Bob Dylan [ tickets ] who spent much of last spring on the road with Merle Haggard [ tickets ], is now scheduled to play two weeks of dates with the country icon this April.

Dylan will kick off his US tour with a short stint of April shows sans an opening act. Haggard, with his band The Strangers, joins the bill April 7 in Las Vegas.

Last August, Columbia issued the seventh edition of its Bob Dylan [ tickets ] "Bootleg Series." Dubbed "No Direction Home: The Soundtrack," the album was the audio companion to filmmaker Martin Scorsese's documentary about the folk-rock legend, which aired last September on PBS. The program was released on DVD that same month.

The film is the first feature-length biography ever produced on Dylan, who serves as its narrator. In addition to archival footage and photography, it features exclusive interviews with Joan Baez, photographer John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers, Allen Ginsberg, Tony Glover, Al Kooper, Bruce Langhorne, Paul Nelson, Suze Rotolo, Pete Seeger and Dave Van Ronk, among others.

"No Direction Home: The Soundtrack" is a two-disc, chronologically sequenced collection that features 28 Dylan tracks, all of which were recorded between 1959 and 1966, and 26 of which were previously unreleased.

Rolling Stone recently reported that Dylan is expected to issue a new album later this year. If it materializes, it will mark his first new studio set since 2001's "Love and Theft."

Haggard's latest album, "Chicago Wind," marks a return to performing the type of country originals that have made him one of the most acclaimed singer/songwriters of the last 40 years. The album is full of both ballads--like "Leavin's Not the Only Way to Go" and "What I've Been Meaning to Say"--and politically charged tracks, such as "Rebuild America First" and "Where's All the Freedom."

His previous album, 2004's "Unforgettable," saw Haggard tackle such sentimental classics from the Great American Songbook as "As Time Goes By" and "Stardust."