Trouble No More - The Bootleg Series, Vol. 13 [1979-1981]

Bob Dylan's influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-consciousness narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the notion that a singer must have a conventionally good voice in order to perform, thereby redefining the vocalist's role in popular music. As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music, including electrified folk-rock and country-rock. And that just touches on the tip of his achievements. Dylan's force was evident during his height of popularity in the '60s -- the Beatles' shift toward introspective songwriting in the mid-'60s never would have happened without him -- but his influence echoed throughout several subsequent generations, as many of his songs became popular standards and his best albums became undisputed classics of the rock & roll canon. Dylan's influence throughout folk music was equally powerful, and he marks a pivotal turning point in its 20th century evolution, signifying when the genre moved away from traditional songs and toward personal songwriting. Even when his sales declined in the '80s and '90s, Dylan's presence rarely lagged, and his commercial revival in the 2000s proved his staying power.

For a figure of such substantial influence, Dylan came from humble beginnings. Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Bob Dylan (b. Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) was raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, from the age of six. As a child he learned how to play guitar and harmonica, forming a rock & roll band called the Golden Chords when he was in high school. Following his graduation in 1959, he began studying art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. While at college, he began performing folk songs at coffeehouses under the name Bob Dylan, taking his last name from the poet Dylan Thomas. Already inspired by Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie, Dylan began listening to blues while at college, and the genre wove its way into his music. He spent the summer of 1960 in Denver, where he met bluesman Jesse Fuller, the inspiration behind the songwriter's signature harmonica rack and guitar. By the time he returned to Minneapolis in the fall, he had grown substantially as a performer and was determined to become a professional musician.

Dylan made his way to New York City in January of 1961, immediately making a substantial impression on the folk community of Greenwich Village. He began visiting his idol Guthrie in the hospital, where he was slowly dying from Huntington's chorea. Dylan also began performing in coffeehouses, and his rough charisma won him a significant following. In April, he opened for John Lee Hooker at Gerde's Folk City. Five months later, Dylan performed another concert at the venue, which was reviewed positively by Robert Shelton in The New York Times. Columbia A&R man John Hammond sought out Dylan on the strength of the review, and signed the songwriter in the fall of 1961. Hammond produced Dylan's eponymous debut album (released in March 1962), a collection of folk and blues standards that boasted only two original songs. Over the course of 1962, Dylan began to write a large batch of original songs, many of which were political protest songs in the vein of his Greenwich Village contemporaries. These songs were showcased on his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Before its release, Freewheelin' went through several incarnations. Dylan had recorded a rock & roll single, "Mixed Up Confusion," at the end of 1962, but his manager, Albert Grossman, made sure the record was deleted because he wanted to present Dylan as an acoustic folkie. Similarly, several tracks with a full backing band that were recorded for Freewheelin' were scrapped before the album's release. Furthermore, several tracks recorded for the album -- including "Talking John Birch Society Blues" -- were eliminated from the album before its release.

Comprised entirely of original songs, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan made a huge impact in the U.S. folk community, and many performers began covering songs from the album. Of these, the most significant were Peter, Paul and Mary, who made "Blowin' in the Wind" into a huge pop hit in the summer of 1963 and thereby made Bob Dylan into a recognizable household name. On the strength of Peter, Paul and Mary's cover and his opening gigs for popular folkie Joan Baez, Freewheelin' became a hit in the fall of 1963, climbing to number 23 on the charts. By that point, Baez and Dylan had become romantically involved, and she was beginning to record his songs frequently. Dylan was writing just as fast.

By the time The Times They Are A-Changin' was released in early 1964, Dylan's songwriting had developed far beyond that of his New York peers. Heavily inspired by poets like Arthur Rimbaud and John Keats, his writing took on a more literate and evocative quality. Around the same time, he began to expand his musical boundaries, adding more blues and R&B influences to his songs. Released in the summer of 1964, Another Side of Bob Dylan made these changes evident. However, Dylan was moving faster than his records could indicate. By the end of 1964, he had ended his romantic relationship with Baez and had begun dating a former model named Sara Lowndes, whom he subsequently married. Simultaneously, he gave the Byrds "Mr. Tambourine Man" to record for their debut album. The Byrds gave the song a ringing, electric arrangement, but by the time the single became a hit, Dylan was already exploring his own brand of folk-rock.

