I’ve always been a big fan of Bob Dylan, but not a fanatic. His work and the changes he went through during the 1960s and most of the ’70s were extraordinary. But since, some projects have left me cold.
His latest, the strong-selling Together Through Life, a further exploration of roots-rock calling on all his musical influences while in collaboration with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, succeeds in most aspects despite a few tracks that fall short of the high level of most of this album.
Almost simultaneously and much more quietly, a remarkable Dylan work with The Band, The Basement Tapes, has been remastered and re-issued on CD for the first time in many years. The attraction of these tapes is inescapable and perhaps more compelling today than on their initial release in 1975. But first Together Through Life.
Dylan has assembled a fine group of musicians for this outing with Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos on guitars, added to members of his touring band, Donny Herron, steel guitar, mandolin, banjo and trumpet, drummer George Recile and bassist Tony Garnier.
Campbell also contributes mandolin and Hidalgo lends a singular sound with his accordion that gives many of the tunes a Southwestern/Mexicali feel, an interesting and fresh take for this type of material, all written with Hunter with the exception of My Wife’s Home Town, a Willie Dixon tune on which Dylan is also credited and This Dream Of You, written by Dylan alone.
All of the uptempo tunes work perfectly. The opener, Beyond Here Lies Nothin’, is one of the best. With a feel reminiscent of the Otis Rush/Willie Dixon tune All Your Love and Peter Green’s Black Magic Woman the band smolders while Dylan’s world-weary and weathered vocal navigates the melody effortlessly.
Dylan’s voice, always a point of contention with some (you love it or you hate it), has changed often over the years. He has settled into a scratchy, throaty incarnation that suits him and imbues this material with a dark and ravaged quality. Never technically adept, he makes up for it with character and experience. The lyrics of Beyond Here indicate dedication and love that is all there really is in this world and Dylan delivers them brilliantly.
Jolene is played in a feel-good swing tempo with stops in the verse and an infectious answer guitar riff in the chorus. The almost fatal tome to the woman in the title features a couple of rocking double lead guitar breaks, the first played in a Chuck Berry chord style and then with the pedal steel on the rideout. The track cooks from start to finish.
The uptempo blues Shake, Shake Mama has a modified Rollin’ And Tumblin’ feel with the band creating a bed of rhythm and riffs underneath the melody that pushes the track along with an easy and flowing groove. Dylan’s voice rides flawlessly over it with more lyrics of wanton attraction. The album closes on the double-time rhythm of It’s All Good with a hint of Bo Diddley’s I’m A Man, driven by Hidalgo’s accordion. The track contains some of the best lyrics on the album with a combination of observation/commentary that only Dylan can provide, of course this time with Hunter:
Wives are leavin’ husbands, they’re beginning to roam
They leave the party, and they never get home
I wouldn’t change it, even if I could
You know what they say man
It’s all good, it’s all good, all good
Three moderate tempo songs, Forgetful Heart, This Dream Of You and I Feel A Change Comin’ On are all classic Dylan. In the first, Dylan sings of good love gone bad as a former lover has closed the door and dismissed all memories of better times. This Dream Of You treads similar ground with the singer fixated on a past love, while the last of the three also tastes the bitterness of bad love but through more defiant eyes.
The most interesting of these tracks is Dream with its Mexicali feel, again featuring Hidalgo’s penetrating accordion and a poignant pedal steel break. I Feel A Change reminds one of When I Paint My Masterpiece with its sprightly feel and Dylan’s narrative style of singing.
When Dylan fashions himself a crooner as on Life Is Hard and If You Ever Go To Houston it simply doesn’t work as well as other tunes on the album. Both song’s musical execution and lyrical content are fine but Dylan’s voice falls short of the standard set by the rest of the record. His sounds a little too tired and ragged on both cuts. In contrast, Dylan does a marvelous job on the Dixon tune My Wife’s Home Town.
The arrival of The Basement Tapes earlier this year in remastered form was quite welcome. There really hadn’t been a good version of this landmark record in the digital era. Dylan sings 16 of the songs and The Band eight on the double disc release, and it contains not only some Dylan gems such as Tears Of Rage, writtern with Richard Manuel, This Wheel’s On Fire, with Rick Danko, and Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood), recently covered by the Derek Trucks Band, but other Dylan treasures, You Ain’t Going Nowhere, Lo And Behold! and Million Dollar Bash, among many others, and some of The Band’s best efforts all of which predate The Big Pink album.
These songs were recorded live in 1967 in the basement of Big Pink, a house some members of The Band were renting, on a two-track tape recorder. The sound has been cleaned up and though not pristine is clear and true to the setting in which the songs were committed to tape. It can be argued this is one of the first experiments in roots music as it related to rock, with its mix of blues, folk, country and gospel, much of what we now call Americana. The songwriting is strong all around and sounds as fresh today as it did in the ’60s. Absolutely love that album cover, too.
It’s difficult to compare anything to The Basement Tapes, but Together Through Life is another worthy entry into the Dylan catalogue that, despite a few missteps, presents Dylan holding sway over a band playing a mix of roots music, which owes a lot to the blues tradition but also brings new elements to the table.