Mike Futcher

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Category: Music (Page 4 of 4)

Rakehelly Blues: Nick Shoulders Live at The York

November 12, 2022 /

Sunday 6th November 2022

The York, Bolton, England

rakehelly – ˈrāk-ˌhe-lē

adj. – wild, dissolute, raucous

It’s a dark, cold Sunday evening and, like many people across England tonight, I’m standing in a pub drinking pilsner and contemplating the unhappy thought of having to go to work on Monday morning. But unlike the rest of the country, save the fifty or so people who gradually fill The York in Bolton over the next half an hour, I have something to look forward to before the weekly grind begins again. In this small, unassuming pub, with a cold wind blowing through the open door, I’m waiting for Nick Shoulders to take the stage.

Among my friends and co-workers, I’m known as the country music fan – itself a true oddity in England – and for weeks I’ve delighted in telling them that I’m going to this gig. Not in the vain hope that they’ll be turned on to the catchy melodies and intelligent lyrics of this great artist – all evidence to the contrary, country music is little more than line-dancing and ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ to them – but because I enjoy the look of confusion on their faces. “I’m going to see a guy with a mullet who yodels and makes trumpet sounds with his mouth,” I say, and they look at me as if I’ve recited a haiku in Yiddish. “Well, enjoy,” they reply, as they back away slowly and wonder whether to inform H.R. about my imminent mental breakdown.

My joy in seeing them trying to process this is surpassed only by my delight at being here myself tonight. I’ve been to two excellent gigs in recent months – Sierra Ferrell’s bewitching show in June and Charley Crockett a few days ago on Halloween, but this is the one I’ve been looking forward to the most. Despite my anticipation, I’m also slightly worried. This is a pub, not a dedicated music venue; at least one sad, heartfelt song by Gravedancer will be drowned out by chatter tonight, and there are two blokes loudly discussing Manchester United’s loss to Aston Villa a few hours earlier. Tonight’s musicians will all successfully tap into the energy in the room tonight, but it’s a fragile energy.

Nevertheless, the night has an endearingly non-premium feel to it. Rather than a “backstage”, there’s an area of the main room cordoned off for the musicians – we see Grant D’Aubin, Nick’s bass player, reclining there with an acoustic guitar as the pub begins to fill. When Nick emerges from behind the cordon of amps and merchandise boxes (presumably to go pee), he moves through the crowd to do so.

A tall, bearded man with long hair takes the stage. He strums an acoustic guitar and begins to sing in a heavy-metal growl. At first, I think he’s a roadie gone rogue, as I thought Gravedancer (a.k.a. Baker McKinney, who I’ve seen walking around) was the only support act on this tour. But the metalhead introduces himself as Mike West, a country singer from the Wirral, and he’s the first of tonight’s pleasant surprises. He has the unenviable task of being the support act to the support act, but his enthusiasm proves infectious.

West is the co-founder of Rogue Country (and consequently one of those responsible for bringing the incredible Sierra Ferrell to the north-west back in June), and he says he was only meant to be in the audience tonight, so he’s stoked to be up on the stage. He makes the most of it, delivering an energetic set. His heavy-metal singing (at one point, he mentions with pleasure that the road he took to get here tonight was called the A666) proves surprisingly flexible, and he succeeds in knitting the disparate crowd into a genuine audience. Highlights from his set include his latest single, ‘Mothman’, and a new song called ‘How to Build a Guillotine’. The latter, which West describes as “like if Ernest Tubb had been in the French Revolution”, is particularly creative. It’s currently unreleased, but hopefully not for long: it’s something of an earworm, and I want to hear it again.

At one point, West congratulates the audience. Watching Nick Shoulders live in such a small venue, he says, is something we’ll be able to brag about in years to come. He’s not wrong. It’s been a surprise to me to go to these gigs – Ferrell, Crockett, and now Shoulders – and see large numbers of people singing along to songs that I thought only I knew. The crowds might still be small – as I mentioned earlier, I think tonight’s crowd numbers fifty at most – but that’s more than the 42 who attended the Sex Pistols’ first punk gig in nearby Manchester, eulogised in the film 24 Hour Party People.

The punk analogy is an appropriate one. The more devoted Shoulderheads will know that Nick started out as the drummer in a punk band, and there’s a rebellious attitude tonight – even the odd protest song – that sees metalheads, hardcore punk rockers and country fans all in the same room, with none seeming out of place. Tonight might not be an epoch-making moment like that Sex Pistols gig, and Shoulders is unlikely to ever push to the front of our culture, yodelling away on The Late, Late Show in an Ed Sullivan moment, but Mike West, in highlighting our bragging rights, has put his finger on something. Even before Nick Shoulders takes the stage, there’s a vibe in the air, a sense of things coming together. Heavy metal, punk, protest and country – the harmony of the revolutionary and the traditional might be just the sound we need in such crazy and divisive times.

Next up is Gravedancer, whose mix of traditional country music and heavy-metal appearance is even more incongruous than that of Mike West. Tattooed, skin-headed and with a beard longer than the A666, it’s startling when Gravedancer runs through a set of tender, emotionally-raw songs picked pensively on an acoustic guitar, including the beautiful self-penned ‘Azalea’. So complete is this effect that when he announces he’d like to sing a traditional English folk song, it receives a quiet and respectful reception from the crowd. I don’t think everyone gets the joke, but I wouldn’t want to live in a world where Arkansas skinheads can’t play ‘Mr. Blobby’ straight-faced as a wistful guitar-pickin’ song.

It is, finally, time for Nick Shoulders to take the stage. He wears a vest and a big fur hat; with his hair hanging down to his eponymous shoulders it looks like he’s wearing a Davy Crockett hat. He’s accompanied by Grant D’Aubin, his bespectacled, moustachioed collaborator from his band the Okay Crawdad, who will provide harmonies and play stand-up bass for the rest of the night.

Nick picks up his acoustic guitar and begins his distinctive powerful strumming. Backed by Grant, he launches into his first number, ‘Lonely Like Me’. It’s one of his earliest released songs and a fan favourite, so naturally the crowd begins to sing along. Nick seems touched by the reception; at multiple points in the night he’ll mention that it’s a trip to come over to the other side of the Atlantic and hear his Arkansas yodelling songs sung back at him.

There’s a lot of positivity in the set, and Nick is not only thankful for his fans but is keen to spread the love: Grant D’Aubin, Gravedancer and Mike West all receive praise from his microphone tonight. At one point, he’ll even urge people to check out his uncle, the late Pat M. Riley, a classic crooner whose music can be found online. The infectious joy in Nick Shoulders’ outlook on life is evident in every whoop, whistle and odd sound; it’s in every catchy hook and yodelled lyric of his music, delivered in that unique high singing voice.

