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The man in the short, white jacket singing “The Man in the Long Black Coat” at the Highmark Mann on Tuesday? That was Bob Dylan.

You might not have known by looking because he wasn’t easy to see. Dylan has always been a master at hiding in plain sight, maintaining mystery about his true self — or selves — and resisting being known despite his every move being obsessively scrutinized for more than six decades.

These days, Dylan also blurs himself visually. On Tuesday at the Mann’s TD Pavilion — a venue he last played 10 years and a day earlier — he stood behind an electric piano at the rear of the stage, his face partly obscured by the hood he kept over his head as if he were expecting rain.

With the boudoir lighting on stage, it was as if the audience — surprisingly youthful, no doubt thanks for Timothee Chalamet’s star turn as Dylan in A Complete Unknown — was invited to witness a late-night jam in a ramshackle roadhouse.

(Mobile phone photo taking — or phone use of any kind — was prohibited during the show, and enforced by security workers hustling around the amphitheater with flashlights.)

And who were those shadowy figures on the film noir stage set interacting with the grizzled Bard? That was a source of intrigue as well. Dylan has been a road warrior on what he has dubbed the “Long Hot Summer Tour,” playing 51 shows so far in 2026.

But while he and longtime bass player and bandleader Tony Garnier and drummer Anton Fig have been constants, the guitarists have been in flux.

First, in June, Doug Lancio left the band, and Dylan watchers were wowed when he was replaced by improvisational jazz guitarist extraordinaire Julian Lage. Then longtime second guitarist Bob Britt quit the band without explanation, though he did post a “Sayonara Bobby” goodbye on Facebook.

Britt was then replaced with Chicago jazz, blues, and Western swing player Joel Paterson. And the lineup then continued to shuffle this month when Lage missed shows due to prior commitments, and Memphis R&B player Jad Tariq filled in for him.

On Tuesday at the Mann, however, Lage was back in Tariq’s place, standing to the right of Garnier and his upright bass. Both kept a close eye on Dylan, careful to follow his lead throughout an 80-minute performance that worked as a steamy midsummer mood piece and intermittent meditation on mortality, while taking an alternative route through the world’s greatest living songwriter’s oversized oeuvre.

Dylan is famous for rearranging much-loved songs from his 1960s and 1970s heyday to the point they become unrecognizable until a chorus comes around.

There was a little of that this time. It took me a minute to realize that the sprightly third song, which was one of many marked by intuitive interplay between Paterson and Lage, was “It Ain’t Me Babe.”

But mainly Dylan keeps the crowd from getting too comfortable by keeping his best-known warhorses out of the set. Nine of 16 songs he sang — in a clear, non-phlegmy voice by his standards, with the band skilled at staying out of his way — came from what are considered latter day Bob Dylan albums. (Though he’s been around for so long that one of those newish albums, Oh Mercy, is 37 years old.)

With Paterson taking most of the leads, the set also included covers of three old-time rock and roll and R&B deep cuts. Bo Diddley’s “I Can Tell,” Jerry Lee Lewis’ “I’ll Make It All Up to You,” and Bobby “Blue” Bland’s ”Share Your Love With Me” were all examples of Dylan playing homage and drawing strength from bedrock American vernacular artists who inspire him. That was also true of the evening’s penultimate song, his own “Goodbye Jimmy Reed.”

Dylan is 85, and the New York Times recently asked him about being an octogenarian and to perhaps offer President Donald Trump sage advice on a milestone birthday.

He declined the latter opportunity but said that in his 80s “you don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. … You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by the things that you did.”

Dylan’s songs are enigmatic. They mean different things at different times to different people. Or you might say they “contain multitudes,” as Dylan sang of himself on his most recent album, 2020’s Rough & Rowdy Ways, which led the way with five tracks performed from it on Friday.

But for those tempted to try to puzzle out what Dylan is thinking and feeling about his own eventual demise, Tuesday night’s set did offer opportunities.

Two songs — one played early on, one mid-set — could be interpreted as dances with death, populated by mythical figures that may or may not be the Grim Reaper.

In the doomy, foreboding, and thoroughly compelling “Man in the Long Black Coat,” darkness is embodied by a ghostly presence “with a face like a mask” who takes a woman away “without a goodbye, not even a note.”

And in “Black Rider,” Dylan sounded feisty, casting himself as a mythical figure.

As if his ability to keep on keepin’ on required it, he vowed to fight Death to the death: “Don’t turn on the charm,” he snarled, “I’ll take a sword and hack off your arm.”

That set the stage for the gospel influenced “I Shall Be Released,” which has recently replaced the philosophical “Every Grain of Sand” as Dylan’s closing number.

The song he first recorded with The Band in 1967 can be read as a prayerful plea from a prisoner, or a supplicant seeking heavenly relief from struggles and strife on this mortal coil.

Either way, it was a stirring finale to a satisfying summer evening, and one of two songs — along with the title tune to the 1990 album Under the Red Sky — that featured a Dylan harmonica solo, with both drawing rousing ovations.

Guitarist Jimmy Vaughn preceded Dylan with his Tilt-A-Whirl Band. It marked Vaughn’s return to the Mann, which he played in 1986 with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, opening for his brother Stevie Ray Vaughn, who died in 1990.

Vaughn is a superb Texas blues guitarist. He never showboats or overplays, and along with his band — which included a three-member horn section — he revved up the crowd with a set that included covers of Roscoe Gordon, Slim Harpo, plus “Texas Flood,” the Larry Davis composition that became his brother’s trademark.

The show kicked off with Brittney Spencer, the Maryland-raised Nashville-based vocalist who is a key player in this decade’s Black country renaissance.

Spencer was a featured guest on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, and along with slide guitarist Omri Skop, she followed Queen Bey’s lead in covering the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” And in addition to her own songs “New to This Town” and “Better As Friends,” she won over the crowd with a quality interpretation of Dylan’s own much-covered love song, “Make You Feel My Love.”