Quick Take
Bob Dylan rolls into Santa Cruz on June 23, with the soon-to-be-81-year-old bringing his “Rough and Rowdy Ways” tour to the Civic Auditorium. Tickets go on sale Thursday.
Bob Dylan is coming to Santa Cruz.
The Nobel laureate and icon of American popular music will perform live at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on Thursday, June 23.
Pre-sale tickets (with promo code/password “rowdy”) begins Thursday at 10 a.m. Sales to the general public begin Friday at 10 a.m. Reserved seating tickets will be $65.50, $85.50, and $125.50.
Dylan, who turns 81 on May 24, launches the latest leg of his tour supporting his “Rough and Rowdy Ways” album with a West Coast run beginning May 28 in Spokane, Washington.
Dylan is no stranger to Santa Cruz, having played in town a few times over the course of his long 60-year-plus career, including a well-remembered show at the Civic in 2000. Even beyond his live shows, Santa Cruz has always been a Dylan-friendly town from the long-defunct restaurant named after a Dylan song, Positively Front Street, to various tributes from local musicians including a compilation of Dylan cover songs released in May 2021 called “Happy Birthday Uncle Bob.”
Bob Dylan exploded onto the folk/rock music scene in the 1960s and has been famously one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. But, unlike so many of his contemporaries, he’s found a way to stay relevant and grow artistically through the decades; perhaps only Neil Young is similar in the ability to reinvent himself.
In 2020, he released his 39th studio album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” which featured a 17-minute song on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard album charts, making Dylan the first and only artist to chart with a new album each decade between the 1960s and 2020s. Later that year, it was announced that he had sold his songwriting copyrights to Universal Music Publishing. A few months later, he sold his recorded music catalog to Sony Music.
The “Rough and Rowdy Ways” tour announced on Monday will take Dylan down the West Coast to California, where he’ll play three dates in Oakland and three in Los Angeles. He’ll also play in Santa Barbara, Long Beach, San Diego and Sacramento, along with the Santa Cruz date, before heading off to Idaho, Utah and Colorado.
His official website lists Dylan’s setlists for the concerts he’s performed already this year in shows through the Southwest and Deep South.
The June 23 Santa Cruz show is a production ofAnother Planet Entertainment.