The second song is a cover of a Sixties song by Tom O’Neal, the foot-tapping ‘Blue Endless Highway’. It’s a catchy, up-tempo number with a great bass line and harmonies from Grant. At first, I think it’s an unreleased original that I mentally note as ‘Highway Patrol’ (after the lyric “lookin’ in the rear-view mirror for the highway patrol/The highway patrol”), but a Google search a few days later will correct me. Nick and Grant have combined well on it, and the only reason the crowd haven’t sung along as they have with ‘Lonely Like Me’ is because of its unfamiliarity. If it gets a studio recording, it might well prove another fan favourite.

It’s followed by another recent Nick and Grant collaboration, a cover of Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ which they will soon be releasing on a new EP with The Lostines. It has some great harmonising, and the slower swing of its music is remedied by its follow-up, the hyperactive, oddball ‘Ding Dong Daddy’, which sees Nick whistle a solo and make uncanny trumpet sounds with his mouth.

We’re offered a hint of the future with a song that Nick announces will be coming out on his new record next year. He describes ‘All Bad’ as a bit of “toxic positivity for your Sunday” and dedicates it to “everybody in here who is just doing the best to hold the fuck on for dear life”. After three cover songs in a row, ‘All Bad’ is a great reminder of Nick’s growing stable of well-crafted original tunes. Behind the punk-like energy of his music, the oddball whistles and yodelling, and the positivity and personal charm, there’s an artist of serious calibre. After the shout-out to uncle Pat, there’s a rendition of the clever original ‘G for Jesus’, another song characterised by fantastic lyrics.

It’s been a great opening salvo from Nick, but due to the nature of the venue that fragile energy in the crowd remains. The energy is there, but it’s hard to find, and needs a watchful eye when found. Nick admits he’d been worried about singing tonight as he’d caught a cold in the unfamiliar climate – welcome, Nick Shoulders, to the north-west of England in November – but he’s in fine voice regardless. Nevertheless, there remains the danger that the energy might disperse, that entropy might be a factor tonight. Nick Shoulders on stage tonight is not so much rakehelly as rakehelly blue: raucous, but with a slight apprehension. I get a sense tonight that it all might collapse at any moment if the next song doesn’t hit right, or the few dozen people in the crowd move too far apart. The music’s been propulsive, but with a nervous fragility, like a freight train held together by loose bolts.

Many shoulders on display in this picture.

“There’s a spider hanging on the ceiling!” Nick shouts, laughing excitedly. It’s been less than a week since Halloween, and the pub hasn’t taken its decorations down. Hanging from a ceiling fan directly above the audience, there’s a giant toy spider spinning round and round. Tickled by the sight, it perhaps inspires Nick to launch into ‘Turn on the Dark’, which he introduces as a “haunted house song”. It’s a magnificent number – and tonight’s only representative from Home on the Rage, Nick’s most recent album. As Nick whistles and Grant performs a solo on his bass, the spider whizzes round and round and the crowd’s heads nod up and down.

Not for the first time, I marvel at how much sound can be made on stage by two slight men possessing only a guitar and a stand-up bass. But Nick Shoulders can get a goodly amount of sound out of an acoustic guitar; his powerful strumming has become almost a signature sound. Accompanied by his high and powerful voice, the amplification of these great songs is undeniable, influenza be damned. Hopefully the next time Nick Shoulders tours in the UK he’ll have become big enough to justify bringing the whole band, but even without them he can make plenty of glorious noise. ‘Turn on the Dark’ has banished any nervousness, an act of aural feng shui. The music’s becoming so good that I begin to doubt the fragility was even there at all, and was just a figment of my agoraphobic imagination.

One song that would have benefited from the full band experience is the next number, ‘Too Old to Dream’. The studio version has the most enthusiastic lead guitar since George Harrison on the Beatles’ first album, and Nick’s whistle solo tonight only goes so far to compensate. But it’s still a great song with strong bones, a highlight in a night that is increasingly becoming full of them.

“How many of you are NOT millionaires? Raise your hands,” Nick asks, introducing his next song. He’s mentioned in the past how he feels a connection to the earth back home in Arkansas, and asks if anyone knows about the history of “the fencing-in of the commons”. He gets blank stares from the crowd and responds, “you should look it up, it’s your history, by god”. He’s referring to enclosure, by which access to the free ancestral land of England was gradually whittled away over the centuries.

As a former history student and compulsive Googler, I’m probably the only one among the yeomen and rakehelly vagabonds tonight who’s keen enough to actually look it up, b’god. Even among a harmonious crowd of heavy metal, country and punk enthusiasts, an interest in the legislative history of progressive feudal land appropriation might be a tad ambitious from Nick. Those class battles are so old and obscure, and the landscape of the north-west changed so fundamentally by the Industrial Revolution, that many don’t even know there were battlefields here.

But there’s method in the madness, and Nick’s prompting sets up the next number. Introduced as “an old cowboy ballad that we totally fucked up”, ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ is an old Roy Rogers song that Nick has furnished with his own lyrics and context. It’s something that he’s done before to great effect, with both ‘Rise When the Rooster Crows’ and ‘New Dying Soldier’ (neither of which get an airing tonight), and ‘You Won’t Fence Us In’, Nick’s new hybrid traditional/original, is another success. It’s a credit to his craft and versatility, that something once sung by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra is not out of place as a protest song sung by an ex-punk rocker in 2022.

This resolute and affirming protest song is followed by one of the best moments of the night. I’ve always thought ‘After Hours’ would be a great bar-room song, particularly that rollicking sing-along ending, and so it proves tonight. As we approach what would traditionally be last orders in this pub tonight in Bolton, Nick leads the crowd in a boisterous rendition of this fan favourite. It’s hard to imagine a song getting a better reception, but then Nick begins the oddly doo-wop-style singing that opens ‘Snakes and Waterfalls’, and the familiar notes get a similar reception.

It’s followed by ‘Bound and Determined’, which Nick says was inspired by the fact he’s always “troubled by authority”, and the song’s an emphatic conclusion to tonight’s protest element (which was kindled by Mike West’s ‘Guillotine’ song and brought to flame by ‘You Won’t Fence Us In’). It’s another great example of Nick’s intelligent and catchy songwriting, and there are at least half a dozen other songs of his that would have received a good reception tonight, if we had time.

