Bob Dylan, iTunes join for ticket pre-sales

"Modern Times," Bob Dylan's first new studio album in five years, doesn't arrive in stores until the end of the month, but iTunes is taking pre-orders for the set starting today (8/8), and fans who place an order will gain access to an online pre-sale for tickets to the folk legend's fall tour.

iTunes' special-edition version of "Modern Times" includes five Dylan videos: "Cold Irons Bound" (shot live on the film soundstage during the making of "Masked & Anonymous"), "Blood In My Eyes," "Things Have Changed," "Love Sick" (from the 1998 Grammy Awards) and the iTunes exclusive "Jokerman." Fans who pre-order the collection will be able to download it on the album's Aug. 29 release date.

Through Aug. 28, customers who pre-order "Modern Times" via iTunes will receive a password for the pre-sale, which begins Aug. 30 and ends Sept. 2, according to a press release. Dates and venues for the fall outing have not been announced, but a preliminary list of US and Canadian cities that Dylan plans to hit are shown below.

Additional information about the pre-sale is available at Ticketmaster's website..

In addition to offering "Modern Times," iTunes is also putting up for sale "The Collection," an exclusive digital box set that includes every song from each of Dylan's studio albums and "The Bootleg Series" releases, plus 42 rarities--a total of 800 songs that span his career. Also included is a special digital booklet featuring liner notes from Grammy Award-winning writer Tom Piazza. The digital set, which also is scheduled for release on Aug. 29, is priced at $199.

As activity begins to swirl around "Modern Times," Dylan is getting ready to hit the road for a pre-release tour. The outing, which launches Aug. 12, is scheduled to make stops in 17 minor-league ballparks by early September. The itinerary is included below.

Joining Dylan and his band on the run will be guitarist Jimmie Vaughan--brother of the late Stevie Ray Vaughan--featuring veteran roadhouse singer Lou Ann Barton and Austin-based musician Junior Brown, who plays "a demonic hybrid 'guit-steel' instrument, a combination 6-string electric guitar and pedal steel guitar, a device he cooked up one night in a dream," according to a press release.

Elana James, who fronted the country-swing trio Hot Club of Cowtown, will open the show backed by her new band, The Continental Two.

"Modern Times," Dylan's 44th album, features 10 new Dylan originals he recorded last winter with his touring band--guitarists Stu Kimball and Denny Freeman, multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron, bassist Tony Garnier and drummer George Recile. Dylan sang and played keyboards, guitars, and harmonica.

Though "Modern Times" will mark Dylan's first new album since 2001's "Love and Theft," he has kept busy in the interim by touring extensively. His profile has been especially high in recent years, thanks to the 2004 release of the first volume of his memoirs, "Chronicles," as well as last year's Martin Scorsese-directed film "No Direction Home," which documented Dylan's early career.