Bob Dylan has always liked the spaces in between, dividing lines, and borderlines in his songs. Particularly in the mid-1960s, he liked, lyrically, hanging out in no-man’s-lands: the haunted wild-western, Tex-Mexican border town of “Desolation Row”; wherever it is he […]
Sandwiched between the daily news of murder, mayhem, and politics, comes a media blitz and social network Bing! Bing! Bing! that Sony Music Entertainment will be releasing not one, not two, but three variations of the latest in Bob Dylan’s […]
An otherwise scholarly discussion about Bob Dylan’s Nashville recordings suddenly got lively at the Country Music Hall of Fame. British songwriter and panelist Robyn Hitchcock introduced the theory that if you turn the cover of John Wesley Harding upside down, […]
The Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, Vol 12: The Cutting Edge The Bob Dylan Bootleg Series is about to become infinitely more bountiful with the November release of Volume 12. The time period is 1965-1966, and the records enriched hereby – […]
I’m in the process of reviewing an album with 18 tracks on it. So what, I hear you ask; that’s value for money, right? Maybe, maybe not. I know that when I looked at the PR and saw the listing […]
As Ian Tyson approaches his 82nd birthday Sept. 25, don’t presume for a minute that he is no more than a tired, over-the-hill folksinger who once penned a great song, “Four Strong Winds,” as part of a long-gone duo Ian & […]
Here’s a question: what’s your favorite version of “9,999,999 Tears”? Dickie Lee’s? Kelly Willis’? Whose version of “All Along the Watchtower” would you spin endlessly on a desert island: Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Dave Mason, and U2 have all recorded […]
I doubt that anyone could have missed the news this week that, 40 years ago, Bruce Springsteen released his Born to Run album. Somebody somewhere was working hard behind the scenes, getting the word out. Stories popped up all over major television networks […]
It’s not easy for Elliott Murphy to pick the best concert he has ever seen. “I was born in 1949 and started playing guitar and getting into music when I was 12, so that makes over 50 years of historic […]
“You’re kind of well-known, but you are kind of obscure.” That’s a comment Jimmy LaFave has heard before, he told me after his stellar outdoor show on Aug. 4 in a park in Ridgefield, CT. The Austin-based singer-songwriter says the […]