It’s time for tonight’s closer, and there’s one song that is unavoidable. Nick Shoulders might die where he stands if he hears ‘Wagon Wheel’ again, but I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing ‘Rather Low’. Nick holds the opening “welllllll” for a long time – his head-cold now well and truly over, no doubt because of adrenaline rather than Lemsip – before launching into his signature song. He encourages the audience to “sing along if you know it” and everyone does know it. He’s saved the best till last, which is quite a thing to say when the set’s been filled with so many catchy numbers that people have been singing along since the opener.

As the crowd cheers and applauds at the end, Nick whoops into the microphone. I’ve previously described Nick Shoulders as seemingly nuttier than a shaken sack of squirrels, and even before a small crowd and nursing a cold on a cold night in England far from home, he’s delivered a propulsive, versatile set filled with whistles, yodels and a big fur hat. Earlier in the night, he introduced a song by saying it was a “mental health check” for us, and at no point had it occurred to me that this was an oddly sane thing to hear from a guy who’d been making trumpet noises with his mouth. Perhaps Gravedancer, recalling the sober reception of the ‘Mr. Blobby’ song, would appreciate how the abnormal and ridiculous has seemed normal among tonight’s crowd of Shoulderheads.

At the end of the night, I go outside and lean against the wall to make a phone call. I notice movement in my peripheral vision; behind me, Nick Shoulders is inside, collecting his jacket and his various pocket shrapnel from the cordoned-off area of the pub. I doubt he’ll remember this show – the smallest on the tour – but Mike West was right: there won’t be many more dates like this in Nick’s future. If the crowd isn’t twice as large next time round, there’s no justice in the world. This whooping, mulleted yodeller is building a devoted fanbase and backing it up with quality tunes. His fame’s growing rapidly, though it probably doesn’t seem like it to him as he packs up and leaves the small northern pub. But the night is special because it might never be like this again. I find myself hoping Nick might look back fondly on playing for a handful of drunk English misfits (and one very dizzy toy spider); I’ll certainly look back fondly on being one of them.

My lift arrives, and I’m gone, taking the A666. Take me home, Bolton Road.

Setlist:

(all songs from the album Okay, Crawdad and written by Nick Shoulders, unless noted)

  1. Lonely Like Me (from Lonely Like Me)
  2. Blue Endless Highway (J. R. Cheatham) (unreleased)
  3. Heart of Glass (Debbie Harry/Chris Stein) (from Heart of Night)
  4. Ding Dong Daddy (Traditional)
  5. All Bad (unreleased)
  6. G for Jesus
  7. Turn on the Dark (from Home on the Rage)
  8. Too Old to Dream
  9. You Won’t Fence Us In (based on ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ (Cole Porter/Bob Fletcher)) (unreleased)
  10. After Hours (from Lonely Like Me)
  11. Snakes and Waterfalls (from Lonely Like Me)
  12. Bound and Determined
  13. Rather Low

The Possessed Jukebox: Charley Crockett Live on Halloween

November 2, 2022 /

Monday 31st October 2022

The Deaf Institute, Manchester, England

It starts without much in the way of preamble; the band first, the Blue Drifters, come on to cheers and the background stereo of Ennio Morricone’s ‘For a Few Dollars More’. The spaghetti western theme is quickly replaced by Crockett’s own, played by the band as they settle in: the short ‘The Man from Waco Theme’ opening the show. The cheers turn to roars as Charley Crockett himself takes the stage.

Dressed in pale grey jeans and a white jacket – and the obligatory cowboy hat – Crockett quickly launches into ‘Cowboy Candy’, the first song from the new album. Before we pause for breath, we’re into ‘Time of the Cottonwood Trees’, another new song, one written for his girlfriend Taylor Grace.

This is followed by ‘Just Like Honey’ and ‘Black Sedan’, two more new tunes, though catchier than the two that preceded it. Not only are all the songs so far from the latest album, but astute fans will also notice they’re in roughly the same sequencing as the grooves already struck into vinyl. A moment of doubt crosses my mind: are we just going to run through all the numbers, however enthusiastically, with no thought to making the night special? The rest of the crowd doesn’t seem to share my doubt: the titular ‘The Man from Waco’ is next up, to a great reception.

There’s good reason for the frantic pace tonight. It’s Halloween, and there’s a strict 10 p.m. curfew at tonight’s venue – The Deaf Institute in Manchester – apparently to make way for another event. It’s not very rock ‘n’ roll, but we’re country tonight anyway. Crockett and the band deliver an old Tom T. Hall song, ‘Lonely in Person’, before another number from the new album, the slower-paced ‘Odessa’. But for all the solid musicianship on display and the enthusiasm of the crowd, my earlier doubts haven’t gone away. We’ve been burning through the numbers, like a jukebox has grabbed ahold of Crockett’s newest album and set it spinning. The next song is ‘Jukebox Charley’, as though to confirm me in this view.

Fortunately, I’ll soon be proved wrong. On this Halloween night, as the rain beats the roof, the jukebox is soon to become possessed.

‘Music City USA’ is up next, followed by a fan favourite, the autobiographical ‘The Valley’. The latter is the oldest original played so far, coming from the 2019 album of the same name. It seems strange to think of ‘The Valley’ as an old song, but so prolific is Charley Crockett as an artist that the song’s delivery tonight brings a more well-worn groove from the band, something not always possible on the newer songs. Most of tonight’s songs weren’t even released when I booked my ticket: Crockett has released two full albums of material since the day I set my card down in April. Even the venue’s website can’t keep up with the man: its biographical spiel is three albums old.

Crockett’s work ethic is something to be marvelled at, but there’s also a risk in it. Not only is it hard to keep up, it’s hard to savour. I’d only listened to The Man from Waco a few times before I showed up at the Deaf Institute tonight, so when the chords of those new songs are first struck by the band, there’s less of the delight and anticipation with which the crowd meets a more established number, as we’ve already seen with ‘The Valley’.

There are a lot of songs to be heard tonight; not counting the thirty-second ‘The Man from Waco Theme’ which opens the show, Charley Crockett and the Blue Drifters will run through a total of 27. With the support act, Theo Lawrence, also doing 14 tunes before Crockett takes the stage, it’s a prodigious amount of music for two-and-a-half hours. It seems Theo was even planning more: he gestures off-stage for one more at the end of his opening set, only to be denied. That 10pm curfew must be met. I find myself wondering what the final number would have been: the young Frenchman has delivered his own impressive set of original songs (as well as the Porter and Dolly crowd-pleaser ‘The Last Thing on My Mind’), characterised by strong writing and a throwback croon. Looking like a long-lost third Everly Brother who’s stepped through a wormhole into 2022, he stood solo behind his guitar and did a great job of warming up the crowd. At one point he says he’s usually backed by a rock ‘n’ roll band, and such is the strength of his set that he may well be one to watch in future. Throughout the night, Crockett is full of praise for his band the Blue Drifters, but he also makes sure to remind the audience to check out Theo Lawrence. It’s not an idle recommendation.

