver and brain and heart as all of us. Maybe it was Bob's physical proximity, maybe my grandma's literal and non-literal absence, from Wichita onwards I started having more often than ever before that "wow, that's actually Bob Dylan singing a mere feet off you" and that feeling popped up several times during that show and those that followed. More than reverence, it was shocking warmth, that "yeah that's about right" thought Bob tweeted about when listening to Nick Cave singing about now being the time for joy.

'My Own Version of You' was pure alchemy, there was a pounding in my brain during the whole last verse that made the experience so powerful, with the melody almost disappeared, Bob suddenly playing (in a pattern that would be repeated in the latter part of other songs in Wichita) an impromptu melody on the low bass keys of the piano, deepening the sound and specially the meanings, as if they were all digging to the core of the songs. Those moments were truly astonishing to witness from that close. 'Key West' was again, after Springfield, a great moment, especially when Bob sang the "land of Oz" line and most of us seemed to took a couple of seconds to remind "oh, wait" and then the crowd cheered it so lovingly to the point that Tony was really cracking up, even Bob seemed touched by our reaction. Another really touching instant happened when Bob sang "I'm so deep in love that I can hardly see" and put his hand on his chest for the whole line.

Wichita Venue - Century II Concert Hall

The most important moment of the Wichita show, though, came in 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue'. At one point, after the second verse, it was clear that the song was on the verge of wrecking, Bob seemed unsure with the lyrics, nodding, dead serious, the piano almost inaudible. After the "all your six sailors" verse, with the band playing a bit of filling, Bob stopped completely, went to his right and picked up a harp. This took several seconds, it was not a quick moment, it was a deliberate pause to compose himself from discomfort or distraction. Then he delivered one of the most incredible harp solos I've seen him do. It was so triumphant, it was the embodiment of hope and purpose. It felt that kind of sports comeback against all odds in a few minutes, and it was one of the times I admired him the most for not giving up, whatever it caused the problem. He sang the last "vagabond" verse beautifully and then delivered another full blown harp solo that he almost connected straight to the opening one of 'I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You', that was immaculately delivered with a final mesmerizing "yeeeeessssss". To be honest, I'm not sure if maybe the hand in chest moment which I wrote about above was in fact during the "I love so real... So real and so true!" (those were Bob's words in Wichita) instead of during 'Key West'. Both lines are related and I definitely felt related to them on those special nights, when I got feelings of not being in Kansas anymore. Just when getting out of the venue, a strangely appealing brutalist building, a huge thunderstorm ensued, which prompted us to hurry back to our hotel room at top speed; just when we were about to enter our hotel, in the distance, a gigantic lightning stroke before our eyes.

Topeka, Kansas' capital and the location of the third show in a row, was quite a 'short' drive from Wichita, about 3 plain hours, so we made it there pretty easily, with the whole afternoon to spare before the show. Our hotel, where a nice amount of other bobcats were also staying, had a huge indoor food court decorated like a Mediterranean cheap town (a cornier corny than Las Vegas style) and a mostly deserted indoor pool and hot tub that felt great after that insane amount of accumulated distance. I was going on my own to the Topeka show, so my partner opted for the not at all disdain able plan of watching the first three 'John Wick' movies out of order in a Latino tv channel with the most 'so bad that it's good' dubbing you can imagine. The Topeka Performing Arts Center was in renovation both on the outside and in the lobby areas, but regardless you could feel the classy essence of it all, not that baroque beauty of the theatres of old (as for example Omaha's venue) but a truly Art Deco venue that was, in my opinion, built and filled with real gusto, class above fanciness. My seat ended up probably being the worst of the whole tour, row 8 or 9 next to the left aisle and also next to the exits what would be heavily used by patrons to refill drinks, ease their pouches or unlock their bladders, albeit with really fantastic acoustics.

I'll state it plainly: the Topeka concert was not only the best and most fulfilling of the six shows I managed to see but right now I'd rank it easily amongst my favorite ever concerts. To try to explain why I'll go back to what I felt in the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa when listening to the live samples of 'Tangled Up in Blue' from different years: *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. And here I might add: to ease you and cool you and cease the pain. For the first time in the tour, Bob took the stage in Topeka with no hat in sight and wearing a jacket and he attacked 'All Along the Watchtower' in a very serious fashion, both that and even more 'It Ain't Me Babe''s guitar solos really merged with the band's sound, going along with the melody, crisp yet totally harmonic. On the second and last verses in 'Watchtower', Bob proposed a piano riff that kept sliding into the bass notes as the lines went on and he phrased the words along with that downgrading sound. It was so interesting to behold that inventiveness right from the start and that 'on the edge' attitude was sustained throughout the whole concert. Maybe I was in the precise wavelength to catch it all, I don't know, molded by time, spaces and experiences to allow myself to have that feeling that it didn't matter if it was the music projecting on me or me projecting on the music, it just felt right on each and every note.

