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Nod To Bob, A - An Artist's Tribute To Bob Dylan - Featuring Greg Brown, Guy Davis, Jack Elliott & M

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This is not the star-studded glory of the 30th anniversary concert, nor does it pretend to be. This tribute is just what it claims to be: a nod, that is quiet, respectful, tasteful. As such, the most understated and sensitive efforts contained herein are by far the most effective and poignant tributes to Master Dylan. By contrast, there are several attempts here to "improve" on the Dylan orignals in various ways, and these range from merely vapid to truly appalling. Lucy Kaplansky's saccharine "It Ain't Me, Babe," for example, misses the point entirely, with its righteous earnestness and too-precious false cadences. Also, while "All Along the Watchtower" has been successflly interpreted in a variety of styles, it doesn't seem to fit well in the Latin/Celtic fusion sound employed by Tom Landa & the Paperboys. And winning the award for most inappropriate Dylan cover since Franki Valli's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," we have "With God On Our Side," sung in French, by a man and a woman in harmony, in waltz time, with a major modulation in the middle. I'm not sure it's even POSSIBLE to corrupt the song further.

That said, there is quite a bit of beautiful stuff here. Eliza Glikyson starts off the set with an approriately sweet, yet still slightly stinging, "Love Minus Zero / No Limit," and in doing so is one of the only of the younger performers not to embarrass herself. The Roches demonstrate just how cool Dylan can be with their tongue-in-cheek "Clothes Line Saga," and Martin Simpson's effortless guitar on "Boots of Spanish Leather" is exactly right. Norman Blake's and Peter Ostroushko's "Restless Farewell" veritably improves on the original. Rosalie Sorrels is, of course, a proven force, and her version of the gorgeous "Tomorrow is a Long Time" is not only even prettier than the original, but also demonstrates a full understanding and appreciation of the song's power (something almost never accomplished in this collection, especially among the younger performers). And finally, in a moving tribute from one grizzled warrior to another, Ramblin' Jack Elliott's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" is both the thinnest arrangement (just the singer and his spare guitar picking, recorded live), and the most powerful performance, of them all. Jack's voice and phrasing, and his mastery of and intimacy with the song, prove he is clearly a man who has been there and back, and who understands that Bob has made the same trip. Listening to Jack sing Bob's song, you have to smile even as your eyes mist up at the thought of all those years. Jack's "Don't Think Twice" may or may not be the best version of the seminal song, but it's far and away the best thing here.

This collection is inconsistent, surely, but if you skip over the self-righteous efforts of the new folkies to the musicians who have a clue, your patience is more than rewarded. As Ramblin' Jack Elliott says at the end of his piece, Happy Birthday, Bob.

This is a great album, with a wide range of artists: Dylan predecessors Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Rosalie Sorrels, contemporaries Spider John Koerner and Dave Ray, newer names John Gorka, 2 of the Roche sisters, and others. Add bluesman Guy Davis, world-beat band The Paperboys, Quebec band Hart-Rouge, string legends Norman Blake & Peter Ostroushko, and UK folkie Martin Simpson and it's a varied and interesting album.

Most unsusual selection: Clothes Line Saga by Suzzy & Maggie Roche, originally on "The Basement Tapes."

Highlights are a very slow version of I Want You by Cliff Eberhardt, Tom Landa & The Paperboy’s Irish reel treatment of All Along The Watchtower, and Hart-Rouge’s French-language version of With God On Our Side. Spider John Koerner & Dave Ray offer Delia, the traditional song Dylan himself covered on his "World Gone Wrong" album. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s Don't Think Twice, It's All Right is the only live track (from 1990) on the CD, complete with a spoken introduction that's worth the cost of the CD.

Packaging: jewel-box in a slip-case; 20-page booklet with artist photos, bios & comments; credits

Format: CD; 15 tracks (14 songs-#14 is a 1:48 spoken intro); 63:09

Superb interpretations of America's supreme musical genius. Each version here is 'real', the shining quality of even Dylan's flawed or tossed-off compositions. Standouts are Guy Davis' "Sweetheart Like You", Spider John Koerner and Dave Ray's "Delia", and John Gorka's "Girl from the North Country." If you can listen to Martin Simpson's "Boots of Spanish leather" without weeping for the beauty of it, you haven't got tears. The range of styles (cf. Tom Landa and the Paperboys doing "All Along the Watchtower" and Hart-Rouge doing "Dieu a Nos Cotes") reflects how Dylan has absorbed and transformed all genres of American music.

Dylan still appreciates the real and he certainly recognized that this 'birthday gift' was the real deal. Read, by contrast, Mikal Gilmore's interview with Bob Dylan in the November 22 Rolling Stone for Dylan's keen nose for phoniness.