Inspired by the British Invasion, particularly the Animals' version of "House of the Rising Sun," Dylan recorded a set of original songs backed by a loud rock & roll band for his next album. While Bringing It All Back Home (March 1965) still had a side of acoustic material, it made clear that Dylan had turned his back on folk music. For the folk audience, the true breaking point arrived a few months after the album's release, when he played the Newport Folk Festival supported by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The audience greeted him with vicious derision, but he had already been accepted by the growing rock & roll community. Dylan's spring tour of Britain was the basis for D.A. Pennebaker's documentary Don't Look Back, a film that captures the songwriter's edgy charisma and charm.

Dylan made his breakthrough to the pop audience in the summer of 1965, when "Like a Rolling Stone" became a number two hit. Driven by a circular organ riff and a steady beat, the six-minute single broke the barrier of the three-minute pop single. Dylan became the subject of innumerable articles, and his lyrics became the subject of literary analyses across the U.S. and U.K. Well over 100 artists covered his songs between 1964 and 1966; the Byrds and the Turtles, in particular, had big hits with his compositions. Highway 61 Revisited, his first full-fledged rock & roll album, became a Top Ten hit shortly after its summer 1965 release. "Positively 4th Street" and "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" became Top Ten hits in the fall of 1965 and spring of 1966, respectively. Following the May 1966 release of the double album Blonde on Blonde, he had sold over ten million records around the world.

During the fall of 1965, Dylan hired the Hawks, formerly Ronnie Hawkins' backing group, as his touring band. the Hawks, who changed their name to the Band in 1968, would become Dylan's most famous backing band, primarily because of their intuitive chemistry and "wild, thin mercury sound," but also because of their British tour in the spring of 1966. The tour was the first time the British had heard the electric Dylan, and their reaction was disagreeable and violent. At the Manchester concert (long mistakenly identified as the show from London's Royal Albert Hall), an audience member called Dylan "Judas," inspiring a positively vicious version of "Like a Rolling Stone" from Dylan and the band. The performance was immortalized on countless bootleg albums (an official release finally surfaced in 1998), and it indicates the intensity of Dylan in the middle of 1966. He had assumed control of Pennebaker's second Dylan documentary, Eat the Document, and was under deadline to complete his book Tarantula, as well as record a new record. Following the British tour, he returned to America.

On July 29, 1966, he was injured in a motorcycle accident outside of his home in Woodstock, New York, suffering injuries to his neck vertebrae and a concussion. Details of the accident remain elusive -- he was reportedly in critical condition for a week and had amnesia -- and some biographers have questioned its severity, but the event was a pivotal turning point in his career. After the accident, Dylan became a recluse, disappearing into his home in Woodstock and raising his family with his wife, Sara. After a few months, he retreated with the Band to a rented house, subsequently dubbed Big Pink, in West Saugerties to record a number of demos. For several months, Dylan and the Band recorded an enormous amount of material, ranging from old folk, country, and blues songs to newly written originals. The songs indicated that Dylan's songwriting had undergone a metamorphosis, becoming streamlined and more direct. Similarly, his music had changed, owing less to traditional rock & roll, and demonstrating heavy country, blues, and traditional folk influences. None of the Big Pink recordings was intended to be released, but tapes from the sessions were circulated by Dylan's music publisher with the intent of generating cover versions. Copies of these tapes, as well as other songs, were available on illegal bootleg albums by the end of the '60s; it was the first time that bootleg copies of unreleased recordings became widely circulated. Portions of the tapes were officially released in 1975 as the double album The Basement Tapes.

