asking us to listen for an answer blowing in the wind, they point to our common enemy". Dylan scholar and musicologist Eyolf Ostrem also calls it "one of the highlights" Modern Times and sees it as a descendant of both Dylan's "Ballad of Hollis Brown" from 1963 as well as his role in the Farm Aid initiative in the 1980s. Seth Bushnell also sees the song as both political and personal, reconciling the two impulses by noting that the "feeling of romantic love is not so far from a love of humanity that fills a human heart when it tries to make the world a better place." Bushnell calls it "heartbreakingly romantic" and "an elegy to Dylan’s heroes and to his own past and a reaffirmation of his love for the common men and women he inspired". A USA Today article ranking "all of Bob Dylan's songs" placed "Workingman's Blues #2" 58th (out of 359). The Big Issue placed it at #3 on a 2021 list of the "80 best Bob Dylan songs - that aren't the greatest hits", noting "Dylan’s best song of the 21st century matches any of his canonical classics, a paean to the proletariat (and how many songs use that word in their opening verse?), a voice weary but resolute that you hear your own story echoing in, especially if you’ve had one of those days". A 2021 Guardian article included it on a list of "80 Bob Dylan songs everyone should know". Cultural references The chorus lines "Meet me at the bottom...Bring me my boots and shoes" refer to a line in the 1946 song "June's Blues" by jazz singer June Christy. The line "Sing a little bit of these workingman's blues" is a quote from the refrain of Merle Haggard's Workin' Man Blues. (Haggard's response in an interview with the Associated Press: "Good, that gives me a reason to do 'Blowin' in the Wind 2'".) The line "No one can ever claim that I took up arms against you" is taken verbatim from Ovid's Tristia (Book 1, Section 3, Line 24). Live performances Between 2006 and 2018 Dylan performed the song 269 times in concert on the Never Ending Tour. The live debut occurred at Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on October 11, 2006 and the last performance (to date) took place at Tucson Music Hall in Tucson, Arizona on October 5,