Bob Dylan Announces Massive 39-Disc Rolling Thunder Box Set
Bob Dylan is releasing a 39-disc archival collection titled Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1976 Live Recordings on November 6, covering the second leg of his 1976 tour. The set includes nearly every professionally recorded show from that leg, featuring guests like Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and Willie Nelson. A standalone 3xLP of the May 16 Fort Worth concert will also be issued the same day.
The 39-disc set captures nearly every professionally recorded performance from the spring 1976 leg, a period when Dylan’s ensemble shifted to include guitarist Mick Ronson and T Bone Burnett alongside core players like Rob Stoner and Scarlet Rivera. The May 16 Fort Worth show, singled out for a separate triple-LP release, features the song “Going, Going, Gone,” which is now streaming. This follows the 2019 box set covering the 1975 leg, which accompanied Martin Scorsese’s documentary on the tour.
Burnett’s press statement frames the revue as a precursor to punk, citing the Clash and the Ramones as inheritors of its energy. The collection’s sheer scale—371 previously unreleased recordings—underscores Dylan’s archival output, with the full tracklist available on his website. Guests across the tour included Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Willie Nelson, and poet Allen Ginsberg.
This release could deepen fan engagement with Dylan’s live legacy, offering scholars and casual listeners a comprehensive view of a pivotal tour. It may also reinforce the commercial viability of archival box sets, prompting other artists to mine their vaults. For the music industry, such projects sustain catalog revenue in a streaming era, while for audiences, they provide a tangible, immersive historical artifact—though the sheer volume may appeal mainly to devoted collectors rather than broader listeners.