In the middle of a busy touring summer, Bob Dylan is playing the Mann
It will be Dylan's first time at the Fairmount Park venue in 10 years, almost to the day.
Bob Dylan is playing the Mann.
The last two summers, Dylan came through the Philadelphia area with Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival, which hunkered down at Camden’s Freedom Mortgage Pavilion.
But this year, Willie is not coming to Philly: the Red Headed Stranger, who turns 93 this month, is cutting back on the number of tour dates he’s doing this year and is not getting any closer to the city than three dates in New York in August.
Dylan, however, is as busy as ever. The archetypal American songwriter, who turns 85 in May, has a full schedule of North American Tour dates, and he’s heading up a sort-of mini festival of his own.
For his show on July 14 at the venue now officially known as the Highmark Mann, Dylan — whose most recent album of new material is 2020’s Rough & Rowdy Ways — will be accompanied by two opening acts.
Texas bluesman Jimmy Vaughn, brother of the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, will perform with his Tilt-A-Whirl Band. The four-time Grammy winner has toured with Dylan before and sat in with him as guest guitarist at a show in Austin in 2024.
Also on the bill is Brittney Spencer, the rising country singer who released her debut album My Stupid Life in 2024 and has a long list of collaborators including Mickey Guyton, Beyoncé, Jason Isbell, Amanda Shire, and The Highwomen.
The late stages of Dylan’s career are examined in a new book by Robert Polito called After The Flood: Inside Bob Dylan’s Memory Palace. His beginnings are the focus of Through The Open Window: The Bootleg Series Vol. 18, 1956-1963, his latest archival release.
Dylan recently launched a mysterious Patreon that includes a video of a Mahalia Jackson performance, essays about Aaron Burr, Wild Bill Hickok read by what seems to be an AI voice, and fictional Letters Never Sent from Mark Twain to Rudolph Valentino and James Baldwin to Walt Disney.
Dylan may or may not have written them himself. What’s he up to? Who can say?
He last performed at the Mann on July 13, 2016, almost 10 years to the day of his scheduled stop at the Fairmount Park venue this summer.
Presales begin at 10 a.m. on April 15 and general on sale date is April 17 at 10 a.m. More info at highmarkmann.org
