Will Bob Dylan Continue to Tour?

Bob Dylan's Rough and Rowdy Ways The tour has finally come to an end. The multi-year track wrapped up on Nov. 14 with a three-night run at London's Royal Albert Hall and there are, at the time of this writing, no further concert dates listed on Dylan's site.

It begs the question: now what? Dylan is 83 years old, and while there are artists still touring beyond that — we're looking at you, Willie Nelson — it's hard to discount advancing age as a factor.

Dylan has never been predictable, nor entirely truthful, so it feels almost impossible to accurately assess what his next steps may be in terms of live performing. This is, after all, the man whose performing schedule once earned the nickname the Never Ending Tour. We can, however, examine the context of the moment.

The End of the Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour

It seems like lifetimes ago that Dylan first launched his Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, which began all the way back in November of 2021. At that time, the promotional material for the tour billed it as “worldwide” and as lasting until 2024, a promise that clearly has been kept. In between, Dylan also appeared at Farm Aid as a surprise guest in 2023 where he played with Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench swear Steve Ferrone of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. He also joined Nelson John Mellencamp as a headlining act on Nelson's 2024 Outlaw Festival Tour.

Silence From the Dylan Camp

Notoriously enigmatic, Dylan very rarely gives interviews and that hasn't changed of late. (The musicians in his band have also kept on the down low.) In fact, it's almost as though Dylan and his team have doubled down on staying silent even as excitement is growing around the upcoming Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknownstarring Timothée Chalamet. Most artists would perhaps be doing some press in support of such a project, but not Dylan — Chalamet himself has done most of the talking.

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“I relate to the feeling that my talent could be my talent,” Chalamet said recently Rolling Stonespeaking to his role. “I don't need to point to some thing in my youth. Your talent is your talent. The thing you gotta say is the thing you gotta say. You don't need the Big Bang. … My dad grew up in the Minnesota of France, you could say. So I would spend my summers in that region, and I would feel the exact same way. You feel boxed in — and you feel like you have something more to say.”

Twitter and the Monkey Man

Instead of announcing new tour dates, Dylan has another hobby: tweeting. Over the last several weeks, he's been posting seemingly on his own accord on X, formerly known as Twitter, commenting on everything from New Orleans restaurants to movie recommendations. Is there a chance it's not actually him crafting the posts? Yes. Is there a chance that it is him? So eat.

His own son and fellow touring musician Jakob Dylan doesn't have a clue why it's happening, but did recently note that should his dad be interested in performing together: “I'm available. He knows how to find me.”

So where does that all leave us? Well, frankly, right back where we started. Dylan has never been the type to tease tour announcements or leave Easter eggs as clues to his next endeavor. The Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, which took Dylan all over the world, may be over, but there is nothing to indicate it's the last time fans will see the mysterious legend on stage.

The closest Dylan has gotten recently to acknowledging his future touring career was in a rare interview he gave to The Wall Street Journal in 2022, in which he offered no certainties, but no refutations either.

“The reason you do it is because it's a perfect way to stay anonymous, and still be a member of the social order,” he said. “You're the master of your fate. You manipulate reality and move through time and space with the proper attitude. It's not an easy path to take, not fun and games, it's no Disney World. It's an open space, with concrete pillars and an iron floor, with obligations and sacrifices. It's a path, and destiny put some of us on that path, in that position.”