Crockett, meanwhile, is soon to bring that crowd to boil. After ‘The Valley’, he launches into three James Hand songs from the 10 for Slim cover album: ‘Midnight Run’, ‘Lesson in Depression’ and ‘Don’t Tell Me That’. The slick Fifties rock ‘n’ roll energy given to these three Hand numbers mean they’re perhaps the most crucial part of the night for Crockett. From here on out, Mr. Jukebox becomes a man possessed. He reaches that sweet spot he’s been searching for with the frantic pace all night: that blissful moment in a night of live music when energy turns into momentum.

‘Borrowed Time’, a song co-written with Evan Felker of the Turnpike Troubadours, is next, and its energy is maintained even in the slower swing of the following song, ‘I Need Your Love’. When the next song strikes up, it gets one of those roars of recognition from the crowd: ‘Welcome to Hard Times’, from the album of the same name. By this point, both band and audience have found the night’s groove, and the number is a high point of the night. When it’s followed up by ‘Name on a Billboard’, another from The Man from Waco album, the new song shares the familiarity of the songs around it, rather than the jukebox delivery from earlier in the show. The night is becoming special.

The next song, ‘Jamestown Ferry’, is a special moment. The fan favourite is given a warm, singalong welcome and is enlivened by a surprise trumpet solo from Blue Drifter Kullen Fox. It’s a great reminder of how Charley and his band seamlessly incorporate other American sounds into their country music, a fact then confirmed by their bluesy cover of ‘I Feel for You’. Reportedly Matthew McConaughey’s favourite Charley Crockett song, it sees Charley without his guitar as he takes the microphone from the stand. Pressing his bejewelled hand against the silver phoenix hanging around his neck, he delivers the slick lines of Jerry Reed.

The growing confidence and looseness of the night is becoming apparent, and we stray a bit further from the well-honed country sound with the Sixties groove of ‘Travelin’ Blues’, before snapping right back with the folksy ‘Lilly My Dear’. Sounding like a traditional song unearthed from the dirt, ‘Lilly’ is in fact an original co-written with fellow Texan artist Vincent Neil Emerson. It’s the second song from Welcome to Hard Times performed on the night – and it’ll be the last. To my disappointment, there are no more songs from my favourite Charley Crockett album. At the very least, it seems like a missed opportunity to not play ‘Rainin’ in My Heart’ when in Manchester (of course, it’s raining outside). But Charley’s stable of strong tunes has grown so fast that it’d be impossible to play everyone’s favourite. The frantic delivery of such catchy songs tonight reveals a hidden truth: the music might seem disposable at first, until you realise you can’t bear to throw it away.

The banjo which Charley donned for ‘Lilly My Dear’ serves well on the next number, the quick tempo of ‘Round This World’. The lyrics speak of a “banjo-pickin’ man”, but it’s the electric guitar of Blue Drifter Alexis Sanchez which steals the song. The Blue Drifter provides a tasty Tex-Mex solo which takes the song to another place, and he’s certainly a bigger hit than the last Alexis Sanchez to rock up in Manchester. ‘Round This World’ is a raucous number, and the perfect lead-in to what will prove the finest moment of the night.

The band continues the beat between songs and then, to another anticipatory roar from the crowd, Kullen Fox begins the mariachi horn riff that announces ‘Trinity River’. ‘Trinity River’ is a jewel stolen from Charley’s first album and re-recorded for The Man from Waco, but neither version is as good as the one performed tonight. It’s the perfect number to play live and puts the night at fever-pitch: Charley in his groove, the crowd enrapt, and the Blue Drifters able to show their musical dexterity in moving from country to blues to Tejano and Louisiana soul. It’s Charley embracing the ‘Gulf’ part of his distinctive ‘Gulf and Western’ sound: ‘Trinity River’ might not be country, but it’s got so much soul you want to tell the purists to go hang.

Charley revels in this new soulful groove, following up with ‘I’m Just a Clown’. This new tune is arguably out of place among the country songs on The Man from Waco, but with its Bill Withers-style vibe it’s perfect for where Charley’s found himself at this late point in the night. The momentum is carrying us all now, and while Charley’s enough of a professional to thank Manchester for coming out, it’s Texas where his heart is. In the final number, ‘Goin’ Back to Texas’, he’s the consummate showman. The music’s as good as it’s been all night and Charley’s dancing; foot-stepping carefully across the small stage, twirling in place and going down low to move spaghetti-legged before the front row of the crowd. The fierce, soulful end to the show proves the jukebox was never broken, not even in that slow, steady sequence of The Man from Waco numbers at the start of the night. Charley Crockett’s played it perfectly.

He leaves the stage with his band to cheers, cheers which continue so passionately that an encore is unavoidable. Charley returns alone, behind his guitar, to sing one of his new pure country songs, ‘July Jackson’. The band also deserves an encore, and they return for the Seventies soul vibes of another original, ‘In the Night’.

It’s been a heady, breathless sequence of music from Charley and his band. It’s been far removed from my previous concert experience, the mesmeric aural spellcasting of Sierra Ferrell in Liverpool, but Charley’s hard-and-fast approach has provided an experience no less memorable.

“I’m Charley Crockett – that’s Charley with an ‘E-Y'”, he says before he leaves the stage, an honest hustler to the end. But the hustle would be for nothing if the music didn’t back it up. And it does, emphatically: tonight has been a potent cocktail of showmanship and musicianship. The merchandise table is busy as the room empties; it’s where the real tour money is made, and why the showman is an important part of the artist. But it’s the music that proves most memorable. As I leave, I hear someone humming that horn riff from ‘Trinity River’. The jukebox’s possession is spreading, out into the Halloween night.

