Sound Advice: Bob Dylan Joins Willie Nelson's Outlaw Gang in Cincinnati

Living legend Bob Dylan continues his never-ending tour with a stop in Cincinnati on Sept. 11 to join fellow songwriters Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp at the Outlaw Music Festival. With the exception possibly of Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, Dylan is one of the last greats from an incomparable era of music — an era he all but defined.

There are moments every Dylan fan cherishes. Maybe it’s his backstage rendition of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” in front of a visibly affected Donovan, captured in D.A. Pennebaker’s classic Don’t Look Back, or the chill-inducing exchange between a disgruntled folk diehard at a Manchester concert in ‘66 and Dylan right before he instructs The Band’s drummer, Levon Helm, to “play it fucking loud!” And with that, he truly never looked back. Dylan has always been hard to pin down, and that’s what makes him so good. Like Picasso, he isn’t content staying in one place, often reinventing himself while everyone else is still trying to catch up.

Hopefully, fans will get a chance to relive these storied scenes from Dylan’s uncompromising and eventful life on the big screen in the upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown , starring Timothée Chalamet as a young Dylan, directed by James Mangold.

Whether touring, publishing books (like 2022’s The Philosophy of Modern Song ), painting, sculpting or releasing new albums, at 82 Dylan shows no signs of stopping. The latest in his seemingly inexhaustible bootleg series will be The 1974 Live Recordings with The Band, set to be released on Sept. 20. A 27-disc set with 431 songs may sound like too much of a good thing, but with Dylan even his throwaways are gems. Better yet, witness the magic of Dylan firsthand — and then pick up that bootleg, say, thirty years down the line.

Bob Dylan performs as part of the Outlaw Music Festival on Sept. 11 at 5 p.m. at Riverbend Music Center. More info: riverbend.org .

This story is featured in CityBeat's Sept. 4 print edition.