Bob Dylan adds tour dates, clears up China controversy

Bob Dylan has added more North American dates this summer after he returns from his European tour. The tour doesn’t exactly come through NYC but it hits Bethel Woods Center on August 12 in Bethel, NY. Tickets go on sale Saturday (6/18) at 10 AM and are available for pre-sale now with the code “snoopy.” All dates below.

In other Bob Dylan news, his “China controversy” has been recently cleared up:

“Allow me to clarify a couple of things about this so-called China controversy which has been going on for over a year. First of all, we were never denied permission to play in China. This was all drummed up by a Chinese promoter who was trying to get me to come there after playing Japan and Korea. My guess is that the guy printed up tickets and made promises to certain groups without any agreements being made. We had no intention of playing China at that time, and when it didn’t happen most likely the promoter had to save face by issuing statements that the Chinese Ministry had refused permission for me to play there to get himself off the hook. If anybody had bothered to check with the Chinese authorities, it would have been clear that the Chinese authorities were unaware of the whole thing.

We did go there this year under a different promoter. According to Mojo magazine the concerts were attended mostly by ex-pats and there were a lot of empty seats. Not true. If anybody wants to check with any of the concert-goers they will see that it was mostly Chinese young people that came. Very few ex-pats if any. The ex-pats were mostly in Hong Kong not Beijing. Out of 13,000 seats we sold about 12,000 of them, and the rest of the tickets were given away to orphanages. The Chinese press did tout me as a sixties icon, however, and posted my picture all over the place with Joan Baez, Che Guevara, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The concert attendees probably wouldn’t have known about any of those people. Regardless, they responded enthusiastically to the songs on my last 4 or 5 records. Ask anyone who was there. They were young and my feeling was that they wouldn’t have known my early songs anyway.

As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There’s no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.

Everybody knows by now that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.” – Bob Dylan

All tour dates below…

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Bob Dylan — 2011 Tour Dates
Thu 06/16/11 Cork, Ireland Docklands
Sat 06/18/11 London, United Kingdom Finsbury Park
Mon 06/20/11 Tel Aviv, Israel Ramat Gan Stadium
Wed 06/22/11 Milan, Italy Alcatraz Appearing at “Sursee Summer Sound”
Fri 06/24/11 Sursee, Switzerland Sursee Ssummer Sound Festival Grounds
Sat 06/25/11 Mainz, Germany Mainzer Volkspark
Sun 06/26/11 Hamburg, Germany Freilichtbuhne Stadtpark
Mon 06/27/11 Odense, Denmark Funen Village
Wed 06/29/11 Bergen, Norway Bergenhus Festning
Thu 06/30/11 Oslo, Norway Oslo Spektrum Arena ANS
Sat 07/02/11 Borlange, Sweden Peace & Love Festival Grounds
Thu 07/14/11 Santa Barbara, CA Santa Barbara Bowl
Fri 07/15/11 Costa Mesa, CA Pacific Amphitheatre
Sat 07/16/11 Las Vegas, NV Pearl Concert Theater
Mon 07/18/11 Phoenix, AZ Comerica Theatre
Tue 07/19/11 Tucson, AZ Anselmo Valencia Tori Amphitheatre
Thu 07/21/11 Albuquerque, NM Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Albuquerque
Thu 07/21/11 Albuquerque, NM Hard Rock Casino Albuquerque Presents The Pavilion
Sat 07/23/11 Thackerville, OK Winstar World Casino
Sun 07/24/11 New Braunfels, TX Whitewater Amphitheatre
Tue 07/26/11 New Orleans, LA Lakefront Arena
Wed 07/27/11 Pensacola, FL Pensacola Civic Center
Thu 07/28/11 Atlanta, GA Chastain Park Amphitheatre
Sat 07/30/11 Memphis, TN Mud Island Amphitheatre
Mon 08/01/11 Nashville, TN Ryman Auditorium
Tue 08/02/11 Evansville, IN Roberts Stadium
Wed 08/03/11 Toledo, OH Toledo Zoo Amphitheatre
Fri 08/05/11 Kettering, OH Fraze Pavilion For The Perf. Arts
Sat 08/06/11 Cleveland, OH Jacobs Pavilion At Nautica
Sun 08/07/11 Rochester, MI Meadow Brook Music Festival
Tue 08/09/11 Canandaigua, NY Constellation Brands – Marvin Sands PAC (CMAC)
Wed 08/10/11 Scranton, PA Toyota Pavilion At Montage Mountain
Fri 08/12/11 Bethel, NY Bethel Woods Center For The Arts
Fri 08/19/11 Gilford, NH Meadowbrook U.S. Cellular Pavilion
Sat 08/20/11 Bangor, ME Downtown Bangor / Bangor Waterfront