Setlist:

(all songs from the album The Man from Waco and written by Charley Crockett, unless noted)

  1. The Man from Waco Theme (Crockett/Kullen Fox)
  2. Cowboy Candy
  3. Time of the Cottonwood Trees
  4. Just Like Honey (Crockett/Fox)
  5. Black Sedan (Crockett/Fox)
  6. The Man from Waco (Crockett/Fox/Taylor Grace/Bruce Robison)
  7. Lonely in Person (Tom T. Hall) (from Lil G.L. Presents Jukebox Charley)
  8. Odessa (Crockett/Nathan Fleming)
  9. Jukebox Charley (Johnny Paycheck/Aubrey Mayhew) (from Jukebox Charley)
  10. Music City USA (Crockett/Mark Neill) (from Music City USA)
  11. The Valley (from The Valley)
  12. Midnight Run (James Hand) (from 10 for Slim)
  13. Lesson in Depression (Hand) (from 10 for Slim)
  14. Don’t Tell Me That (Hand) (from 10 for Slim)
  15. Borrowed Time (Crockett/Evan Felker) (from The Valley)
  16. I Need Your Love (Crockett/Neill) (from Music City USA)
  17. Welcome to Hard Times (from Welcome to Hard Times)
  18. Name on a Billboard
  19. Jamestown Ferry (Mack Vickery/Bobby Borchers) (from Lil G.L.’s Honky Tonk Jubilee)
  20. I Feel for You (Jerry Reed) (from Jukebox Charley)
  21. Travelin’ Blues (Eddy Owens) (from Lil G.L.’s Blue Bonanza)
  22. Lilly My Dear (Crockett/Vincent Neil Emerson/Colin Colby/Tyler Heiser) (from Welcome to Hard Times)
  23. Round This World (from Music City USA)
  24. Trinity River*
  25. I’m Just a Clown
  26. Goin’ Back to Texas (from Lonesome as a Shadow)
  27. Encore: July Jackson (Crockett/Grace)
  28. Encore: In the Night (from In the Night)

* ‘Trinity River’ is from The Man from Waco but was originally recorded on 2015’s A Stolen Jewel

A Pretty Magic Spell: Listening to Sierra Ferrell Live

June 30, 2022 /

Monday 27th June 2022

Future Yard, Birkenhead, England

It is hard to write about music because it is an elemental thing. Even among artists and other creative types, musicians occupy a special sphere. There is a line attributed to Walter Pater that all art aspires to the condition of music, and even an ordinary musician can, with a few strums of a guitar and some simple lyrics, bring forth the harmony that is in the world much more effectively than a great writer. Certainly, writing about music often ends up destroying the magic in it, turning the experience of sung gold into mute and lumpen lead.

“My hands are little, but they’re strong,” Sierra Ferrell says at one point on Monday night, in between songs, and on that stage those small, dainty hands touched upon the casual magic that music has but which is much harder to find in other art forms. She is certainly no ordinary musician. To hear Miss Sierra sing for the first time is an experience, whether on an album or a video online. To listen to her live is to witness one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World (others include the Empire State Building, the International Space Station, and how Pete Davidson is attractive to women). It is hard to describe her voice, not only because of the problem of writing successfully about music, but because its qualities shapeshift elusively as you hear it. To describe it as earthy misrepresents its femininity; to describe it as tender or melodious undersells its power. It is note-perfect, and yet with a ruggedness that stays true to Sierra’s West Virginian roots. It is like an angel who has decided to no longer serve, but has not turned away from the light either, and instead chooses to sing according to what it feels truly shines.

I have travelled the thirty-five miles from Manchester to Liverpool precisely to experience this wonder, and the show does not disappoint. In the last couple of years I’ve become a fan of this new country scene – much to my own surprise – and the old iPod I’ve loaded up for the car journey is full of Sierra’s music, mixed with Nick Shoulders, Colter Wall, Charley Crockett and Tyler Childers, among others. The first song on shuffle as I pull away from home is ‘Silver Dollar’, and whether by coincidence or kismet, it’s the first song Sierra plays after I arrive at the packed, dark Future Yard in Birkenhead. After a strong opening act by Josh Beddis, filled with slow songs and including a rolling closer called ‘The River’ – “sinners, won’t you find your way back home” –plenty of goodwill has been generated in the crowd by the Welsh picker’s genial stage presence. The atmosphere is further enhanced when Sierra arrives on stage and throws what appears to be confetti or petals into the crowd. They don’t reach beyond the first row, but unless she deployed a t-shirt cannon they wouldn’t have found me anyway. I’m standing at the very back of the room, near the bar, though I’m not drinking tonight (I’m driving home after the show). If I was any more of a wallflower, I’d be singing ‘Sixth Avenue Heartache’.

The venue, the Future Yard, is the perfect size for the performance that Sierra and her band – Oliver Bates Craven on mandolin and fiddle and Geoff Saunders on stand-up bass – are about to deliver. It is large enough to generate an atmosphere but small enough to emphasise the power in the songs, whether that’s the tender intimacy of ‘Whispering Waltz’ or the raucous energy Sierra finds in ‘Fox Hunt’ or ‘I’d Do it Again’.

On stage, Sierra places her small frame behind her acoustic guitar. She has a crown of flowers sown into her wheat-gold hair – a striking array of pinks and reds and oranges and yellows. She looks like she has stepped out of an Alphonse Mucha painting. And when she begins to sing, the effect becomes otherworldly. Her body sways as she sings and strums on her guitar, and she won’t break the spell she has over the room for the rest of the night.

The opening ‘Silver Dollar’ is followed by ‘Give it Time’, with Oliver and Geoff harmonising on the chorus to give it a throwback bluegrass feel. It’s a sign that, for all of Sierra’s unique ability, she is also supported by formidably talented friends. The third song, ‘Why’d Ya Do It?’, features some great fiddle from Oliver; the first sign that while the crowd may miss the incredible Josie Toney – Sierra’s regular fiddle player who, for whatever reason, has not travelled for the UK tour – they need not mourn her on the night.

The performance reaches another level with the fourth song, ‘Bells of Every Chapel’. Sierra introduces it in her tender Southern accent, saying it was inspired by watching the Netflix show The Crown with a friend. It’s a reminder that she hasn’t stepped out of one of Mucha’s art nouveau paintings, or a Roaring Twenties honky-tonk, but exists in the here and now. The song was co-written by Oliver Bates Craven and he leaves another mark on it with a mandolin solo. Not to be outdone, Geoff Saunders delivers a solo on his stand-up bass. Solos from both artists will become a regular and welcome feature of tonight’s set. A high note at the end of this song, held by Sierra for a long time, gets the crowd whooping. The trio on stage will maintain this level for the rest of the night.

