Fresh Dirt on Dylan

By ROB PATTERSON

Wow, it’s actually been a while since I wrote something in this space about Bob Dylan. Loyal readers might already know that he’s been the subject of more of my columns than anyone else. And deservedly so, for, as I have taken to saying in recent years, as far as songwriting goes in the second half of the 20th Century here into the new millennium, there is Bob Dylan, and then there is everyone else.

My reverence for his Nobel Award-winning talent includes an abiding affection for covers of Dylan by other artists, many of them fine songwriters themselves. I have compiled a Spotify playlist of them, titled “Visions of Bob,” that has at present (as I am always adding tracks) 172 songs that total up to some 12.5 hours of splendid and rewarding listening. And I don’t even include the best-known ones, such as Jimi Hendrix doing “All Along the Watchtower,” Peter, Paul & Mary’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” by The Byrds. Every single interpretation in the massive playlist is sonic manna to my ears.

It all attests to what I call the “malleability” of Dylan’s compositions. They are so florid and fecund with lyrical and musical riches and gifts, yet at the same time solid as oak in their construction, that they can be adapted, interpreted, reconfigured, reimagined and more by artists whose own talents recognize the superiority of Dylan’s creative genius. And deliver a spectrum of masterful and distinctive covers.

Hence, I’m also a big fan of some artists’ entire albums of Dylan covers. And recently added a new favorite to that list, thanks to a tout by my friend Wayne Robins – longtime pop music critic for Long Island’s Newsday, now an adjunct professor at St. John’s University – in his Substack feed. It’s by a band that for both of us was seminal in our affection for the country rock that fused into a new genre (now under the amorphous Americana rubric) as the 1960s flowed into the early ‘70s: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

“Dirt Does Dylan” has all the hallmarks of a classic Dylan cover album, best summed up by how they inhabit each and every one of the 10 numbers as if they were their own, and bring their own revelatory light and emotional sustenance plus a bracing freshness to songs I already know and love. From first listen, I was enchanted. And in the days and weeks to follow I played it again and again, delighted every time.

My favorite track changes through successive listens. The opener, “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You,” a warm, upbeat declaration laced with lovely fiddle and pedal steel guitar filigrees that seamlessly shifts to a slightly haunting vibe on the bridge, was a winner right out of the gate. But then my top track on this hit parade migrated to the Dirt Band’s rolling flow on “She Belongs to Me,” sung with authoritative buoyancy by Jeff Hanna. Then, the way the band’s singers trade verses and harmonize on a celebratory “Forever Young” captured my ears. After that, their plaintive “Girl from the North Country” beguiled me.

Harmonica master Jimmy Ibbotson brings flashing neon signals to “It Take a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” They turn what may have seemed like almost a throwaway at first blush on “Nashville Skyline,” “Country Pie,” and bake it into a delicious swinging shuffle. Even the all-star rendition of “The Times They Are A-Changin’” with Roseanne Cash, Steve Earle, Jason Isbell and The War and Treaty avoids the all-too-common pitfalls of such conglomerations as each singer shimmers on their verses.

As my buddy Wayne observes of the Dirt Band, they have “exquisite taste” and their “arranging is still impeccable.” It’s a collection so fine I wish it were a double album.

NGDB has always had a special way with superior songs by such superb writers as Buddy Holly, Randy Newman, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jackson Browne and (a pre-Monkees) Michael Nesmith, to name just some. They deserve to be heralded as one of the truly Great American Music Bands.

“Dirt Does Dylan” joins my personal hit parade of beloved Dylan cover albums like Tim O’Brien’s folk/bluegrassy “Red on Blonde,” “John Wesley Harding” by Thea Gilmore, The Persuasions’ a capella “Knockin’ on Bob’s Door” and young Aussie Emma Swift’s “Blonde on the Tracks.” Now I just have to figure out where to drop each of its 10 tracks into my Visions of Bob playlist.

Populist Picks

Documentary Film: “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice” – Hailing from the same Southern California country rock scene as NGDB, Ronstadt soared to superstardom on the power of her voice, an innate sense of truly great songs, and her high and wide artistic ambitions to not just conquer the pop charts but country with her trio collaborations with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, Broadway musical theater and the music of her Mexican heritage. As an early and avid fan of hers, I was not just reminded of her astounding vocal prowess but wowed more than ever before by it. And saddened by how Parkinson’s Disease robbed her great big human heart of the profound expressiveness of her vocals that made her an American musical treasure.

Album: “I Run Down Every Dream” by Tommy McLain – A legend within the classic Louisiana swamp pop scene, but largely a footnote outside it, 82-year-old singer and songwriter McLain delivers music that evokes emotion with a rare fecundity, abetted by contributions from admirers Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe. Exquisitely produced by Louisiana music’s not quite secret weapon, C.C. Adcock, this disc is a delicious gumbo with abundant old-school musical charm.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email robpatterson054@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2022

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