Bob Dylan will be returning to Italy this summer with five planned concerts in Milan, Lucca, Perugia, and Rome. The legendary singer-songwriter announced that cell phones will be banned at all of his concerts. Not only will photos and videos not be allowed, the events themselves will be “phone free,” according to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Concert attendees will need to put their cellular devices in a closed bag supplied by San Francisco-based company Yondr for the entire night. The bags will be supplied to attendees at the entrance, and the process will be overseen by personnel, according to Corriere della Sera. The Yondr bag locks once a device is placed inside of it. Attendees will keep their cellphones on them for the concert, and the bags can be unlocked at any time. However, this must be done outside of the designated phone-free areas, according to Italian newspaper La Reppublica.
Dylan will be holding two concerts in Milan’s Teatro degli Arcimboldi on July 3 and 4; one at the Lucca Summer Festival in Piazza Napoleone on July 6; another at the Umbria Jazz in Perugia on July 7; and a final concert in Rome on July 9 at the Parco della Musica, according to Corriere della Sera. Dylan will perform songs of the album “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” released in June 2020.
Dylan’s “Rough and Rowdy Ways” tour will take him all over Europe, from Portugal, to Norway, and France. He was the first songwriter to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. He was recognized for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
A list of tour dates and link to purchasing tickets can be found here.
Asia London Palomba
Asia London Palomba is a trilingual freelance journalist from Rome, Italy. In the past, her work on culture, travel, and history has been published in The Boston Globe, Atlas Obscura, The Christian Science Monitor, and Grub Street, New York Magazine's food section. In her free time, Asia enjoys traveling home to Italy to spend time with family and friends, drinking Hugo Spritzes, and making her nonna's homemade cavatelli.