This week we turn on the way-back machine, as the stars of yesteryear claw their way back from the dustbin to the concert stage. Bob Dylan returns to the Newport Folk Festival (401-847-3700) for the first time since he did or did not get booed off stage for the sin of playing electric guitar back in 1965. Almost 40 years later, we find that some things never change: of all the performers at Newport this year, Dylan has made the most relevant album this century. Kate and Anna McGarrigle play the festival's Friday-night gig at the Viking Hotel; Dylan headlines a Saturday bill including Jonatha Brooke and Shawn Colvin; and on Sunday we get Arlo Guthrie, Dar Williams, Bruce Cockburn, and the Blind Boys of Alabama. You can also catch Dylan playing a rare, last-minute club gig at the Palladium (800-477-6849) in Worcester on Friday, as well as at the Augusta Civic Center (207-626-2400) in Maine on Sunday. Cockburn and Colvin warm up for Newport with a headlining gig at Merrill Auditorium (207-842-0800) in Portland on Friday.

The nostalgia factory also brings us the Hollies and the Lovin' Spoonful tonight (Thursday, August 1) at the Cape Cod Melody Tent (508-775-9100) in Hyannis, and on Saturday at the South Shore Music Circus (781-383-1400) in Cohasset. Santana brings his post-Supernatural self -- commercially, at least, he's once again a mere mortal -- to Meadows Music (203-265-1501) in Hartford on Saturday and to the Tweeter Center (617-931-2000) in Mansfield on Tuesday. Soul queen Aretha Franklin is at FleetBoston Pavilion (617-931-2000) on Friday and at the Cape Cod Melody Tent on Sunday. Todd Rundgren headlines tonight (Thursday, August 1) at Toad's Place (203-562-5589) in New Haven and then -- we're not making this up -- opens for Hall and Oates at a hot-air-balloon festival at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station (888-994-6824) next Saturday, August 10.

Over the course of eight years and four albums, the indie-rock duo Retsin slowly evolved into an acoustic, neo-traditionalist folk group. So it's not surprising to see that band's two core members, Cynthia Nelson and Tara Jane O'Neil, backing Anna Padgett -- a singer-songwriter with Liz Phair's libido and Chan Marshall's spare, hymnal grace -- in a band called the Naysayer. In support of their excellent new Heaven, Hell, or Houston (Carrot Top), the group play Wednesday at Flywheel (413-527-9800) in Easthampton and next Thursday, August 8, at the Abbey Lounge (617-441-9631) in Somerville. New Hampshire's Jason Anderson, who records power pop in the Dinosaur Jr./Teenage Fanclub tradition for K Records under the name Wolf Colonel, hits the Met Café (401-861-2142) in Providence on Friday and Flywheel on Sunday; both dates are with Teenbeat honcho/former Unrest principal Mark Robinson. And former Dinosaur frontman J Mascis, who has a new disc coming in October, is himself at the Met Café on Saturday.