Dylan in Cincinnati
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University Press of Mississippi
Publishing:15th Sep '26
£22.99
This title is due to be published on 15th September, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Dylan in Cincinnati takes a fresh approach to Bob Dylan’s performance art by asking what happens when we focus on a single city across six decades.
When we think of Dylan in concert, we imagine Newport, New York, or London. But most of his shows were in places far from the spotlight—venues largely ignored by music critics and scholars. Cincinnati, a city with little fanfare in the heart of the American Midwest, becomes an ideal site for study. Its concerts and bootleg recordings tell a story of reinvention night after night, year after year.
This history requires planting a shovel in one locale and digging down, layer after layer. What emerges is a portrait of Dylan as a restless itinerant artist who never abandoned audiences in flyover states. In fact, some of his strongest performances were given there. By recovering these overlooked shows, Dylan in Cincinnati documents not only the history of one city’s concerts but also the essence of Dylan’s enduring power as a live performer.
"Dylan in Cincinnati is a masterful study of Bob Dylan’s live performances, framed through the unique lens of Cincinnati. Herren captures the layered, magnetic power of Dylan’s concerts with remarkable clarity and insight." - Court Carney, coeditor of The Politics and Power of Bob Dylan’s Live Performances: Play a Song for Me
"By focusing on Cincinnati, Herren finds a powerful way to closely study Bob Dylan’s extraordinary live performances across six decades. Rather than limiting the discussion, the local emphasis grounds the book while the author broadens the scope into a history of Dylan’s live art in relation to civic, political, and cultural contexts at both local and national levels. Told with wisdom, humor, and insight, and animated by a deep sense of place, this is a compelling and richly textured account of Dylan’s remarkably creative career." - Andrew Muir, author of One More Night: Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour
"No one writes about Bob Dylan like Graley Herren. Dylan in Cincinnati is an ambitious and wholly original look at Dylan the performer through the decades, viewed through the lens of his appearances in just one city. What always shines through is Herren’s boundless curiosity and enthusiasm, which has resulted in a completely engrossing study of a life lived in service to art, as well as a love letter to the city of Cincinnati." - Laura Tenschert, writer and creator of the Definitely Dylan podcast
"I wish every city had a Graley Herren. I come to his writing for the incisive Dylan reporting and analysis but find myself equally engrossed learning about regional culture and this local slice of American history. There are many books about Bob Dylan’s New York or Bob Dylan’s Minnesota—Bob Dylan’s Cincinnati is a much less obvious topic. Dylan has more history there than I would have guessed though, as Herren unspools some surprising threads and finds an original angle to bring to Dylan’s work. A must-read even for Dylan fans who, like me, have never stepped foot in Cincinnati." - Ray Padgett, author of Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members and the Bob Dylan newsletter Flagging Down the Double E’s
ISBN: 9781496863997
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
310 pages