LEWISTON — Bob Dylan wants to connect with a whole new generation of listeners.

The tour that will bring the music legend to Lewiston’s Colisee on April 10 is part of a 12-show college slam that is set to include Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Penn., and the State University of New York in Buffalo.

“He wants to be in front of young people,” said Alex Gray, whose company, Waterfront Concert, is promoting the local show. “I think he wants them to have an appreciation for what is coming. And I think he also wants them to have an appreciation for what has been.”

The show will be opened by young folk rockers Dawes, who last year opened for British Grammy winners Mumford & Sons in Portland.

“You don’t open for a legend, Dylan, and you don’t open for one of the hottest bands in the world right now, Mumford, unless you’ve got it going on,” Gray said.

“His people reached out to us and said, ‘We know there’s a lot of cool, eclectic colleges in Maine,'” Gray said. The Colisee and its closeness to both Bates and Bowdoin colleges fit.

Tickets for the concert go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday. The general public may buy them online at waterfrontconcerts.com or either by phone or in person at the Colisee box office at 207-783-2009.

However, Dylan is offering a special deal to college students. At each stop on his tour, he is offering a limited number of cheaper tickets to people with a valid college ID. The tickets are $30 each, purchased on a first-come, first-served basis and spread throughout the 4,000-seat arena.

Those tickets will be available only in person at the Colisee box office with a proper ID.

Typically such tickets, if offered at all, are only for the furthest seats in the arena, Gray said. In this case, they include some prime locations.

Dylan has performed in Lewiston before, in 2000 and again in 2008. Gray promoted a show for Dylan in Bangor in 2011.

Gray insists that the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer remains current with today’s music.

“Bob Dylan is a case study for what bands are supposed to do, because he has reinvented himself over and over,” he said.

He was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941 in Minnesota. After his success as a New York acoustic performer, he shocked audiences by embracing electric music. Though born a Jew, he became a Christian.

And he has had an idiosyncratic relationship with his audiences, sometimes saying little at concerts while maintaining a group of devoted fans with his continued tours.

“He still sells a ton of tickets,’ Gray said. “Most of the other arenas on this tour seat at least 8,000 people.”

Dylan has won 11 Grammy awards and earned an Academy award for the song “Things Have changed” on the “Wonder Boys” soundtrack.

“If you haven’t seen Bob Dylan once in your life, you have to,” Gray said. “You have to see him before he’s gone.”

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