Bob Dylan returning to Mankato in April for his first Minnesota concert in six years

Bob Dylan — the real one, not the actor playing him on screens — is finally bringing his Neverending Tour back home to Minnesota in 2025.

The Iron Range native will play his first home state gig in six years at the site of his last show here, Mankato’s Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center, on April 4. Tickets for the Friday night concert at the downtown hockey arena go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. via Ticketmaster.com at prices not yet revealed. Seats to most of his shows of late have gone for about $75-$200.

Dylan, 83, has kept up momentum on the road in recent years, including a well-received appearance last summer at Somerset Amphitheater in western Wisconsin with Willie Nelson. But he hasn’t been back to Minnesota on tour since before the pandemic.

“He was focused, impassioned and arguably singing at his best in decades,” Star Tribune music critic Jon Bream wrote of that 2019 concert in Mankato — a reaction shared by many Dylanophiles after that show and at most of his other tour dates around the country since then.

While Bob himself seems to be enjoying some kind of musical upswing on stage in the 2020s, demand for his concert tickets certainly will be higher in 2025 following the widespread response to the new Oscar-nominated biopic on his early ‘60s incubatory period, “A Complete Unknown.” The first date he announced for 2025 — a March 25 date in Tulsa, Okla., in conjunction with the new museum there, the Bob Dylan Center — sold out fast when it went on sale last week.

Instead of playing bigger venues in bigger cities in response to this certain revival, though, Dylan is being Dylan. He’s choosing instead to play smaller sites and cities, also including Witchita, Kan., on March 29 and Green Bay, Wis., on April 6. There’s a chance more Midwest dates could be added later; but don’t count on it.

Some of the Twin Cities musicians who performed on Dylan’s only Minnesota-made album, “Blood on the Tracks,” took the stage this past weekend at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa with an all-star cast for a 50th anniversary celebration of the record. Clips are circulating all over social media (see one below) showing Kevin Odegard, Gregg Inhofer and Billy Peterson along with Paul Metsa performing with the likes of Elvis Costello and the War on Drugs' Adam Granduciel.