Dylan.FM

Ray Padgett is writing a new book that compiles 50+ interviews with musicians and others who've been involved with Bob Dylan's live shows. It's called Pledging My Time, and there is a pre-release Indiegogo campaign running that allows you to pre-order the book and take advantage of special bonus offers. The campaign runs through December 16, 2022 so we talked with Ray to learn more about the book, about the campaign, and to find out what he's learned talking to all these Dylan insiders.

Who's in the book?: Jim Keltner, Winton Watson, Benmont Tench, Larry Cambell, Stan Lynch, Early Sound Crew (David Robb, Keith Dircks, Fuzzy Frazer), Billy Cross, Richard Fernandez (Tour Manager), Christopher Parker, John Wurster, Ray Benson, Dickey Betts, Jeff Bridges, Harvey Brooks, Gary Burke, Marshall Crenshaw, Karl Denson, Leslie Dowdall, Ramblin' Jack, Kinky Friedman, Freddy Koella, Barry Goldberg, Spooner Oldham, Michael 'Soy Bomb' Portnoy, Duke Robillard, Fred Tackett, Richard Thompson, Happy Traum, and more.

Ray talked with us in Episode 03 about the cover songs made from Time Out Of Mind. He runs the Cover.Me website which reviews and discusses all kinds of cover song performances, and he's published two earlier books, one Cover Me that take a deep dive into twenty of the most iconic cover songs in history (including All Along The Watchtower and Make You Feel My Love), and a 33 1/3 book on Leonard Cohen's tribute album called I'm Your Fan.

Ray also runs a must-have Dylan email newsletter called Flagging Down The Double E’s. The newsletter does deep dives into legendary Dylan live shows, and has published some of the musician interviews that will be included in Pledging My Time.

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LINKS:

• Pledging My Time Book IndieGoGo Campaign
• Follow Ray Padgett on Twitter, Instagram
• Flagging Down The Double E's newsletter (Substack)
• Check out CoverMe Website
• Ray's Cover Me book (Amazon)
• Ray's 33 1/3rd Book: I'm Your Fan The Songs of Leonard Cohen

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Jeff Slate is a musician, writer, and radio host with a long and deep connection to Bob Dylan. He wrote the liner notes to the More Blood, More Tracks edition of The Bootleg Series, and has done several events for The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa. He shares his insider's view and personal memories on Time Out Of Mind in this episode.

As an artist and performer Jeff has won an ASCAP Award, toured as the opener for Sheryl Crow, worked on a project with Pete Townshend and much more. As a writer his work regularly appears in The Wall St. Journal, RollingStone, Esquire and The New Yorker. He hosts shows on SiriusXM and the BBC. In addition to the Dylan Bootleg Series he's written liner notes for The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's 50th Anniversary Box, Shawn Colvin, and others. And he's the co-author of The Authorized Roy Orbison book.

We talk Time Out Of Mind, an album he skipped work to devour on release day, and hear how he got involved with the Dylan team and his views on Bob's live work, use of producers (or lack thereof), and much more.

Our Dylan.FM Premium Members get an extended version of this conversation with an extra 30 minutes of discussion, as well as the option to watch the video version of our interview. Join us to go deep on Dylan with extended versions and videos of all of our podcasts, exclusive posts, access to special events, and more. To become a member click here.

To become a member click here.

LINKS:

Jeff Slate Website

Twitter @JeffSlate

Instagram @jeffslate

Jeff's Music on Spotify

Song Heartbreak - Annimated Video (YouTube)

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Five respected music writers - each with recent reviews of Bob Dylan's new book - joined us to share their thoughts and discuss the contents of this incredible work. Our panel includes Anne Margaret Daniel, Seth Rogovoy, Allison Rapp, David Yaffe, and David Hajdu (Bio's below).

They share their favorite entries from the book, the songs they’re listening to differently now, their views on Dylan’s writing style , and the ever-present question of who helped or worked with Bob on the project came up more than once.

READ: 50+ REVIEWS OF DYLAN'S NEW BOOK

This version includes the first 45 minutes of our roundtable discussion. If you'd like to hear the full 90 minute version or watch the video version - and get access to extended versions of all our podcasts plus videos - you'll need to become a Premium Member here. Members get a private RSS feed to enjoy the full-length versions right in their favorite podcast app.

Order Dylan's The Philosophy of Modern Song (Amazon)

Panelist Biographies and Links:

• Anne Margaret Daniel teaches at the New School University in New York City and at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. Her essays on literature, music (often Bob Dylan), books, and culture have appeared for the past twenty-five years in books, critical editions, magazines, and journals including The New York Times, Hot Press, The Spectator, and The Times Literary Supplement. Anne Margaret has degrees from Harvard (A.B.), Georgetown (M.A.), University of Virginia School of Law (J.D.) and Princeton (Ph.D). - Website: https://www.annemargaretdaniel.com/
• Seth Rogovoy is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet (Scribner, 2009), The Essential Klezmer (Algonquin, 2000), and the upcoming Within You WIthout You: Listening to George Harrison (Oxford Univ. Press, fall 2023). Seth is a contributing editor at The Forward and produces a Substack newsletter, Everything Is Broken. Seth lives in Hudson, N.Y. - Website - Review
• Allison Rapp is a music and culture journalist based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Brooklyn Magazine, Rock Cellar, City Limits, and more. She currently works as an assistant editor at Ultimate Classic Rock. - Website - Review
• David Yaffe is a professor of humanities at Syracuse, and the author of Fascinating Rhythm (Princeton), Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown (Yale) and Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell (FSG), winner of the ASCAP Virgil Thomson/Deems Taylor award, a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, and has been translated into five languages. He has been a frequent contributor for Air Mail since 2021, and has written for many other publications, including The New York Review of Books, New York Magazine, The Paris Review, The Nation, Slate, and The New York Times. He is at work on a book about Leonard Cohen. - Website - Review
• David Hajdu is the music critic for The Nation and a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Before joining The Nation in January 2015, he served for more than 10 years as the music critic for The New Republic. He is the author of 8 books including Positively 4th Street, The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan,Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. David currently serves on the National Council on the Humanities. - Website - Review

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Mark Howard was the Engineer on Dylan's Time Out Of Mind and Oh Mercy. But in three plus decades he's worked with dozens of great artists - Willie Nelson, Robert Plant, Dave Grohl, Rickie Lee Jones, and many many more. And he's photographed all of these experiences.

He has a new book out full of these 'on the job' photographs -- it’s called Recording Icons / Creative Spaces - The Creative World of Mark Howard. It shows the recording studios he's built in unique homes and buildings all over the world, and the work that was done in those spaces.

We talk to Mark about his process, his photography, and the amazing artists and albums he's worked on.

GIVE-AWAY: We're giving away a copy of this new book - to enter to win just subscribe to our 'Seven Days' our free weekly newsletter of Dylan news and links. On Nov 18 we will pick one subscriber to win the New Mark Howard Photo Book. Plus you'll get our great summary of everything that happens in the world of Dylan every week. (Existing subscribers are already entered to win the book.)

EXTENDED AND VIDEO VERSIONS. An extended version of this interview - with about 30 extra minutes of discussion, and a video version, is available to Premium Members at FreakMusic.Club. or our Substack. For as little as $8/mo you get extended versions of our podcast episodes, video versions, and many more benefits.

Right now, new Annual Members get a copy of Jochen Markhorst's Time Out Of Mind Book.

LINKS:

• Recording Icons / Creative Spaces (Amazon)
• Listen Up! (Mark's first book on his life of recording experiences)

Steven Hyden wrote the liner notes for The Bootleg Series 17: Fragments - The Time Out Of Mind Sessions, and in this episode talks to us about the assignment, his assessment of Bob Dylan in 1997, and how the narrative of the times stood up to 25 years of additional Bob Dylan output.

Hyden is a respected music writer, and his latest book is called Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack for a Generation, and he's also the author of Your Favorite Band is Killing Me, Twilight of the Gods and several others. He writes regularly at Uproxx where he is officially the ‘Cultural Critic’, Plus: he has a new Bob Dylan Podcast focusing on Live shows from the Never Ending Tour - called Never Ending Stories.

His essay in the CD and LP box sets talks about how Dylan was positioned and perceived in the media around 1997, and how that narrative didn’t exactly align with reality and how 25 years has utterly destroyed the popular assumptions of the time.

In this conversation we talk about how Steven got the gig, what he was asked to do, his thoughts about summing up 60 years of Bob Dylan, what it meant at the time for a 55 year old to make an album, the role Daniel Lanois played, what the new mix and outtakes say about the album, his thoughts on the live tracks that are included, the future of the Bootleg Series, and much more.

This is a new interview done on January 30, 2023

Our Dylan.FM Premium Members get an extended version of this conversation with an extra 40 minutes of discussion, as well as the option to watch the video version of our interview. Join us to go deep on Dylan with extended versions and videos of all of our podcasts, exclusive posts, access to special events, and more. To become a member click here.

Or help support this podcast with a contribution via our Tip-Jar:

LINKS:

• Steven Hyden writing at Uproxx
• Book: Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation
• Book: Twilight of the Gods: A Journey To The End of Classic Rock
• Book: Your Favorite Band is Killing Me
• Book: This Isn't Happening - Radiohead and 'Kid A'
• Podcast: Never Ending Stories (AppleMusic) (Patreon)

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