While Dylan was in seclusion, rock & roll had become heavier and artier in the wake of the psychedelic revolution. When Dylan returned with John Wesley Harding in December of 1967, its quiet, country ambience was a surprise to the general public, but it was a significant hit, peaking at number two in the U.S. and number one in the U.K. Furthermore, the record arguably became the first significant country-rock record to be released, setting the stage for efforts by the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers later in 1969.

Dylan followed his country inclinations on his next album, 1969's Nashville Skyline, which was recorded in Nashville with several of the country industry's top session men. While the album was a hit, spawning the Top Ten single "Lay Lady Lay," it was criticized in some quarters for uneven material. The mixed reception was the beginning of a full-blown backlash that arrived with the double album Self Portrait. Released early in June of 1970, the album was a hodgepodge of covers, live tracks, re-interpretations, and new songs greeted with negative reviews from all quarters of the press. Dylan followed the album quickly with New Morning, which was hailed as a comeback.

Following the release of New Morning, Dylan began to wander restlessly. He moved back to Greenwich Village, he finally published Tarantula in November of 1970, and he performed at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971. During 1972, he began his acting career by playing Alias in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which was released in 1973. He also wrote the soundtrack for the film, which featured "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," his biggest hit since "Lay Lady Lay." The Pat Garrett soundtrack was the final record released under his Columbia contract before he moved to David Geffen's fledgling Asylum Records. As retaliation, Columbia assembled Dylan, a collection of Self Portrait outtakes, for release at the end of 1973. Dylan only recorded two albums -- including 1974's Planet Waves, coincidentally his first number one album -- before he moved back to Columbia. The Band supported Dylan on Planet Waves and its accompanying tour, which became the most successful tour in rock & roll history; it was captured on 1974's double live album Before the Flood.

Dylan's 1974 tour was the beginning of a comeback culminating with 1975's Blood on the Tracks. Largely inspired by the disintegration of his marriage, Blood on the Tracks was hailed as a return to form by critics and it became his second number one album. After jamming with folkies in Greenwich Village, Dylan decided to launch a gigantic tour, loosely based on traveling medicine shows. Lining up an extensive list of supporting musicians -- including Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Mick Ronson, Roger McGuinn, and poet Allen Ginsberg -- Dylan dubbed the tour the Rolling Thunder Revue and set out on the road in the fall of 1975. For the next year, the Rolling Thunder Revue toured on and off, with Dylan filming many of the concerts for a future film. During the tour, Desire was released to considerable acclaim and success, spending five weeks on the top of the charts. Throughout the Rolling Thunder Revue, Dylan showcased "Hurricane," a protest song he had written about boxer Rubin Carter, who had been unjustly imprisoned for murder. The live album Hard Rain was released at the end of the tour. Dylan released Renaldo and Clara, a four-hour film based on the Rolling Thunder tour, to poor reviews in early 1978.

Early in 1978, Dylan set out on another extensive tour, this time backed by a band that resembled a Las Vegas lounge act. The group was featured on the 1978 album Street Legal and the 1979 live album At Budokan. At the conclusion of the tour in late 1978, Dylan announced that he was a born-again Christian, and he launched a series of Christian albums that following summer with Slow Train Coming. Though the reviews were mixed, the album was a success, peaking at number three and going platinum. His supporting tour for Slow Train Coming featured only his new religious material, much to the bafflement of his long-term fans. Two other religious albums -- Saved (1980) and Shot of Love (1981) -- followed, both to poor reviews. In 1982, Dylan traveled to Israel, sparking rumors that his conversion to Christianity was short-lived. He returned to secular recording with 1983's Infidels, which was greeted with favorable reviews.

Dylan returned to performing in 1984, releasing the live album Real Live at the end of the year. Empire Burlesque followed in 1985, but its odd mix of dance tracks and rock & roll won few fans. However, the five-album/triple-disc retrospective box set Biograph appeared that same year to great acclaim. In 1986, Dylan hit the road with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers for a successful and acclaimed tour, but his album that year, Knocked Out Loaded, was received poorly. The following year, he toured with the Grateful Dead as his backing band; two years later, the souvenir album Dylan & the Dead appeared.