A release is provided by the slow and intimate ‘Whispering Waltz’, showcasing Sierra’s vocals on a night when that could be said about every song that’s heard. It is followed by a reprise of ‘Silver Dollar’ – a surprise, particularly as there later proves to be no place on the setlist for ‘In Dreams’, another signature song. The seventh song of the night is the lesser-spotted ‘Littlebird’, from the 2018 album Pretty Magic Spell. Its warm reception from the crowd returns an almost shy thank-you from the artist, as though Sierra is surprised that people respond to her music.

As though to shake off this bout of shyness, Sierra and her band launch into the best song on the night, the as-yet-unreleased ‘I’d Do it Again’. She plays up the cuteness of the lyrics, selling it with a wink here and there, and displays great control of her voice as she hits all the right beats without pausing for breath. Even after solos from each of the three players – including a brief one from Sierra’s acoustic guitar – I’m still surprised when the song, which in its versions online has a charming Cole Porter vibe, reaches a raucous end that gets the crowd going again. Sierra roaring “I’d do it again – three times!”, refusing to let the song end, shows how the versatility in her vocals is matched by the flexibility in her songwriting. ‘I’d Do it Again’ was the most unexpected performance of the night.

Matching the earlier effect of following ‘Bells of Every Chapel’ with ‘Whispering Waltz’, Sierra changes pace after the frenetic end to ‘I’d Do it Again’ by singing the sweet and accepting ‘Made Like That’, followed by ‘Lonesome Feeling’, an Osborne Brothers song introduced as an “old bluegrass number”. Talk of West Virginia in between songs leads to an apparently impromptu rendition of John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’. Seemingly suggested by someone in the front row, the audience is only too happy to sing along.

Sierra is not yet ready to leave her home state, and begins to sing ‘West Virginia Waltz’. It is another impressive vocal, holding a long note on the word ‘flame’ as the song builds. Her voice proves the strongest even when harmonising with two men, though for the next song Sierra stands alone on stage. She plays ‘Rosemary’ from her 2019 album Washington by the Sea, a murder ballad that is intriguingly followed by the unreleased ‘Fox Hunt’. Sierra plays fiddle on this song, with Oliver also on fiddle and Geoff switching to acoustic guitar. This was the song I anticipated most before the show, with the versions I had seen online finally convincing me that I had to see Sierra live. I don’t expect the new verse she delivers, which suggests that this crowd-pleasing foot-stomper may also morph into something of a murder ballad or outlaw song itself. It’ll be interesting to see what its final form will be when it’s finally cut for an album, but, as Sierra says when the song is finished, “don’t ask me when that is”. It will be quite a task to replicate the live energy of this song in the studio.

Sierra follows up ‘Fox Hunt’ with two other unreleased numbers, ‘Lighthouse’ and ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down’. The three musicians harmonise on one mic for ‘Lighthouse’, and the song hints that Sierra is far from finished in building her stable of quality tunes. Despite the relative unfamiliarity of these two numbers, she still has the crowd in the palm of her hand and has them waving their arms in an arc during the chorus of the next song, the hopeful ‘At the End of the Rainbow’.

The sight of swaying arms also proves appropriate to summon the next number, ‘The Sea’. Though Sierra has returned to a familiar song here, she still has a surprise or two in store. ‘The Sea’ starts as expected, a slow, jazzy piece, but then gets unexpectedly high-tempo. Oliver and Geoff perform some now-signature mandolin and bass soloes to complement the song’s new swift current.

The band and the room are still full of energy, but we’ve reached the last song of the night. Sierra launches into ‘Jeremiah’, and the song seems all the sweeter for knowing it is the last. Another welcome surprise of the night: Miss Sierra begins to howl like a wolf on the final verse of the song, much to the delight of the crowd. Perhaps she’s been spending too much time with Nick Shoulders, her yodelling and whistling sometime-tourmate who seems nuttier than a shaken sack of squirrels.

Sierra and the band leave the stage, bowing to the cheers and the applause of the crowd, before returning for a brief encore. “You guys like honky-tonk?” Geoff says, before they sing the old bar-room song ‘Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music)’. As a nod to the British audience, a line is changed to “that pub down the street”. It can sometimes feel like country fans from outside West Virginia or Texas or the Bluegrass State, particularly those in other countries, are excluded in the name of protecting the genre’s authenticity, but the music never sounded as natural in England as it did tonight. The spell cast is complete.

It is unlikely that Sierra or the band will remember this night. Pretty soon they’re travelling on to London, and then Europe, and there’ll be stages and festivals and honky-tonks aplenty when they head back home to the States. If there remains any natural justice in art today, Sierra Ferrell will be in high demand. She proved tonight, if it needed to be proved, that she can do it all. The high notes and the low, the raucous songs and the tender ones. The voice is the thing that alters you when you hear it, but what is clear throughout the night is that the songcraft is also strong. Old favourites and new soon-to-be-favourites have been played, and ‘The Sea’ and ‘I’d Do it Again’ in particular have changed form without being diminished. It requires a feat of musicianship to bring all this together. It’s most noticeable, of course, in the stand-out moments – the high held notes of Sierra’s singing, the solos from Oliver and Geoff – but also in the night’s smaller moments – the light touches on Oliver’s mandolin, the backbeat of Geoff’s bass, the inflections in Sierra’s voice as it rolls over certain lyrics.

It’s these small moments that return to me after I leave the venue and start the late-night drive back to Manchester. I missed an opportunity to have a photo taken after the show – Sierra and her band mingled with fans at the bar – as it seemed awkward to stick around when I was alone and could not drink due to the need to drive home. I remained a wallflower to the end. But I clutch a black Sierra Ferrell t-shirt with ‘the bee’s knees’ on it, and smile. It seems absurd to purchase a memento when the night itself has been unforgettable, and perhaps it was the final symptom of the spell Miss Sierra had cast. I remember a song from earlier in the night. “Little bird,” she had sung. “Now won’t you sing to me. I know you’ll sing for free. I’m right where I wanna be.” I don’t expect her to sing for free, but on Monday night in Liverpool I was right where I wanted to be.