And that feeling of correctness just went off the charts with 'When I Paint My Masterpiece'. It's a song where Doug Lancio's acoustic guitar playing always is a nice touch, so when it started I noticed the acoustic but suddenly I realized that the acoustic was the main sound I was hearing. The acoustic guitar was driving the song and, all of a sudden, I knew it: flamenco. When the flamenco sound mixed with the "Spanish stairs" (despite being the Roman "Spanish stairs"), I couldn't believe I was there, in Topeka, Kansas, witnessing Bob Dylan playing his own version of flamenco, the folklore music from southern Spain, from where my grandma and all her family came. I just couldn't believe it, that again, in a true miraculous fashion, everything clicked within me, suddenly beholding that unfathomable certainty, my life and life only indeed. The rendition was so beautiful I don't hesitate to put it along the other two greatest performances of the 'Rough and Rowdy Ways' tour I've been fortunate to see for myself: Tokyo's April 11th 'Goodbye Jimmy Reed' in 2023, and Meridian's 'Every Grain of Sand' in 2022. Just a couple of songs later, Bob asked us “Are these songs for this time or not?”. I would doubt to trump Bob Dylan but I think not even him could grasp how much they are.

I was reaching the last part of a journey that took just a tad more than one week but that felt as if it had started in another lifetime. A journey over the world to end up in remote towns, devoid cities, at the globe's end, where everything is so wasted and so basic that nothing can be made up, masked or superficially embellished. It is what it is. Towards the end of the Topeka show, I remember that I thought of trying to approach the stage after 'Every Grain of Sand' with not much hope as there was security nearby. However, the last song was so powerful, its beat so rooted to the core, as if it was an standard of a yet to come era, that I couldn't help myself. After the last piano note, in what to me felt in slow motion, I stood up, walked peacefully by the aisle towards the stage, reached the closest point to Bob while everyone on the front row, unexpectedly, was still seating, and thanked him and directed to him some heart shaped hands gestures. He gave me the look a couple of times and, against all odds, it was in Topeka where I'm sure he acknowledged me. After the show, I had this not so often feeling of needing to share my emotions and views with other fans and, fortunately, a small triplet of us went to a nearby bar, the Spawn Inn, a fantastic gamers bar where I had a blue cocktail named Blastoise, after the famed Pokémon. I read afterwards that the Topeka Performing Arts Center opened in 1939, the same year in which my grandma arrived as a little child in Barcelona from the land of flamenco.

The following day we drove to Omaha to the music of, of course, Bruce Springsteen's magnificent 'Nebraska' and a few 'Street-Legal' songs my partner ended up adoring to my total surprise. 'Reason to Believe', Springsteen's album last track, has a killer refrain: "Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe". That sounded about right too and rhymed pretty well with the last lines we listened to in the car while pulling into Omaha:

There's a new day at dawn, and I've finally arrived

If I'm there in the morning, baby, you'll know I've survived

I can't believe it, I can't believe I'm alive

In a way, I couldn't believe it either, that we had made it in one piece, though not unscathed nor unhurt, but yes, alive. If not for our Scotland-Chattanooga crossover friend, Graham, this trip would have been impossible, so my deepest gratitude goes to him for making it possible and enabling me to forge these inedible memories.

Omaha - Picture by Ray Padgett

By the way, next day in Omaha was possibly, all in all, the best one of the whole trip. A super laid-back day at the great and free Joslyn Art Museum downtown, where Monet and Lichtenstein whisper to each other from decades apart, where you can see Michelangelo's 'David' on the reflection of a tourist's sunglasses in a mesmerizing huge photography by Thomas Struth and the problematic and spoiled cultural and artistic legacy of the First Nations. If you wanna know about other postcards of the hanging, I'd write down the names of George Smith and Will Brown.

Later on, by the river, Bob played a beautiful show at the Orpheum Theatre that couldn't have left me more content and smiling, trading 'All Along the Watchtower' for 'I'll Be Your Baby Tonight' and then all the rest and, while I'm certain I'm doing it little justice with these few lines, I guess that's good enough for now.

Omaha - Picture by Madeleine Nathalie