In 1988, Dylan embarked on what became known as "the Never-Ending Tour" -- a constant stream of shows that ran on and off into the late '90s. That same year, he appeared on The Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1 -- by the supergroup also featuring George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne -- and released his own Down in the Groove, an album largely comprising covers. The Never-Ending Tour received far stronger reviews than Down in the Groove (the Traveling Wilburys album fared much better), but 1989's Oh Mercy was his most acclaimed album since 1975's Blood on the Tracks, due in part to Daniel Lanois' strong production. However, Dylan's 1990 follow-up, Under the Red Sky (issued the same year as the second album by the Traveling Wilburys, now a quartet following the death of Roy Orbison shortly after the release of the Wilburys' first long-player in 1988), was received poorly, especially when compared to the enthusiastic reception for the 1991 box set The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased), a collection of previously unreleased outtakes and rarities.

For the remainder of the '90s, Dylan divided his time between live concerts, painting, and studio projects. He returned to recording in 1992 with Good as I Been to You, an acoustic collection of traditional folk songs. It was followed in 1993 by another folk record, World Gone Wrong, which won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. After the release of World Gone Wrong, Dylan released a greatest-hits album and a live record.

Dylan released Time Out of Mind, his first album of original material in seven years, in the fall of 1997. Time Out of Mind received his strongest reviews in years and unexpectedly debuted in the Top Ten, eventually climbing to platinum certification. Such success sparked a revival of interest in Dylan, who appeared on the cover of Newsweek and began selling out concerts once again. Early in 1998, Time Out of Mind received three Grammy Awards -- Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk Album, and Best Male Rock Vocal.

Another album of original material, Love and Theft, followed in 2001 and went gold. Soon after its release, Dylan announced that he was making his own film, to star Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, John Goodman, Val Kilmer, and many more. The accompanying soundtrack, Masked and Anonymous, was released in July 2003. Dylan opted to self-produce his new studio album, Modern Times, which topped the Billboard charts and went platinum in both America and the U.K. It was Dylan's third consecutive album to receive praise from critics and support from consumers, and it was followed three years later in 2009 by Together Through Life, another self-produced effort (as Jack Frost) that also featured contributions from David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. He capped off the year with an old-fashioned holiday effort, Christmas in the Heart. Proceeds from the album were donated to various charities around the world.

Dylan released the self-produced (again as Jack Frost) Tempest on September 11, 2012; it debuted at three on both the Billboard 200 and the U.K. charts. The next two years brought acclaimed entries in the ongoing Bootleg Series -- 2013 saw the release of Another Self Portrait (1969-1971), which restored the reputation of a much-maligned era, and 2014 saw the long-awaited appearance of The Basement Tapes Complete -- and then Dylan threw a curve ball for his next studio album. Released in February 2015, Shadows in the Night found the singer/songwriter devoting himself to selections from the Great American Songbook in the pre-rock & roll era. Every one of the ten songs had previously been recorded by Frank Sinatra, and Dylan's album was his version of Sinatra's saloon songs, arranged by his own touring band. Shadows in the Night debuted at seven in the U.S. and at number one in the U.K. It was followed in the autumn by the next installment in The Bootleg Series, The Cutting Edge 1965-1966. Available in three editions -- a double-disc distillation, a comprehensive six-disc box, and a complete, limited-edition 18-CD set -- The Cutting Edge 1965-1966 collected unreleased (and unbootlegged) outtakes from the recording of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde.

