The 18th installment of Bob Dylan’s bootleg series will focus on the early years of folk icon’s career. The Bootleg Series Vol. 18: Through the Open Window, 1956-1963 will be released on October 31.
Videos by American Songwriter
The expansive eight-CD box set charts Dylan’s journey from his hometown, Hibbing, Minnesota, to Greenwich Village in New York City, where he quickly emerged as the most-celebrated singer/songwriter on the folk scene.
[RELATED: Bob Dylan Will Hit the UK and Ireland for a String of Shows This Fall]
The deluxe collection features 139 tracks, including 48 previously unreleased performances, as well as an additional 38 extremely rare cuts. The box set comes packaged with hardcover book featuring more than 100 rare photos and extensive liner notes by historian Sean Wilentz. Abbreviated two-CD and four-LP editions of Through the Open Window featuring 42 tracks from the box set also will be available.
Through the Open Window includes rare studio outtakes, alternate takes, and demos, as well as live performances at clubs, larger venues, civil-rights rallies, informal gatherings, friends’ apartments, radio stations, and more. Many of the recordings feature Dylan performing with other artists. They include Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte, Big Joe Williams, Dave Van Ronk, Jim Kweskin, and Happy Traum.
The outtakes and alternate takes include recordings from sessions for Dylan’s first three studio albums—Bob Dylan (1962), The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), and The Times They Are a-Changin’ (1964).
A Freewheelin’ outtake titled “Rocks and Gravel (Solid Road)” has been released as an advance digital track from the collection.
The box set’s final two CDs feature a previously unreleased recording of Dylan’s landmark October 26, 1963, concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
More About The Bootleg Series Vol. 18: Through the Open Window
The Bootleg Series Vol. 18: Through the Open Window can be pre-ordered now. The collection begins with a recording of Dylan’s first band, The Jokers, playing the early rock ‘n’ roll tune “Let the Good Times Roll” in December 1956 at Terlinde Music shop in St. Paul, Minnesota. It also features an informal recording Bob made in Hibbing of an early original song, “I Got a New Girl.”
You can check out the full track list of the physical versions of Through the Open Window at BobDylan.com.
The box set’s liner notes feature a 125-page essay by Wilentz about the collection and that period of Dylan’s career.
“Of that time and those places, this collection is just a fragment,” Wilentz writes. “Even so, as an aural record of an artist becoming himself—or in Dylan’s case, his first of many artistic selves—the collection aims to collapse time and space, not as a nostalgic reverie but as a living connection between the past and the present, the old and the new, which are never as distinct as we might think.”
Dylan Joins Farm Aid Lineup, Other Performance Plans
Dylan has been one of the main performers on the 2025 edition of Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival Tour. Two more dates remain on the trek—at Noblesville, Indiana, on September 18 and East Troy, Wisconsin, on September 19.
Meanwhile, Dylan has just been added to the lineup of the 2025 Farm Aid benefit concert. The event takes place this Saturday, September 20, at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The show also will feature Nelson, Neil Young and his current band The Chrome Hearts, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews with Tim Reynolds, Margo Price, Kenny Chesney, Billy Strings, Wynonna Judd, Steve Earle, and more.
Bob also has a European headlining tour lined up for the fall. The 26-date trek begins October 16 in Helsinki, Finland, and is scheduled through a November 25 show in Dublin, Ireland. Check out all of his upcoming tour dates at BobDylan.com.
(Photo by CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images)
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.