Mikal knows what's what. His brother is Gary Gilmore, of Mailer's *Executioner's Song* fame and Mikal's own superb *Shot in the Heart,* which I have used in my war and violence courses. His attachment to the 'real' in life seems to have gotten Bob Dylan to speak in non-oblique ways about what he is about.

Well, there was the 1991 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy's where Dylan was presented with a ridiculous proposal to have others (mainly pop phonies) sing a medley of his songs, and all he had to do was "show up." So he said okay.

BEGIN QUOTE

DYLAN: Then the Gulf War broke out. The Grammy people called and said, "Listen, we're in a tight fix. So-and-so, who was going to sing 'Times Are A-Changin',' is afraid to get on an airplane. So-and-so, who was going to do 'Like a Rolling Stone,' doesn't want to travel becuase he just had another baby and doesn't want to leave his family." That's understandable. But then so-and-so, who was going to sing, "It's All Over, Baby Blue," was in Africa and didn't want to take a chance flying to New York, and so-and-so, who was going to sing "All Along the Watchtower," wasn't sure he wanted to be at any high-visiblity place right then, because it might be a little dangerous. So they said, "Could you come and sing? Could *you* fill the time?" And I said, "What about the guy who's introducing me [Jack Nicholson]?" They said, "He's OK. He's coming."

Anyway I got disillusioned with all the characters at that time-with their inner character and their ability to be able to keep their word and their idealism and their insecurity. All the ones that have the gall to thrust their tortured inner psyches on an outer world but can't at least be true to their word....I just lost respect for them. There's a few that are decent and God-fearing and will stand up in a righteous way. But I wouldn't want to count on most of them.

END QUOTE

Count on "A Nod to Bob" instead.

As Dylan tributes go, this is a pretty good one. Nod to Bob mostly inclines its head to the 1960s-era bard. The sole exceptions are Guy Davis's "Sweetheart Like You," from the 1980s Infidels, and Spider John Koerner and Dave Ray's "Delia," a century-old Georgia murder ballad which Dylan recorded in the 1990s (in a quite different variant) on his all-traditional World Gone Wrong. The artists are seasoned pros, all influenced in one way or another by the folk revival that brought Dylan to the world stage. Only Lucy Kaplansky's lifeless "It Ain't Me, Babe" falls flat. It's almost to be preferred, however, to the sour anti-American rant French Canada's Hart-Rouge makes of "With God on Our Side" (sung in French); in the liner notes the band concedes that the song --surely the protest anthem at its most puerile, and Dylan at his most insufferably self-righteous -- is strictly a period piece, but apparently it can't resist the temptation. It should have. More happily, Suzzy and Maggie Roche offer a supremely good-humored "Clothes Line Saga," and Rosalie Sorrels establishes that "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" is a far better song than heretofore suspected. There is also Martin Simpson's affecting "Boots of Spanish Leather." Norman Blake and Peter Ostroushko do a suitably rustic-sounding "Restless Farewell," whose melody (from the old Irish "Parting Glass") is much older than Dylan's lyrics. And then there's Ramblin' Jack Elliott's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," than which there is no better. It has the added virtue of a hilarious opening anecdote at the young Dylan's expense.

For me, a "tribute" album should be one where the individual artsits set out not to imitate the originals, but to make the song they choose their own. This album succeeds admirably. If you haven't heard of some of the artists on here, don't let that stop you. If you're a fan Of His Bobness, or his songs, you want this CD. And, by the way, "Dylan meets Riverdance" is NOT a bad thing.

A must have for any fan of Dylan's, poetry, or just plain ole life. The artists have interpreted and presented individually, and that's what makes this CD good. The halting, "I Want You," alone is worth the price of admission to this uneven, earthy experience. I like the CD so well, I gave a musician/friend/artist my first copy before I purchased my second.

This is ... good. A heartfelt and honest rendering of Dylan's work. From the first line sung by Eliza Gilkyson, you know you're stuck inside somehting special, so you ease your body down and push off from the shore. Letting the breeze of the day mix you within the rhythm sea of legacy. You hear the traditional roots that Dylan has always honored, here with "Delia," to the deep blues that's given to "Sweetheart Like You" by Guy Davis. An interpretation that gets intestines quivering within the Delta, where the legacy of the whip echoes like the heat of sunset over the Mississippi River. The blues rise again with Greg Brown doing "Pledging My Time." The dirge is done so masterfully that wherever you're listening becomes someplace else. It becomes a roadside bar, where the ticks upon the clock have changed from noontime to midnight.

