Bob Dylan
Masonic Temple Theatre
April 4, 2026
Everyone projects their own idea of Bob Dylan onto the man himself, so it’s no wonder that a lot of people leaving the Masonic Temple Theatre Saturday night felt a bit underwhelmed by not seeing the version of Dylan they had in their head.
That’s got to be one of the annoying things about having a career like Dylan’s, which stretches across seven decades and through webs of myths and over 125 million albums sold. He didn’t seem bothered by any of it, however, emerging on stage at the Masonic draped in a rain jacket with his hood up, sitting down at the keys (sometimes standing!) and singing.
Keeping the hood up led to a lot of speculation with the smokers outside (and quips about him being dressed like Detroit rapper Eminem, which was accurate). They openly debated if it was actually him or if they were piping in his voice from somewhere backstage. Even in 2026, the myth of Bob Dylan continues to grow.
This is yet another leg of the “Rough and Rowdy Ways” tour, named after his album from 2020 and going on since 2021. The core of the band is strong, with Bob Britt and Doug Lancio on guitar and Tony Garnier on bass. (The drummers have rotated in recent years.)
If you’re looking for the hits, you didn't find them here. And if they did emerge, they were rearranged and almost unrecognizable. I did lovethe more upbeat, major key version of “All Along the Watchtower,” which in the Dylan canon is the probably the best known tune he played in Detroit. “False Prophet” and “I Contain Multitudes” were also standouts, pulled from his most recent material.
I didn’t go into this show expecting anything out of Dylan or for him to harken back to some bygone slice of nostalgia. I was motivated to see a legend at 84 who is seemingly on a never-ending tour of gorgeous theaters around the country and still has an urge to create and move forward as an artist.
From that point of view, I kinda loved it. It’s like Dylan was cosplaying as a bar band act in some brigadoon dive bar. They didn’t even dim the lights until halfway through the second tune. (There’s a joke to be made here about the age range of this audience needing additional time and light to find their seats, but I’ll leave that for some other Midbrow writer.)
Everything felt lo-fi and warm and fuzzy and insanely distant, even though we weren’t sitting that far away. It was like hearing an old record drift through the window of a neighbor's house. If you’ve got the patience for it, you can almost make out the tune! It was a quiet show with a lot of subtlety between the notes that some of the drunken audience members certainly missed, or were too busy thinking about what the show could’ve been to enjoy the one that was unfolding right in front of them.
Now, with his voice. There are times when you can’t make out a word, like he just ate four hot dogs or yodeling to you about the time he did eat four hot dogs, or is calling out in pain for more hot dogs. This can be an ultimate exercise in patience. At its best, you might be able to make out a sentence or two. At its worst, it feels like you’re trying to work your way through bramble with a machete.
And after a while of working a hatchet through a bramble, you get a little tired… and just wishing there was a more vocally legible version of Dylan on stage.
