Definitely Dylan

In today’s Bob Dylan Hotline we talk about Bob Dylan and gospel music – the ties he had to the genre before his conversion to Christianity, and the enduring impact it had in the decades that followed.

Check out the trailer for the documentary Say Amen, Somebody here.

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.

Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.

Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.

Happy Equinox! What better day to look back on summer and that's exactly what we're doing in this conversation. What do you think? What are your favourite Bob Dylan summer songs? Or do you associate his music with another season entirely?

And of course we had to talk about the new upcoming Rolling Thunder Live 1976 box set! 

One correction: Fort Collins is in COLORADO, I have no idea why I said Florida. I’m sorry about that.

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.

Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.

Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.

In this episode of the Bob Dylan Hotline, we give our opinion on Bob Dylan ~as women~. Is that different from other episodes, you might ask? Not really, but this time we're talking about talking about Bob Dylan as women. The conversation took us in many different directions because we had a lot to say.

You can find our earlier conversation on Women and Dylan here.

A few notes:

00:18 - A note on the almost impossible popularity of Dolly Parton. The phenomenon of a woman becoming very popular very quickly until the public turns on her and starts tearing her down has now been dubbed as “getting womaned”, since it rarely happens to men to this extent.

00:22 - There are luckily a few examples for “kookie” women, from Björk to Kate Bush to Erykah Badu to name just a few, but I think Rebecca’s point was more regarding how willing the public is to accept that kookiness as part of Bob Dylan's character, while female artists are more likely to be reduced to their kookiness.

00:35 - I’m really interested in how some of Dylan’s early songs challenge the conventional gender dynamic. “It Ain’t Me Babe” is a rejection of romantic stereotypes, but songs like “Hero Blues” and “John Brown” are about women encouraging a harmful masculinity rooted in violence and aggression. For more on this, check out my talk on Bob Dylan’s Heroic Masculinity here.

00:51 - In this context, also consider the re-written lyrics to “To Be Alone With You”, where he sings about wishing to be back in his “true love’s arms / She likes older men, they can’t resist her charms”. Here he directly writes from the place of an “older man”. The same is true for “Spirit on the Water” where he resist the accusation that he’s “over the hill” or past his prime and insists that, given a chance, he’s show her a “whoppin’ good time”. 

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.

Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.

Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.

In this episode Laura talks to Jake Xerxes Fussell about Bob Dylan the folksinger, and the albums Good As I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993). We discuss the song selection, their textured beauty, and what they can retroactively tell us about that moment in Dylan’s career.

Jake Xerxes Fussell is a guitarist and singer from Columbus, Georgia, who arranges and performs traditional folksongs. He has released five studio albums and recently co-composed (with James Elkington) a feature length soundtrack film score. 

He tours regularly in the United States, Canada, and Europe. His sixth and forthcoming album, “The Old Beloved Path,” will be released by Fat Possum Records on September 18th.

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.

Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

Today we're talking about Bob Dylan's fashion through the years!

What's your favourite outfit Bob Dylan has worn, or which style do you most associate with him?

You can read Graley Herren's excellent essay on gender performance in Bob Dylan's The Philosophy of Modern Song here.

And the other essay we mention about Gorgeous George can be found on Graley's Substack.

Check out Ray's interview with JJ Holiday, who played with Bob Dylan on Letterman in 1984 and lent him his outfit here.

Around 01:13, I'm talking about the chapter on "There Stands the Glass" in The Philosophy of Modern Song, where Dylan writes about the history of tailors Nuta Kotlyarenko, or Nudie Cohn, and Manuel Cuevas.

Follow Britt Eisnor on Instagram for great in depth research in to a lot of Dylan and The Band related topics, but also content on Bob's fashion.

Shot_of_love_69 – whose name is Alaina – who made the beautiful jacket for Britt is also a must-follow.

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.

Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.

Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.

In this week's Bob Dylan Hotline, we're talking about Bob Dylan's vocals! What do YOU think his sexiest, spookiest, and most moving vocals are?

This question comes from Graley Herren, one of the most referenced people on this podcast because we think he's great, and he has a new book coming out in September, which traces Dylan's career through the lens of his performances in just one city! Pre-order your copy of Dylan in Cincinnati here.

Also check out Graley's Substack.

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.

Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.

Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.

In this week’s Bob Dylan Hotline we talk about the state of Dylanology, Dylan Studies, whatever you may call it, as well as the groundwork laid by fans. Plus, Rebecca reports back from when Bob Dylan Long Hot Summer stopped at Forest Hills, Queens!

Check out the Dylan Review here.

You can download the pdf of Bob Dylan Interviews by Artur Jarosinski here.

The Olof Bjorner site I mentioned is now part of BobServe.

If you have a question for us, send us a voice memo to bobdylanhotline[at]gmail.com.

For anything else get in touch at itsdefinitelydylan[at]gmail.com

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.

Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.

Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.

When Bob Dylan began his career, murder ballads were having a bit of a moment. In this episode, we’ll look into the influence these songs had on the young artist, and how they inspired a particular subset of his own early songs.

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.

Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

This week on the Bob Dylan Hotline Laura and Rebecca are talking about Bob Dylan's pronouns!

In 1978, Bob Dylan told Craig McGregor,

"Tangled Up In Blue [was] the first [song] I ever wrote that I felt free enough to change all the... what is it, the tenses around, is that what it is? [...] The he and the she and the I and the you, and the we and the us–I figured it was all the same anyway – I could throw them all in where they floated right – and it works on that level."

How does this changing around of pronouns affect how we hear the song? And why does Dylan favour writing in the second person rather than the first? Joni Mitchell has something to say about that.

You can listen to Rebecca talk about "Like a Rolling Stone" on the Pod Dylan podcast here.

Find the Substack version of Graley Herren's essay on "Sweetheart Like You" here.

In case anyone's interested in what I did end up talking about at the conference about Bob Dylan and Masculinity conference, you can watch my talk here.

The line from "I Contain Multitudes" about "four pistols and two large knives" is from Shelby Foote's history of the Civil War, as James Adams (bob_notes on Twitter/X) noted here.

If you have a question for us, send us a voice memo to bobdylanhotline[at]gmail.com.

For anything else get in touch at itsdefinitelydylan[at]gmail.com

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.

Book your Bob Dylan Walking Tour of NYC with Rebecca on ramblintours.com.

Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.

Rebecca’s bootleg version is here.

This week Laura talks to writer, editor, and musician Sam Sodomsky about the trilogy of Great American Songbook albums, Shadows in the Night (2015), Fallen Angels (2016), and Triplicate (2017) – a move that for some legacy artists might be predictable, but that for Bob Dylan was a real curveball.

You can support Definitely Dylan on Patreon or with a one-off donation at buymeacoffee.com/definitelydylan.

Get your Definitely Dylan baseball cap here.