Setlist:

(all songs from the album Long Time Coming and written by Sierra Ferrell, unless noted)

  1. Silver Dollar (Ferrell/Nate Leath)
  2. Give it Time
  3. Why’d Ya Do It?
  4. Bells of Every Chapel (Ferrell/Oliver Bates Craven)
  5. Whispering Waltz (Ferrell/Craven)
  6. Silver Dollar (reprise) (Ferrell/Leath)
  7. Littlebird (from Pretty Magic Spell)
  8. I’d Do it Again (unreleased)
  9. Made Like That
  10. Lonesome Feeling (Billy Henson) (unreleased)
  11. Take Me Home, Country Roads (John Denver/Bill Danoff/Taffy Nivert) (unreleased)
  12. West Virginia Waltz (Ferrell/Leath)
  13. Rosemary (from Washington by the Sea)
  14. Fox Hunt (unreleased)
  15. Lighthouse (unreleased)
  16. Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down (Traditional) (unreleased)
  17. At the End of the Rainbow (Ferrell/Leath)
  18. The Sea
  19. Jeremiah
  20. Encore: Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music) (Joe Maphis/Rose Lee Maphis/Max Fidler) (unreleased)

A Giant on the Earth in These Days: Bob Dylan at 80

May 22, 2021 /

Whenever I am unimpressed by the latest hyped novel, film or musical act – which is something that seems to happen increasingly often – I find myself lamenting that there do not seem to be any artistic greats among us nowadays. I begin my own novelette, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, with a well-known quote from Genesis: “There were giants in the earth in those days”. Regardless of what the Nephilim truly were in the Bible – fallen angels, an ancient race, or heroes among men – the verse continues to resonate. As our culture falters under the weight of economic depression, societal deconstruction and artistic philistinism, we find ourselves looking desperately for icons who could explain it all. But whether they died out or we drove them away, the giants who could stand astride a culture seem to have vanished from the earth.

However, with Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday arriving this Monday, it is well to remember that one such great is still among us. Dylan’s legend is gigantic but, remarkably, his talent keeps pace with it. From the astonishing lyricism of the freewheelin’ folk songs of the early Sixties to last year’s remarkably fresh Rough and Rowdy Ways album – which contains the song ‘Murder Most Foul’, a show-stopping meditation on American decline and hope – Dylan has always been there to provide genuine artistic insight into our world. “I contain multitudes”, as Walt Whitman wrote – and Dylan is one of the rare few who has not only faced the yawning cultural pit, but has proved equal to the task of filling it with courageous art.

This adventure hasn’t always been smooth, and there are plenty of failed experiments in Dylan’s career that people use to try to diminish his achievement. Some criticisms are merely ignorant and superficial – his supposedly ‘nasal’ singing voice, for example, is in fact remarkably adept at interpreting songs – but others carry more weight. With that in mind, I have decided to comment on an underappreciated aspect of Dylan’s career: his forays into the written word.

In 2016, the announcement that Dylan had won the Nobel Prize for Literature was scoffed at in some quarters. Certainly the prize was heavily influenced by Dylan’s genius lyricism in his songwriting, but at the time I had already read both of Dylan’s published works and had been impressed by both, and I saw the scoffing as unwarranted. What follows are two book reviews from my Goodreads profile: a reappraisal of Dylan’s much-maligned 1966 novel Tarantula, and a further review of his 2004 autobiography Chronicles: Volume One. I hope these two pieces of writing go some way towards paying tribute to just one of this giant’s multitudes.

“Like the animal of the same name, you’re instinctively scared of ‘Tarantula’…”

Bob Dylan, Tarantula (London: Harper Perennial, 2005), 116pp. Originally published 1971.

It’s not that bad, you know. I mean, sure, when the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in October 2016 they probably didn’t have Tarantula, the songwriter’s only published ‘novel’, in mind as an example of his excellence. It is a rambling, nonsensical stream-of-consciousness piece of absurdity and only for the most patient or obsessive of Dylan fans.

It does have a certain rhythm to it, even if it doesn’t always make sense, though we can’t blame the usual precariousness of translating song lyrics to prose for the strangeness of Tarantula. Whilst Dylan’s imagery does suffer from the lack of the “dobro’s F hole twang & climax from disappointing lyrics” (pg. 14), there is a lot of stuff in here that’s just plain baffling. A magazine article once highlighted the ‘unintelligible’ line, “now’s not the time to act silly, so wear your big boots & jump on the garbage clowns” from page 2 of Tarantula. I assume they chose this early example because they didn’t want to read any further; there’s certainly plenty of other choice absurdities (my favourite is “little girls hide perfume up their shrimps & there are no giants – the warmongers have stolen all our german measles & are giving them to the doctors to use as bribes” from page 58). There’s also evidence that Dylan didn’t want the book published at all, so we shouldn’t judge him too harshly for it. But, clearly, anybody looking for a fearsome piece of poetry along the lines of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ or the eloquent phrasing of ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’ (both written around the same time as Tarantula) is going to find slim pickings.

That said, some nuggets do emerge from the stream-of-consciousness style. The book defies rigorous analysis, but “if youre going to think”, Dylan advises, “dont think about why people dont love each other – think about why they dont love themselves – maybe then, you will begin to love them” (pg. 109). Riffing on Woody Guthrie, Dylan writes “this land is your land & this land is my land – sure – but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway” (pp75-6). Such thoughts are in short supply here, but the rampant procession of song lyric snippets and literary references and the usual mid-Sixties Dylan stuff of lawyers and senators and mayors and garbage men all makes you realise just how much stuff we’ve got swimming around in our brains. In the introduction – or rather, the disclaimer – we are told the book is “about Bob Dylan thinking aloud” and there is more to this than apologia. As early as page 2, Dylan is talking of “bombing out your young sensitive dignity just to see once & for all if there are holes & music in the universe”, an image the streaming prose returns to on page 68, when in the “vast desert” of his head he “lets yokels test bombs in his brain”. There’s certainly value in letting a talent like Dylan use your head as a nuclear lyrical testing ground, banging away like Curtis LeMay. Like the animal of the same name, you’re instinctively scared of Tarantula, but a calmer and closer look reveals it’s rather more graceful than you first thought. But you still wouldn’t like to get too close to it.

I’m not inclined to be harsh on the flailing, hit-and-miss Tarantula because it’s clear Dylan doesn’t take himself too seriously (“Take it easy & dont scratch too much” is his life advice on page 109). The book is mischievous, playful – not artsy or pretentious. There’s a Loki vein of mischief in Dylan’s book (as in much of his music), challenging and ridiculing those who would define or label or analyse him. “To my students”, he addresses on page 107, “i take it for granted that youve all read & understand freud – dostoevsky – st. michael – confucius – coco joe – einstein – melville – porgy snaker – john zulu – kafka – sartre – smallfry – & tolstoy – all right then… now i’m giving you my book – i expect you all to jump right in – the exam will be in two weeks”. Here, Dylan is remarking on the disposability of his book. Why the hell, he asks impishly, are we reading this when we’ve still not read Sartre? You’ve got to admit, he has a point.

