Bob Dylan onstage with The Band in 1974 (photo by Barry Feinstein)
Most live albums feature maybe a concert’s worth of songs, whether recorded all in one performance or collected from different points along a tour. But Bob Dylan isn’t most artists. His 1974 Live Recordings collection announced this week will deliver a whopping 431 tracks (the real number! not a typo!) from his tour of arenas that year with The Band. Of those, 417 have not previously been released. It all adds up to 27 CDs, with liner notes from music journalist Elizabeth Nelson. If you’re not quite ready for THAT much Bob Dylan, don’t worry. Also landing Sept. 20 is a 3-LP set titled The 1974 Live Recordings – The Missing Songs From Before the Flood, selected from the larger collection. Besides just being 50 years ago, 1974 was the year Dylan returned to touring after his 1966 motorcycle accident, and in some ways it created a blueprint for what we now have come to expect from arena shows. Learn more about The 1974 Live Recordings box set, including a complete track listing, here, and get a preview with this performance of “Forever Young” from Seattle on Feb. 9, 1974.
Joe Bonsall (photo by Jon Mir)
Joe Bonsall, the longtime tenor voice of vocal group The Oak Ridge Boys, died this week at the age of 76. His publicist said the cause was complications from ALS. Bonsall cited his illness in January in an announcement saying he was retiring from touring with the group. The Oak Ridge Boys date back to the 1940s, when the group was started as a gospel quartet in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, but morphed into a country band by the early 1970s. Bonsall joined in 1973. They notched No. 1 hits with “Elvira” and “Bobbie Sue” in the early 1980s, and took Rodney Crowell’s “Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight” to No. 1 in 1979. Learn more about Bonsall’s career in this remembrance from The New York Times. His 11th book, a memoir titled I See Myself, is scheduled for release this November.
Margo Price might look a bit different these days, and she’s not hiding the reason why. When she needed to get surgery for sinus problems earlier this year, she told her doctors: “While you’re in there fixing the carburetor, you might as well take a couple of dents out of the hood,” and thus emerged with a re-shaped nose, according to a long post this week on her Substack. In the post, Price describes a lifetime of insecurity about her looks, and how she learned to navigate that as a girl, then a woman and an entertainer. Her surgery, she reports, didn’t fix her insecurities, and in fact has added some new emotional challenges (though it did fix her sinuses!). But it’s made her more mindful of how women are perceived in the world, and she says in the post “I want to tell little girls growing up today that it’s okay to be yourself. It’s okay to have a unique look. It’s normal to have stretch marks and cellulite and acne and hairy skin and scars! Beauty fades and it’s what’s inside that really matters.” Read Price’s post on Substack.
There’s an exciting new addition to the business conference portion of IBMA’s World of Bluegrass event this September. Roots Revival: A Black Stringband Symposium will explore and celebrate Black traditions in roots music with six sessions on Sept. 26 and 27 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The panels will examine the experiences and challenges of being a Black woman in folk music, highlight Black instrument makers and figures in bluegrass history, trace the journey of Black traditional songs to bluegrass standards, and more, and there will also be a Black Music in Appalachia showcase. The symposium is a partnership between IBMA, The Banjo Gathering, and Elderly Instruments. Learn more about the Black Stringband Symposium here. This is the final year that World of Bluegrass will be held in Raleigh, where it has taken place since 2013. IBMA has not yet announced where the annual gathering will be held in 2025.
The finalists have been announced for this year’s FreshGrass Awards, presented by the FreshGrass Foundation, No Depression’s nonprofit publisher. These talented folks will compete for the top prize in their category by playing in front of a panel of judges at the FreshGrass | North Adams festival in Massachusetts in September.
Band
The Little Mercies
High Horse
Catfish in the Sky
Banjo
Ettore Buzzini
Megan Mendenhall
Taylor Shuck
Fiddle
Carson McHaney
Jacquie Armbruster
Guitar
Ethan Robbins
G Rockwell
Jake Eddy
Learn more about each finalist, and about the annual contest itself, here.
WHAT WE’RE LISTENING TO
Here’s a sampling of the songs, albums, bands, and sounds No Depression staffers have been into this week:
Valerie June feat. Carla Thomas and the Stax Music Academy – “Friendship”
Rose Cousins – “Forget Me Not”
Amy Helm – “Money on 7,” from her new album, Silver City, coming in September
Cassandra Lewis – Lost in a Dream
Dean Johnson – “Faraway Skies”
Nada Surf – “New Propeller,” from their new album, Moon Mirror, coming in September
The Head and the Heart – “Virginia (Wind in the Night)”
Brad Byrd – “Perfect Life”
Bette Smith – GOODTHING
James McMurtry – “Childish Things”
Phish – “Life Saving Gun”
THICK – Happy Now
Los Campesinos! – “Feast of Tongues”
Jeremie Albino – “Rolling Down the 405,” from his new album, Our Time in the Sun, coming in November
