On Saturday, April 12, Bob Dylan performs at Embassy Theatre in Fort Wayne, and, of course, it’s sold out. And, if you have tickets, make sure they’re printed, as digital ones will not be accepted.

What can we say about Dylan, the most iconic and storied U.S. singer-songwriter in rock music that has not been said before?

Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in Duluth, Minn., a few months before the United States entered World War II. 

His recording career began in 1961 when he was 20 years old. 

He turns 84 next month, having logged 40 studio albums, 21 live albums, and endless compilation albums and reissues — not to mention being paid tribute over the decades by a cavalcade of music stars who have had big hits with covers of his songs.

Here are a few of his awards: 11 Grammys over 35 years, a Gospel Music Association Dove Award in 1980, inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, Kennedy Center Honor in 1997, Pulitzer Prize in 2008, National Medal of the Arts in 2009, Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, and certainly not least, Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016.

There have been many documentaries featuring Dylan and his concert performances and motion picture dramas as well. 

His Music was A-changin’

The recent blockbuster A Complete Unknown is certainly giving a boost to his touring and ticket sales. 

Directed by James Mangold, the film stars Timothée Chalamet as Dylan. Its story begins in 1961 when Dylan appeared as a newcomer in New York’s Greenwich Village folk music clubs. He was brought to the attention of pioneering record producer John Hammond who signed him to a recording contract on the spot and, well, the rest is history.

Dylan was a singing poet with, let’s be charitable, an unmistakable voice that was unlike anything heard in mainstream radio and pop music. High and thin, and never particularly melodic or even in tune, his singing was nonetheless the vehicle for his mesmerizing songwriting and lyrics. Through it, he gave voice to the sentiments of a generation.

He started in the counter-culture of urban folk and protest songs, moving into the era of the Vietnam War. 

Dylan famously and abruptly swapped his acoustic guitar for a Stratocaster at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 and entered an electric rock phase. 

In ensuing years he became a pop star and moved through a Nashville country music phase. 

Dylan was always known to be spiritually minded, from his Jewish upbringing, and it didn’t surprise those who knew him well that he accepted Christianity in the late 1970s and put out a series of evangelical gospel albums.

Dylan has been considered an elder statesman of popular music for decades, and as such, he can write and sing about anything he likes in any style he chooses. But it mostly comes back around to folk-rock with acoustic guitars, and occasionally gospel-tinged harmonies.

Remaining rough and rowdy

Dylan is appearing on a leg of his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, which is named for his 2020 studio album, and has been going, off and on, since late 2021. 

Expected to appear with Dylan is a somewhat younger cadre: his musical director of 35 years, upright bass and electric bass player Tony Garnier, ace Nashville guitar side-man and producer Bob Britt, and another veteran Nashvillian on lead guitar, Doug Lancio. The new drummer is session player Anton Fig, known for his decades with Paul Shaffer on the David Letterman show.

Rough and Rowdy Ways is a masterclass in how a rocker can age. Dylan’s adapted his endlessly fertile songwriting to the reality of his gravelly octogenarian voice. It’s perfectly appropriate that he pitches his newest melodies almost an octave below the high tenor of his youth, and now sings in a small compass when he wants to and declaims poetry over the music when it suits the narrative. 

His lyrics are first-person, whether he’s being autobiographical or spinning yarns about characters. He sings, “I’m a man of contradictions/I’m a man of many moods/I contain multitudes.”

Dylan’s still filling his songs with religious references, and in the best tradition, he sings of love to another person in spiritual terms, in “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You.”

In “Goodbye Jimmy Reed,” a flat-out electric blues juke-joint banger, he says an elaborate farewell to a highly influential star from the 1950s who passed away in 1976. But Dylan is singing as if it were yesterday, and from his perspective, maybe it is.

Setlists from recent shows indicate Dylan will perform most of the songs from this recent album, with only a handful or two of classic songs from his heyday in the 1960s and ’70s.

PHONE-FREE EXPERIENCE

If you are fortunate enough to have tickets to the show, be advised that as per Dylan’s requirements, the use of phones, smartwatches, and accessories will not be permitted in the concert hall. 

Upon your arrival, Embassy event staff will take each device and lock it into a pouch — which you will keep — and you can’t unlock the pouch and use your device while in the performance space. Anyone seen using a device in the performance space during the concert will be escorted out of the venue by security. 

At the end of the event, the staff will unlock everybody’s pouch and you can take your device out. 

It’s called the Yondr system; look up the details online. We’re passing along this information, which is on The Embassy’s website, where they say, “We appreciate your cooperation in creating a phone-free viewing experience.”

Due to this extra step, doors will open 90 minutes before showtime instead of the normal 60 minutes.