ASHEVILLE, NC (828newsNOW.com) — Hey, this Bob Dylan kid is pretty good.

Since old, scratchy-record melodies running through our heads can be the quicksand of nostalgia, it’s refreshing when a new artist comes along to rescue us from retrospection.

That’s what Asheville got on Thursday night (March 21, 2024) at Harrah’s Cherokee Center, when Dylan, an 82-year-old up-and-comer from Minnesota, strode to the piano, pecked out syncopated melodies and blues arrangements a majority of the crowd had never heard, and then mesmerized the hushed throngs with a driving flow of words. Lots of words.

Do people still show up at Bob Dylan shows expecting to hear greatest hits? Well, how does it feel…?

On Thursday, Asheville didn’t get to, or have to, wallow in the past too much. Dylan was like a whole new artist.

The genius of his obstinate refusal to play old stuff in the old ways is that he allows the audience to imagine what it was like back in the day to see this awkward young fellow open up his mind, craft melodic poems in a whole new way and reveal himself as a once-in-a-generation talent.

People who’ve checked in with his shows regularly have noted that it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. It did work on Thursday night because Dylan the singer brought the full dramatic emphasis with his voice that Dylan the wordsmith created with his pen.

About half of the songs from Thursday night’s set list were from Dylan’s “Rough and Rowdy Ways” album — and not the one that got a bit of mainstream radio air play, “Murder Most Foul.”

There also were songs from his vast, six-decade catalogue, but none played the way most casual fans might remember them. For example, Dylan somehow layered the once-sullen lyrics of “When I Paint My Masterpiece” on top of a backing band melody that sure sounded a lot like “Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” the 1953 novelty song by Jimmy Kennedy that later was popularized by They Might Be Giants.

Why did he do that? That’s nobody’s business but the Turks’. And yet, it was a crowd favorite.

If myopic, nostalgic fans really, really wanted to hear ol’ Top 40 Bob, they could listen very closely for some Easter eggs. In the closing number, “Every Grain of Sand,” Dylan’s harmonica solo briefly followed the melody line of “Times They Are a Changin’.”

Dylan might have been giving the nostalgia crowd a mental wink. There. There’s that.

It might not work at all Dylan shows, but it worked on this night. By starting and ending with his choices of songs, in the arrangements that worked for him, he allowed hushed audience members to stuff their retrospection where it belongs: in the little locked foam pouch where they had to stuff their cell phones, too.

It allowed everyone to suspend nostalgia for once, and move forward, discovering new sounds and new words with this “new” guy, Bob Dylan. He might be going places.