Bob Dylan - Rothbury Music Festival, Double JJ Ranch, Rothbury, MI, USA 2009 | ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST

Bob Dylan - Rothbury Music Festival, Double JJ Ranch, Rothbury, MI, 7-5-2009

Paul says : Last month (writing this in February 2025), I posted an excellent sounding Bob Dylan concert from 2001. Here's another excellent one, from 2009.

Both the 2001 and 2009 recordings are bootlegs on an unusual kind: they are examples of Assisted Listening Device (ADL) recordings. These are usually special feeds at concerts to help people who have hearing trouble. Every now and then, these recordings make it onto bootlegs. The ones I heard generally sound great, but they almost always have pristine sound of what was happening on stage, and very little crowd noise. It makes for a strange listen, as if the performer was playing to a bored audience that could barely be bothered to cheer.

Thankfully, these days, there are many ways to edit sound files. So I did to this concert recording what I did to the 2001: I split the crowd noise from everything else (using the MVSEP program), greatly boosted the cheering, the put the cheering back with the rest. Now, it sounds like a typical high quality soundboard boot. And that's extremely unusual for a Dylan concert from this era. There are lots of soundboard boots from earlier phases of his career. But from about 2000 onwards, there are basically none. The only exceptions I know of are these two ADL recordings from the 2001 concert and this one.

Dylan has had a late career renaissance, with many of his more recent album being both critically acclaimed and selling well. This concert took place a few months after the release of his studio album "Together Through Life," which was another winner, even reaching Number One on the album charts in some countries. Weirdly, he only performed one song from that album, "Jolene." But he played four from the previous album, "Modern Times" ("Rollin' and Tumblin," "Nettie Moore," "Spirit on the Water," and "Thunder on the Mountain"), and well as songs from other more recent albums like "Love and Theft" and "Time Out of Mind."

This album is one hour and 46 minutes long.

01 talk 
02 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
03 Senor [Tales of Yankee Power] 
04 Tangled Up in Blue 
05 Rollin' and Tumblin'
06 Spirit on the Water 
07 High Water [For Charley Patton] 
08 'Til I Fell in Love with You 
09 Po' Boy 
10 Highway 61 Revisited 
11 Ballad of a Thin Man 
12 Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again 
13 Nettie Moore 
14 Thunder on the Mountain
15 Like a Rolling Stone 
16 Jolene 
17 All Along the Watchtower
18 talk 
19 Blowin' in the Wind 

N.B. this is the year we went to see Bob at The Roundhouse in London 26th April 2009 but it bore faint resemblance to this . . . . .Tangled Up In Blue didn’t go like this from memory!? Weird! But it IS a highly listenable recording and as I have said before I only post sets now that are listenable and the soundboards from recent twenty years or so are pretty much of a muchness but this is worth a listen . . . . . as evidenced TUIB! and Rollin & Tumbling see below!

Bob Dylan & His Band at Rothbury Music Festival, Rothbury, MI, USA on July 5, 2009. Soundboard recording.

Bob Dylan (vocal & keyboard), Stu Kimball (guitar), Denny Freeman (guitar), Donnie Herron (violin, mandolin, steel guitar), Tony Garnier (bass), George Receli (drums & percussion).

Bob Dylan - Rollin and Tumbling Rothbury Music Festival, Rothbury, MI, USA