Bob Dylan, photo by Alberto Cabello from Vitoria Gasteiz — Last night, Bob Dylan shuffled up to Buffalo, N.Y., with the Outlaw Music Festival for a return to Darien Lake Performing Arts Center. With additional sets from Willie Nelson & Family, Turnpike Troubadours, The Red Clay Strays and Waylon Payne, the rolling revue’s latest staging arrived in the last lap of a tour that’s shown The Bard in rare form, consistently eliciting rare returns to fan favorites. Expectations were particularly high for Friday night, as the legendary songwriter’s Buffalo set at Outlaw’s Buffalo tour-closer last year included his first treatment of “Desolation Row” since 2018, including some impromptu tempo-setting percussion with awrench. The Bard did not disappoint.
To kick off his performance, Dylan got right down to business, digging into his vast catalog for his first rendition of “Masters of War” since his 2016 headline set at Desert Trip Festival. While Dylan has resisted commenting on current events for many decades now, it’s tempting to read his return to the standard from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan alongside a ramp-up in global conflict. Rolling Stone highlighted a congruence to the track’s appearance at the 33rd Grammy Awards in 1991, when he quietly brought the song to national television during the throes of the Gulf War. The revival continues a thread of golden age classics that had been long absent from his live repertoire on the Outlaw Music Festival’s 10th anniversary tour, following surprising versions of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Positively 4th Street,” “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and more.
Dylan followed his momentum into a set that otherwise stayed true to those he’s shared with audiences across the country since May. Staples like “Forgetful Heart,” “To Ramona,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “Highway 61 Revisited,” “Love Sick” and “Blind Willie McTell” were matched with his current rotation of oddball covers, including George “Wild Child” Butler’s “Axe and the Wind,” Charlie Rich’s “I’ll Make It All Up to You,” Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Share Your Love With Me” and Bo Diddley’s “I Can Tell,” which he debuted at the Memphis stop in July. To close the performance, Dylan delivered the beloved “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”…