New Bob Dylan box set features previously unreleased songs recorded in Minnesota

29th April 1965: American folk pop singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan. (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)

Among Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, Minnesota’s own Bob Dylan has been one of the most generous in sharing outtakes from his career.

On Halloween, he’ll release “Bootleg Series Volume 18: Through the Open Window, 1956-1963,” which digs into his earliest days. The eight CD box set — highlights of which will also be available as two CD and four LP sets — follows his move from Minneapolis to the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early ’60s. The collection includes rare Columbia Records outtakes and other recordings made at club dates, in tiny informal gatherings, in friends’ apartments and at jam sessions in long-gone musicians’ hangouts. The recordings come from new tape sources and many have never been presented in any form.

Bob Dylan’s “Bootleg Series Volume 18: Through the Open Window, 1956-1963” includes previously unreleased performances from the Minnesota native’s early career. It’s due out Oct. 31, 2025. (Courtesy of Columbia Records)

As such, “Through the Open Window” includes a handful of numbers recorded in his home state. The box opens with “Let the Good Times Roll,” recorded on Dec. 24, 1956 at Terlinde Music Shop in St. Paul. Other selections include “I Got a New Girl” (May 1959; home of Ric Kangas, Hibbing), “Jesus Christ” (Sept. 1960; Dylan’s home, Minneapolis), “I Ain’t Got No Home” (May 13, 1961; Coffman Theater at the University of Minnesota), “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” and “Devilish Mary” (May 1961; Minneapolis), “Long Time Gone” (Aug. 11, 1962; home of Dave Whitaker, Minneapolis) and “Eternal Circle,” “Liverpool Gal” and “West Memphis” (July 17, 1963; home of Tony Glover, Minneapolis).

Also included is a seven-song concert captured on Dec. 22, 1961 at the Minneapolis home of Bonnie Beecher.

“Of that time and those places, this collection is just a fragment,” writes author and historian Sean Wilentz in his 125-page liner notes essay. “Even so, as an aural record of an artist becoming himself — or in Dylan’s case, his first of many artistic selves — the collection aims to collapse time and space, not as a nostalgic reverie but as a living connection between the past and the present, the old and the new, which are never as distinct as we might think.”

To preview the set, Dylan’s label has released an outtake of “Rocks and Gravel” recorded in studio on April 25, 1962 to steaming services and YouTube.

Dylan began digging into his vault with 1991’s “The Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3: Rare and Unreleased 1961–1991.” In the decades since, he has used the series to present unreleased key concerts as well as deep dives into various albums and eras.