“[Dylan] stands astride the divide, while also hoping people with dirty feet don’t use him as a bridge…”

Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One (London: Pocket Books, 2005), 293pp. Originally published 2004.

“I know that he wanted to understand me more as we went along, but you can’t do that, not unless you like to do puzzles. I think in the end, he gave up on that.” (pg. 218)

One of the few artists of the 20th century who truly stands apart, it is difficult to pin Bob Dylan down and drag him back to the more regulated cultural strata where we can understand and quantify him. This is the case even when he is speaking directly and disarmingly, as he is here, in the first (and, to date, only) volume of Chronicles, his autobiography. Like the producer Daniel Lanois, whom Dylan is referring to in the lines I’ve quoted above, eventually we give up. We cede the ground and, without irritation, just let this singular artist do his own thing.

Chronicles: Volume One is an unconventional memoir. Its five chapters deal with three different periods of Dylan’s long career: the first two with 1961, before he became famous; the third in 1970, during a fallow period; a fourth in 1989, as he tries to engineer a new sound; and then finally a fifth back in 1961-2, with Dylan on the cusp of his unique fame. The content and sequence betray in part the origins of the book (it started with Dylan writing liner notes for re-issues of the relevant albums – Bob Dylan in 1962, New Morning in 1970 and Oh Mercy in 1989), but you also get the feeling that Dylan wouldn’t have it any other way. We get nothing on the insane run of creativity from 1963-66, or on the Blood on the Tracks album, but he does briefly discuss his time rapping with Kurtis Blow in the Eighties, of all the things (pg. 219). Like Lanois, you want to understand him more as you go along, but you do have to puzzle it out.

Nevertheless, Dylan manages to cover an astonishing variety even within these peculiar parameters. I first read Chronicles about ten years ago and, thinking back on it, I seemed to remember a powerful piece of writing about Dylan’s encounter with Harry Belafonte; that barely struck me this time around. In contrast, I had all but forgotten that Dylan discussed his tour with Tom Petty (even though I was then, and remain, a huge Heartbreakers fan); this time around I found that discussion fascinating. Dylan manages to touch upon, at natural points in the narrative, various personalities he met over the years, whether trifling encounters with the likes of Jack Dempsey, Robert Graves or John Wayne, or with those who had a deeper influence on him, like John Hammond, Dave Van Ronk and Woody Guthrie.

Dylan is particularly good at explaining the influence of various musicians on his own creative outlook; Guthrie especially, though Chronicles also ends with an energizing one-two punch combo about Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Robert Johnson. He’s less good at explaining his own creativity, particularly as it appears so feverish (a passage in the chapter on Oh Mercy, where Dylan tries to explain the new songs and vocal techniques he is developing, is clearly reaching for something ineffable but struggles to reach the reader). I’ve long been trying to formulate an adage that the difference between great writers and average writers is that average writers are trying to explain simple things in a complex way (through big words, fancy techniques, etc.) whereas great writers are trying to explain complex things as simply as possible. I felt something similar in reading Dylan as he tried to express his creative direction: normal artists are trying to be special, whereas Dylan, feverishly atop the strange artistic hierarchy, is a special one trying to be normal.

Certainly, one of the most striking aspects of Chronicles, and Dylan’s personality in general, is his determination to be normal and conventional. In conversation, I often use “catch rainbow trout”, a lyric from ‘Sign on the Window’, one of his New Morning era songs, as a byword for the sort of domestic contentment Dylan is striving for. He wants out of the “rat race” (pg. 114) but is also “fantasizing about… a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard… That was my deepest dream” (pg. 117). In the Eighties, he buys ‘World’s Greatest Grandpa’ mugs (pg. 209). He never wanted to be a countercultural icon in the Sixties – “I had no ambitions to stir things up. I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick” (pg. 35) – and bristles at the attempts to get him to lead a movement (pg. 119). By 1970, he’s completely fed up with the hippies and gatecrashers: “I wanted to set fire to these people” (pg. 117). While never a reactionary or a get-off-my-lawn type, he’s also not the rebel agitator, “the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest”; “whatever the counterculture was, I’d seen enough of it” (pg. 120). He stands astride the divide, while also hoping people with dirty feet don’t use him as a bridge – or set fire to said bridge.

For someone with such a strange position in our culture, and who remains so enigmatic even as he carries us across the pages of a dedicated autobiography, Dylan is remarkably self-aware. He says it’s “nice to be known as a legend, and people will pay to see one, but for most people, once is enough” (pg. 147). It says a lot that, even on a second read, his legend takes on new and ever more inscrutable dimensions – most ‘legends’ don’t even stand up to a single glance. Chronicles can sound like a performance at times (“The last time I’d seen her, she was heading West” (pg. 60)), but when this happens it never appears to be out of conceit, a desire to wow the audience with stream-of-consciousness verbosity. Instead, whenever he eludes discussion of more conventional memoir topics like his family (his wife is mentioned but never named) or his relationship with Suze Rotolo (the lady on the cover of the Freewheelin’ album), it has the appearance of practiced shields and well-oiled countermeasures. He’s been throwing up these puzzles and magic signs to bamboozle interlopers for a long time now.

And why not? The interest in Dylan ought not to be in his Minnesotan hometown or his children, but in his unique creative take on things. The literary quality of Chronicles is rarely overt (an exception being “sometimes all it takes is a wink or a nod from some unexpected place to vary the tedium of a baffling existence” on page 43), but it takes technical skill to establish this voice and maintain it during a non-linear narrative. To do so with some occasional genuine insight, and maintaining the reader’s interest, is impressive. When someone comes into writing from a different artistic realm – music having its own unique language – and proves capable of writing well, it’s always an experience to be grateful for. When the world’s most renowned songwriter describes songs as “like strange countries that you have to enter” (pg. 165), you sit up and pay attention. When he describes his legendary image as “a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows” (pg. 147), you realise he’s been to so many of those strange countries which nobody knows, and has been crowned there. Our enduring fascination with his remarkable far-off conquests is never puzzling – how could we not be fascinated? – even if, partly by design, the man behind the legend remains so.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy some of my other book reviews on my Goodreads profile. I have also written a novelette called Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, inspired in part by the Genesis verse with which I opened this post. It can be found here.

The image of Bob Dylan used at the top of this post is in the public domain and was accessed via Wikimedia Commons. The book covers of Tarantula and Chronicles: Volume One are the property of their respective publishers and are considered fair use for purposes of review.

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