The Politics and Power of Bob Dylan's Live Performances

Ephemeral by nature, the concert setlist is a rich, if underexplored, text for scholarly research. How an artist curates a show is a significant aspect of any concert's appeal. Through the placement of songs, variations in order, or the omission of material, Bob Dylan's setlists form a meta-narrative speaking to the power and significance of his music. These essays use the setlists from concerts throughout Dylan's career to study his approach to his material from the 1960s to the 2020s. These chapters, from various disciplinary perspectives, illustrate how the concert setlist can be used as a source to explore many aspects of Dylan's public life. Finally, this collection provides a new method to examine other musicians across genres with an interdisciplinary approach to setlists and the selectivity of performance. Unique in its approach and wide-ranging scholarly methodology, this book deepens our understanding of Bob Dylan, the performer.

Erin C. Callahan (PhD, Drew University) is Professor of English at San Jacinto College in Houston, Texas. She has published on gender in the Star Wars Saga, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Charles Schulz's Peanuts and contributed an essay to 21st Century Dylan: Late and Timely. She has presented at various conferences, including ACA/PCA, PAMLA, Bob Dylan in the 21st Century in Arras, France, and The World of Bob Dylan, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Court Carney (PhD, LSU) is Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University, where he teaches on race, memory, culture, and music. He is the author of Cuttin' Up: How Jazz Got America's Ear and a forthcoming book on the public memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Table of Contents - Introduction: The Politics and Power of Bob Dylan's Live Performances - Erin C. Callahan and Court Carney - Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Implications of the Past: A Case Study - Court Carney - "Might as Well Just Stay Up Here": Bob Dylan's Pivotal Performance at Montreal's Finjan Club in 1962 - Simon McAslan - I'm Ready to Go Anywhere: Bob Dylan's Propulsive Vector of Engagement with Audiences, 1964-1966 - Keith Nainby and John Radosta - "Hurricane" and Bob Dylan's Protest Music Renaissance on the Rolling Thunder Tour - Skye Landgraf - Reaching for the Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan's Country Music Connections and Lasting Impact on the Emerging 1970s Country-Rock Movement - McKenzie L. Isom - The Rolling Thunder Revue's Critical Bicentennial Nostalgia - Jason Tebbe - "All the World's a Stage": Bob Dylan's Spontaneous Performativity in Martin Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue (2019) and NBC's Hard Rain (1976) - Sara Martínez - The Warfield Cycle: Dylan's Mystery Plays, San Francisco, November 1980 - Graley Herren - "Hanging in the balance of the reality of man": Dylan's Artistic Vision of Impermanence, October 1981 - Jim Salvucci - Bob Dylan's Splayed Anthems - Robert Reginio - Bob Dylan's Waste Land: Contemporary Existential Anxieties Reflected in the 2013-2019 Set Lists - Erin C. Callahan - "What's Going On in Your Show:" A look at the Shadow Kingdom setlist - Nina Goss - "Today and Tomorrow and Yesterday Too": Time in Bob Dylan's Work of the 2020s - Laura Tenschert - Encore: The Never-Ending Sonnets: On Bob Dylan's Never-Ending Tour, 1987-1997 - Jeff Fallis - Epilogue: From Angel to Devil, From Lovelorn to Enchantment: Dylan's Setlists in 2022 - Erin C. Callahan and Court Carney List of Contributors Acknowledgements