Just two songs into his Outlaw Music Festival set Wednesday night at the FirstBank Amphitheater in Franklin, Tennessee, Bob Dylan broke out his 1964 protest anthem “The Times They Are a-Changin’” for the first time since 2010. It was a slow, moving rendition where Dylan played piano and harmonica, and had minimal accompaniment by his band. His voice was remarkably clear and lucid, which has been the case all summer long.
(We’re waiting for video of the full song to appear on YouTube. In the meantime, we’ve embedded one brief clip above from X. You can see another here. There’s also a fuller take on Bluesky you can see here, though you’ll need an account.)
Dylan last played “The Times They Are a-Changin’” in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 9, 2010, when he appeared at an event honoring the Civil Rights Movement, sharing the billing with Joan Baez, John Mellencamp, Smokey Robinson, Natalie Cole, and Jennifer Hudson. Until the night came, nobody knew which song Dylan was going to play for an audience that included President Obama.
“He had mentioned the possibility of also doing ‘Chimes of Freedom’ or ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’” Bob Santelli, one of the show’s organizers, told Rolling Stone. “Believe me, if Bob had opted to play another song, there wasn’t a person in the house that would have minded.”
That night, Dylan was joined onstage only by bassist Tony Garnier and pianist Patrick Warren. When the song ended, Dylan walked to the front row and shook Obama’s hand. It was the first time they had a chance to meet. “He was exactly as you’d expect he would be,” Obama told Rolling Stone later that year. “He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal. Usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that.”
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He continued, “He came in and played ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’.’ A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage – I’m sitting right in the front row – comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it – then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.”
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It’s unclear why exactly he brought back the song Wednesday night after all these years. Maybe seeing Timothée Chalamet’s take on it in A Complete Unknown brought it to mind. (We’ll overlook the fact that the movie shows him singing the song at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, which didn’t actually happen.) Maybe he’s a huge Zohran Mamdani fan and this is his way of telegraphing support for the Democratic candidate in the New York manorial race. (Bob’s present-day political views are a mystery, and we’ll place the odds extremely close to zero that the song was a commentary on the New York City election.)
In all likelihood, he merely wanted to add another song into his set that the ocean of casual fans a show like this would recognize. At a Phoenix stop of the tour on May 13, he played “Mr. Tambourine Man” for the first time since 2010. Just don’t expect to hear “The Times They Are a-Changin’” if you have tickets to another stop of the Outlaw Music Festival tour. That “Mr. Tambourine Man” was a one-off, and it’s very possible “The Times They Are a-Changin’” will also vanish from the set after Wednesday night.
