Bob Dylan Performs ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ For 1st Time Since 2017

Bob Dylan broke out one of his most beloved songs last night during his set at Willie Nelson‘s traveling Outlaw Music Festival. Dylan played “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” for the first time in over seven years and just the third time in the past decade on Sunday night at Toyota Amphitheatre in Wheatland, California.

The return of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” — last played on June 17, 2017 at the Firefly Music Festival — came towards the middle of Dylan’s 15-song set at the shed near Sacramento. The other surprise of the performance was when the Nobel Laureate was on guitar for a brief portion of his “Highway 61 Revisited” opener while facing drummer Jim Keltner.

Bob Dylan shook up his setlist for his time on Nelson’s Outlaw Festival tour. The 83-year-old musician has been using the break from his Rough & Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour 2021 – 2024 to stop focusing on material from the 2020 album that shares its name with the tour.

Outside of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Dylan’s setlist was the same as most of his other Outlaw Music Festival performances. Bob Dylan wrote the powerful song in 1962 and originally released “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” the following year on his sophomore studio album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

Watch audience-filmed footage of Bob Dylan dusting off “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” in Wheatland below: