Bob Dylan never said anything about hoping to die before he got old. He just told the old people to get out of the way if they couldn’t lend a hand.
On Monday, rock’s greatest poet turns 80, and — despite some rough concert performances here and there — his true fans will tell you they’re glad he never got out of the way.
Last year, the Hibbing, Minn., man who gave us “Blowin’ in the Wind” in 1962 grabbed us by the collar during the pandemic with “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” one of his most lyrically dense, playful and challenging albums.
It was his 39th studio album, not counting the reams of unreleased bootleg stuff, and on the quality scale, it probably cracks the top 20. There’s reason to believe that there will be a 40th, that we’ll leap to hear it, that critics will gush, and that it will further this 60-year narrative in one fascinating way or another.
That’s not something you can say about many artists who came along in the ‘60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s … how far you wanna go?
To honor his genius and longevity, WYEP (91.3 FM) will devote a good part of Monday to Pittsburgh artists of various stripes covering Dylan.
From 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., WYEP will play at least one of the Pittsburgh covers per hour, along with a sprinkling of Dylan doing Dylan. At 1 p.m., they will present a “Live From Home” session with Emma Swift and Robyn Hitchcock playing Dylan tunes, and then at 9 p.m., they’ll do a straight hour of PGH Does Dylan.
“It's a great testament to the Pittsburgh music scene,” Morning Mix host Joey Spehar says. “Everybody's got something going on and for everybody to take the time to think about this, to act on it, to make these recordings, I am absolutely floored. I could not be happier about it.”
There are 34 covers in all, six of them dating back to the station’s 35th anniversary of “Blood On The Tracks” in 2010.
For the current batch, Spehar sent out an email to about 60 local artists asking if they would want to participate.
“I said ‘Let me know and pick a song’ and, surprisingly, with all those different people, nobody picked the same song.”
There are, after all, more than 500 to choose from, already covered by more than 2,000 artists, from The Byrds, Hendrix and The Band to Guns ’N Roses, Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine to My Morning Jacket, Sufjan Stevens and Tedeschi Trucks.
The Pittsburgh batch ranges from intimate versions of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” courtesy of Lyn Starr and Morgan Erina, respectively, to Jordan Montgomery doing rap verses on “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” and pop-punk supergroup PACK blasting through “Like a Rolling Stone.”
“This Wheel's on Fire” comes from the Chet Vincent-led Famous Horses, who busied themselves in the early months of the pandemic doing a song-by-song treatment of “The Basement Tapes” — remotely.
Sure to be one of the most compelling is the galloping psych-rock version (think Tame Impala) of “Highway 61 Revisited” from Animal Scream, featuring Josh Sickels (Takeover UK) and Chad Monticue (1,2,3), who applies a sinister set of vocals.
“I don’t know if Dylan really sold his soul but he sure has a great sense of humor,” Monticue says, “and the opening lyrics about the ultimate test from God are some of my favorite he’s ever penned. We knew it’d be sonically fun to experiment with the whistles, and I attempted to vocally approach each verse in a unique way, as to make them all feel completely different.”
When Montgomery, rapper and founder of Driving While Black Records, saw the email, he gravitated toward one of Dylan’s early protest songs, “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
“I decided to cover it,” he says, “in light of everything going on this past year with COVID and the fight for equality and seeing how relevant the song still is in regards to the issues we continue to fight against.”
Working with a karaoke track, he made a remix with his own twist on the lyrics.
“This writing process was very different for me because I’m used to writing to a beat and the song doesn’t have any drums,” he says. “So I tried to do my best Dylan impression which took me back to the days when I used to write poetry. I really liked the lyrics when I was done, but I wasn’t sure how listeners would like my delivery. So far everyone seems to like it.”
When PACK looked at Spehar’s spreadsheet of chosen songs, they saw a glaring omission.
“We couldn’t believe that ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ wasn’t taken,” says bassist Chris Fafalios. “When we were working our version out, though, we were like, ‘Oh, no one took this because it’s six minutes long!”
They decided, in essence, that that wheel wasn’t on fire, so why try to reinvent it?
“It’s more of a love letter than trying to mess with something that is already perfect,” Fafalios says. “No one is really crazy enough to try to cover Bob Dylan on your own accord, but having someone like WYEP ask in the spirit of celebration gives you license to take on a song like this one.”
WYEP's PGH Does Dylan:
- Animal Scream “Highway 61 Revisited”
- Animal Scream: “I Threw It All Away”
- Bad Custer: “Political World”
- Ben Shannon: “Masters of War”
- Bill Deasy: “Tangled Up in Blue”
- Bill Toms: “Simple Twist of Fate”
- Bindley Hardware Company: “Buckets of Rain”
- Boca Chica: “Buckets of Rain”
- The Buckle Downs: “I Shall Be Released”
- Daniel Petrich: “Girl From The North Country”
- Famous Horses: “This Wheel's on Fire”
- Goodnight, States: “Shelter From The Storm”
- The Harlan Twins: “You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”
- Honest Babes feat. Erika June & Mike Dugan of Working Breed: “It Ain't Me Babe”
- John Stuart: “When I Paint My Masterpiece”
- Jordan Montgomery: “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ”
- Kahone Concept: “Knockin' On Heaven's Door”
- The Living Street: “Blowin’ In The Wind”
- Lohio: “If You See Her, Say Hello”
- Lyn Starr: “Mr. Tambourine Man”
- Melinda & The Night Sky: “Ragged & Dirty”
- The Moon My Twin: “Boots of Spanish Leather”
- Morgan Erina: “Love Minus Zero/No Limit”
- Mystic Seers: “The Man In Me”
- One Man Sample: “Lay, Lady, Lay”
- PACK: “Like a Rolling Stone”
- Sam Stucky: “Don't Think Twice, It's All Right”
- The Telephone Line: “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine”
- Victor Abendano: “Just Like a Woman”
- Zoob: “Mama, You Been On My Mind”
- Zoom Grand Caravan: “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”
First Published: May 20, 2021, 1:15 p.m.
Updated: May 24, 2021, 12:13 p.m.