Themes of love, loss, and bitterness are here. Cliff Eberhardt slows down the rhythm of "I Want You" to where you can hear- can actually hear the thoughts of a wanting and pondering heart. "Boots of Spanish Leather is a song without a chorus or a hook. It's a tale of correspondence and separation that needs listening, and Martin Simpson gets you to listen. Lucy Kaplansky doesn't even attempt the biting sneer of intensity that's heard in Dylan's "It Ain' Me, Babe." Her interpretation is straight forward, saying, no, sorry, but, "It ain't me, you're lookin' for, babe." It was a pleasure to see Norman Blake included here. He has always been a personal favorite. Blake and Peter Ostroushko team up on "Restless Farewell" and strike chords, getting a person to twitch and reflect on restless farewells.

These songs live, pulsating like the birth of a new season. And since it's May, catch a whiff of flowers blooming as the snow melts from high mountain tops to flow into streams, the into rivers to the sea. That's just like a Dylan song, there is a continuum here, flowing into the sea- the rhythm sea of legacy.

The French version of "With God On Our Side," by Hart-Rouge is haunting. The song may be considered a period piece, but still lives and that's why it's haunting. Read the words, then juxtaposition them into today's world. "But I learned to accept it/ Accept it with pride/ For you don't count the dead/ When God's on your side." Tom Landa and The Paperboys add a Celtic tinge to "All Along The Watchtower." Listen, feel the urgency echo like thunder and lightening. Feel the rhythm and the words emanate into your own world. You feel it because a poet makes you feel, and Dyaln surely does that. Listen again, can you hear two riders approaching? Can you hear the wind beginning to howl?

Listening to this album truly submerges a person- soaking them within the rhythm sea of words and phrases, while the breeze rustles the grasp of everday into the realm of imagination, and yet... And yet, the words remain so firmly entrenched in everyday life. The everyday of simple occurrences is here with Suzzy and Maggie Roche's rendition of "Clothes Line Saga." And John Gorka gives us the everyday of place and memory with "Girl of the North Country." In a world where memory has been replaced by instant gratification, it's good to be reminded against forgetting.

I agree with the thoughts of Rosalie Sorrels about songs being reinterpreted, with meanings being juggled by personal, emotional, and social perceptions. Her interpretation of "Tomorrow is a Long Time" has sparked a new flame for "If today was not an endless highway." Today is an endless highway, and art is a constant and evolutionary companion of that road.

Ramblin' Jack Elliot ends it off by bringing it all back home. Brings it back with the connection to Woody Guthrie. Elliot was know as the son of Woody Guthrie. Subsequently, as Dylan learned from Elliot, he was called the son of Jack and the grandson of Woody. What's especially good about this album, is the wide range of musical styles that show an expanding expanse. Turn around and look at the horizon. See it getting wider and richer. It's against forgetting where it came from. So, walk forward backwards.

I thought this was basically an uneven album, with some triumphs and some failures. Bob Dylan is a hard act to follow as a musician and as a vocalist, and everyone who listens to this will be hearing his voice and phrasing first, so I admire every one of the artists on this CD for their efforts.

Martin Simpson actually brought the message of the Boots of Spanish Leather home to me in a way that Bob never did. But he inspired me to listen to Bob's version again, to see the difference or the similarity. I think that Simpson's interpretation is awesome. The Roches they caught everything so about the Clothesline song with wonderful harmonies and humor. Rosalie Sorrels is someone that I never knew about (I'm a bit of a neophyte) and she absolutely mesmerized me. I'm going to get more of her music. Ramblin' Jack of course held his own, with his great story.

The version of I Want You was so off the mark to me that I couldn't finish listening to it. That was really the only disconcerting interpretation on the CD for me. The rest of the CD was good....not much more of note if you know what I mean. Nothing really stood out for me beyond what I've mentioned. It's not a must-have... but I'm glad I have it.

Nodding-out to Bob: most of these songs have been sapped, in these performances, of any humor, sarcasm or exhilaration they once had.

This amazing album ranges from a soulful Guy Davis growling his way through "Sweetheart Like You" to the eerie harmony of the Roche Sisters as little girls dealing with Daddy's illerate badgering, mom's pragmatic family control, and startling news in "Clothesline Saga." All Along the Watchtower's gorgeous bluegrass fiddle (the Paperboys) and the haunting rhythms of Marttin Simpson's Boots of Spanish Leather are covers I come back to over the years. For those who like to hear what Dylan's lyrics would have sounded like had he stayed "mainstream," Delia is a surprising treat.A Nod to Bob: An Artists' Tribute to Bob Dylan on His Sixtieth Birthday