In May 2016, Dylan returned with Fallen Angels, his second Sinatra-inspired collection of songs from the Great American Songbook; it debuted at number seven on the Billboard charts. Later that year, Columbia/Legacy released The 1966 Live Recordings, a 36-disc box set containing every known recording from that pivotal year, but its release was overshadowed by Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in the autumn of 2016. Dylan continued his exploration of the Great American Songbook with the March 2017 release of Triplicate, a triple album containing three thematically arranged collections of pop standards. Entitled Trouble No More 1979-1981, the 13th volume of The Bootleg Series spotlighted Dylan's Christian era in the early '80s and arrived in November 2017. Live 1962-1966: Rare Performances from the Copyright Collections, a double-disc set of highlights culled from previously released rarities collections, appeared in July 2018. Four months later, the six-disc deluxe version of More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 14 appeared. It contained all known studio recordings -- full and partial -- that eventually resulted in the classic Blood on the Tracks in 1975. Dylan further explored his 1975 archives in 2019, teaming with director Martin Scorsese for the documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese. The film appeared in June, accompanied by a 14-disc box called The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings. Later in 2019, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 15: Travelin' Thru -- a triple-disc set concentrating on Dylan's Nashville recordings of the late '60s, highlighted by his sessions with Johnny Cash -- was released.

Dylan released "Murder Most Foul," a nearly 17-minute track about the JFK assassination, on March 27, 2020. It was his first original song in eight years, and it was quickly followed by "I Contain Multitudes" and "False Prophet," a pair of singles that announced the arrival of his 39th studio album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, on June 19, 2020. Rough and Rowdy Ways debuted at number one on Billboard upon its release; it entered the U.K. charts at number one. The outtakes collection 1970 -- a set featuring unreleased material from the Self Portrait and New Morning sessions, including recordings with George Harrison -- appeared in February 2021. In September, Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 16 (1980-1985) was released. Easily one of the artist's most provocative periods, it focused on the years that birthed Shot of Love, Infidels, and Empire Burlesque, with numerous unreleased outtakes, alternate takes, rehearsal recordings, and live performances.

—Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Bob Dylan converted to Christianity in 1979. Like many who have been born again, Dylan spoke and sang solely of his faith for a brief period -- roughly half a year, beginning in November of 1979 and ending in May of 1980. Facing a fan base who were generally furious at his newfound religion, Dylan started to thread some oldies into his set lists but he didn't leave gospel behind until he released Infidels in 1983.

Once he returned to secular music, he didn't abandon all the songs that he wrote during this period -- and it's also unclear what became of his faith, as he stopped speaking of it in concrete terms in public -- yet these three years remained one of Dylan's least understood phases, possibly because the studio albums he released between 1979 and 1981 were cocooned in studio gloss. Trouble No More, the 13th instalment of The Bootleg Series, attempts to right the record by collecting a wealth of live material from this period, supplementing these cuts with unreleased studio tracks, including a few songs that have never seen the light of day.

Whether it's appreciated in its lavish eight-CD/single-DVD box set or its judiciously edited double-disc companion, Trouble No More performs the same function: it illuminates the passion driving this music. Unlike Another Self Portrait, this Bootleg Series installment offers a different perspective of a maligned phase, but it doesn't provide a jolting revelation, not even with several unveiled Dylan originals in tow. A few of these songs would've enhanced either Saved or Shot of Love -- in particular, "Ain't Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody" feels robust as it dodges confession -- but the execution matters more than the content. Dylan did write a handful of classics during this time but the tunes tend to be overshadowed by the ragged, soulful performances, where the songs -- both major and minor -- get reshaped on-stage and in the studio. The band impresses -- this music, which sounded so slick on the released records, has grit, swing and soul -- but they're only following their leader, who is chasing a muse that may still remain elusive to his audience.

Dylan may not articulate his conversion in words -- these are among his stiffest lyrics, allowing no room for ambiguity yet still bearing some playfulness -- but Trouble No More, more than Saved or even the fine Slow Train Coming, is buoyed by the music. Whether he's singing a slight song, easing into testimony, or leaning into a blues, Dylan seems engaged, even on the verge of rapture, an excitement that carries through the full live shows from 1980 and 1981 on the Deluxe Edition, where he reworks his old tunes -- "Maggie's Farm" is driven by a wild, twisting riff -- in hopes that they open the door to his new thing. Few appreciated his trip at the time, but years later it feels compelling, possibly because it's allowed to be messy and soulful within the parameters of The Bootleg Series.

