The year 2014 marked the 17th anniversary of Jeff Buckley’s passing, the 20th anniversary of the release of Grace (his only fully realized studio album), and this November 17th brings what would’ve been his 48th birthday. For the most recent […]
The story of the Basement Tapes – those songs recorded in 1967 at a house known as Big Pink in West Saugerties, NY, by Bob Dylan and The Band – is a quintessential American-music story, with all the appropriate elements […]
The brief period that The Band and Bob Dylan spent in 1967 (in actuality only from June to October of that year) recording music in the basement of a pink house in West Saugerties, NY, was as remarkably brief as […]
Two Degrees of Separation I blogged about Mike Bloomfield and Bob Dylan in December, writing here about their first encounter in Chicago in 1963, the crucial role that Bloomfield played backing Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, the beautiful licks he laid […]
In 1969, when Country Rock was in it’s infancy, Bob Dylan had the foresight to go to Nashville AKA “Music City U.S.A” to make a new album influenced by his close friend Johnny Cash. This may or may not be […]
Reading of the death of former pro boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter today awoke an old memory which reminded me how lucky I was to have, what in retrospect, was a pretty cool father. I should add by “cool” I do […]
I videotaped this concert when it aired on PBS decades ago and have been watching it periodically ever since. Every time I see it, I ask myself the same question: Why on earth has this incredible show—which has long been […]
As you’ve probably heard, the Fender Stratocaster that Bob Dylan played at the Newport Folk Festival on Sunday, July 25, 1965, sold at Christie’s on December 6 for $965,000. NPR’s All Things Considered gave the story prominent coverage that night; […]
‘I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine’ is a gem: a beautifully controlled and nuanced piece of writing, delivered on record with both power and restraint. Its spare and apparently straightforward language is woven around an ultimately mysterious core. We are […]
It seems like a lifetime ago that a Chaplinesque scamp established the audacity of his songwriting vision with The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Flash forward 43 years, and Dylan has never sounded more freewheeling than he does on his new album […]