— Stephen Thomas Erlewine

In the autumn of 1978, Bob Dylan began performing a new version of "Tangled Up in Blue." In addition to a complete melodic makeover, he updated a lyric that had previously referenced an unnamed Italian poet to address a more specific source text: "She opened up the Bible and started quoting it to me/Jeremiah, Chapter 13, verses 21 and 33." Debuted during the tour behind his directionless Street Legal LP, his new arrangement of the beloved track offered a glimpse at Dylan's next reinvention: You can hear a white light starting to seep in.

Right around that time, Dylan introduced a new song to his band called "Slow Train Coming." That track appears in four vastly different versions on Trouble No More, the fascinating new Bootleg Series release covering his fruitful but polarizing era as an evangelical Christian songwriter between 1979 and 1981. The earliest rendition on the collection stems from his '78 tour rehearsals when the verses were not yet finalized and Dylan mostly just hammered in the chorus: "There's a slow/Slow train coming/Around the bend," he sings over and over again as his backing vocalists' performance grows increasingly dramatic with each repetition. It's a stirring, uncanny document of an artist discovering his new sound—an ominous take on gospel to which he'd devote himself for the next three years.

"Slow Train Coming" would become the title track to the first entry in Dylan's "Christian trilogy." These albums, which draw on the grainy, burnt-out blues sound he'd adopt more fully in the 21st century, remain the most mysterious items in one of rock music's deepest, most daunting discographies. On principle alone, they turned off multitudes of fans who once admired Dylan's staunch individualism and leftist politics. But for Dylan, they signified a rebirth, both creatively and personally. By the end of the decade, his longevity as a rock icon was unprecedented: Elvis was gone; The Beatles had been broken up as long they'd been around; the "new Dylans" like Springsteen were now welcoming their own disciples. When the "old Dylan"—just pushing 40—found himself uninspired on what had become known as his "Las Vegas Tour," the Bible offered a way forward, even if it didn't provide the answers he might have wanted.

For the most part, the songs on Trouble No More do not reflect the hope or contentment usually associated with praise music. They are as venomous and full of doom as Dylan's more celebrated writing on war, politics, or love. Neither as warm and embracing as Cat Stevens' nor as spiritually wise as Leonard Cohen's, Dylan's religious work seems to come from a place of fear—borderline paranoia. Inspired by the best-selling Hal Lindsey book The Late Great Planet Earth, he constantly pairs his acceptance of Jesus with warnings of an imminent apocalypse. In a catchy song called "Precious Angel," propelled by a bouncy, pinched Mark Knopfler guitar riff, he looks to the future and sings of "darkness that will fall from on high/When men will beg God to kill them and they won't be able to die." In many songs, Dylan quotes directly from the Bible. In others, he sings as first-person "I," instructing "you" to follow his lead and make a change or risk facing unthinkable consequences: a strange play on the messianic presence he'd assumed in the lives of his fans. "I told you the answer was blowing in the wind, and it was," he allegedly announced at a show, "I told you the times they were a-changing, and they did. And I'm telling you Christ is coming back—and he is!"

To perform this material live, Dylan pressed reset on his songbook, ignoring the nearly two decades of work that preceded Slow Train Coming. He was debuting new music at every concert—songs that would eventually appear on the sharply focused Saved in 1980 and the more eclectic Shot of Love the following year. In the absence of his hits, he fleshed out setlists with faithful covers of devotional songs like Dallas Holm's "Rise Again" and hymns performed by a four-person gospel choir who toured with him. Fans were perplexed. Throughout a stunning San Francisco performance of "Pressing On," one of his finest gospel songs, the audience remains silent. They refuse to clap along during the a capella break, inadvertently bringing the hard-won battle in its lyrics to life. There's a captivating tension in hearing an artist so revered, so evangelized, preach to empty seats—an energy that pervades the set and makes this one of Dylan's most haunting and vulnerable collections of music.

Trouble No More exists in several editions. The most comprehensive set includes two live shows from the era; two discs of tour highlights; two discs of outtakes and rarities; and a bizarre concert film interrupted by newly filmed scenes of actor Michael Shannon reciting sermons in a vacant church (likely in the absence of Dylan's own between-song sermons, which have mysteriously and perhaps mercifully been edited out). These recordings beat out their studio counterparts at nearly every turn. Stemming largely from live shows and rehearsals, they avoid the tinny production and glossy pastiche of the records, highlighting this era's latent strengths: the unnerving conviction in Dylan's vocals, his killer backing band, and, most of all, the underlying strength of the material.

Songs that previously felt like hidden gems in Dylan's catalog become centerpieces. A live rendition of "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar" features bombastic, blazing guitar solos from guest performer Carlos Santana as Dylan spits his way through the lyrics, making its surreal narrative even more impassioned. "When He Returns," the closing track on Slow Train Coming, appears in stark, definitive form, on solo piano and organ at a 1980 show in Toronto. Dylan's voice sounds beautiful, fanatical, and somewhat insane, which is exactly how this material should be delivered.

Unlike other editions of the Bootleg Series exploring Dylan's mythically productive studio sessions, the outtakes are not the main draw here. The slow, stately "Making a Liar Out of Me" comes closest to a lost classic, though the band's performance is too tentative for it to truly transcend. Less ambitious tracks like "Ain't Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody" and "Ain't No Man Righteous, No Not One" are pleasant but steer close to "Schoolhouse Rock!" levels of singalong didacticism. While Dylan was writing prolifically at this time, his relentless output felt more like a search for the right words as opposed to an overflow of inspiration. For the most part, the best songs all ended up on the albums. What's more interesting is how the material evolved from its early forms to the studio renditions and onto the stage. With key tracks appearing in multiple incarnations, the set examines how Dylan reapproached this material the longer he lived with it: how "Gotta Serve Somebody" ascended from a bitter confession to a twisted roll call, or how the livestock in "Man Gave Names to All the Animals" slowly disassembled over the course of the tour.

By 1981, Dylan eased up on his evangelism. He introduced decidedly secular new material to his shows—like the excellent "Caribbean Wind" and the not-so-excellent "Lenny Bruce"—and welcomed back old favorites like "Maggie's Farm" and "Like a Rolling Stone." Soon, he would disown this entire era. He abandoned its material in later setlists and denied he'd ever even been a Christian, citing it as just another example of the media's unfair insistence on labeling him at every turn. "I mean, nobody cares what Billy Joel's religious views are," he spat at one interviewer, who could have responded by pointing out that Billy Joel never wrote a song called "Property of Jesus." Regardless of his true beliefs, Trouble No More offers living proof of Dylan's commitment at the time. Across these 102 tracks, he sounds as devoted to his work as ever, puncturing a style of music built to offer definitive answers with his own heavy brand of cosmic nihilism.

The era came to a close with "Every Grain of Sand," the final track on Shot of Love. Allegedly written fully-formed at the piano in the summer of 1980, it remains one of his most powerful compositions: If the sole purpose of his religious search was to lead him here, then the journey was worth it. The track appears twice on Trouble No More, as an intimate rehearsal midway through the tour and a full-band performance on its very last night, before he took a three-year break from live shows and mostly abandoned religious music (at least until his 2009 curio Christmas in the Heart). Between those two takes, Dylan's voice lowered and the song's pace slowed, trading its epiphanic intensity for a comforting sense of foresight and calm. Together, they summarize the story told throughout Trouble No More: one man's path from fear to acceptance, obsession to understanding, getting born and pressing on.

— Sam Sodomsky