Dancing with Dylan

"Together Through Life"

http://www.counterpunch.org/brown05012009.html

Dancing with Dylan

By PETER STONE BROWN
May 1 - 3, 2009

If Bob Dylan's previous studio album, Modern Times was about (among
other things) finding love or maybe just romance, in a world, where
some sort of impending doom lurked waiting around the next corner, on
the new, Together Through Life, he's decided, well there's nothing
much you can do about it except sing the blues, and if you're going
to sing the blues, then you might as well make it swing a little have
a good time doing it.

The blues has been the one constant in Dylan's nearly five decades of
musical adventures. It dominated his very first album and there's
maybe two albums that don't have a blues song in structure, and it's
dominated every album since he returned to songwriting after a long
layoff with Time Out Of Mind. And make no mistake about it, Bob
Dylan can be a great blues singer, up there with the very best, when
he wants to be.

Dylan's initial work (meaning the '60s) was so devastatingly
brilliant – and to see why, all one has to do is compare his songs
with similar
songs by his contemporaries – that ever since he's been saddled with
the impossible task of not only being Bob Dylan, but the myth of
being Bob Dylan. And it is the myth that he's played with
endlessly, like a cat with a mouse, doing everything he can to
destroy it, yet holding on to it at the same time. Ultimately, every
attempt at deflating who he was only ended up adding to the myth.

Lost in the myth, is that the music is what it's always been about
for Bob Dylan. It's what drives him, it's his first love, and if the
title of this album signifies anything, it's that. What makes Dylan
fascinating and what's earned him his reputation as one of the
greatest American artists is his absolute refusal to stand
still. It's death to him. The meaning of, as well as the sound to
his work is always transient. What comes in second, or maybe third
behind the lyrics, and the myth is that seen as a whole, Dylan's work
and maybe his greatest achievement has been an extensive exploration
into American music and by extension American culture.

While much of Dylan's work in the studio and on-stage has been off
the cuff, and whatever happens happens, in the past 15 years at
least, he's been more consciously in search of a sound. Following
the success of Time Out Of Mind, he decided he could achieve the
sound he wanted on his own, for whatever reason using the name Jack
Frost. (Those who pay attention to album credits, Jack Frost
appeared on 1990's Under The Red Sky.)

Together Through Life is easily the best Jack Frost production
yet. The sound is loud, bright, punchy and clear, with all the
instruments coming through. The arrangements are thought out and
definitive. (The arrangements will probably change once Dylan does
these songs onstage, but that's another story.)

For the sessions Dylan used three members of his road band, longtime
bassist Tony Garnier; drummer George Recile, and Donnie Herron who
plays steel, guitar, banjo, mandolin, trumpet, and while not listed
in the album credits, violin. Augmenting this are guitarist Mike
Campell, of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, who also plays mandolin,
and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos on accordion and guitar.

Hidalgo and Campbell's contributions give the album its punch and its
spark, while Herron, much like Garth Hudson did in The Band, provides
the texture. He's the glue holding it all together. After seven
years playing hundreds of shows together, Garnier and Recile have
become an extremely tight rhythm section. Whatever excesses Recili
had when he first joined Dylan's band, where you wondered if a fill
would end on time have been reigned in and careful attention has been
paid to Garnier's bass sound. The result is you can actually hear
what he's doing and what an excellent player he actually is. Much
has been made in the press as well as in the online interview at
Dylan's official site of the album having a sound reminiscent of
Chess and Sun Records. That's not entirely accurate, though on the
blues songs, the bass in particular does have the Chess sound. While
the blues dominate, the album crosses Dylan's usual wide range of
stylistic genres – Hidalgo's according touches on not only Tex-Mex,
but Zydeco, Cajun and polkas – the sound and feel of the album is
cohesive throughout.

The songs are not necessarily hard hitting in impact, and frankly
were written that way on purpose. Much has been made that all except
one are a lyrical collaboration with Robert Hunter, best known as
lyricist for the Grateful Dead. Ultimately it's not important,
though I'm sure someone out there is busy trying to discern who wrote
what line. These songs are meant to be taken as face value. While
the usual references are there – it's a good idea to be well read to
listen to Bob Dylan, along with having a good knowledge of film –
these songs do not dive deep into the mystic. That said, they have a
way of creeping back into your mind, almost haunting you in a way
that makes you want to hear them again. Certain lines hit you at
certain times, in fact the have a way of sneaking up on you, in a way
that you end up thinking about what the line may really mean such as
the title of the opening song, "Beyond Here Lies Nothing."

It's an album in which the landscape the songs are written against is
an important as the songs themselves, and it's a shadowy, often
menacing, sometimes violent landscape, the landscape of a fading
America. That menace is found in Campbell's guitar, Hidalgo's
accordion, and most of all in Dylan's voice.

Ongoing throughout this album, throughout life, is the search and
more importantly the struggle to find love, but also friendship, in
the belief that love and only love is the true sustaining force in
life. Yes these songs are written, and sung with the full knowledge
that love rarely lasts, and often the singer is left simply
contemplating the shadows as night turns to morning. Dylan's great
trick in this is that the past, present, future, and the desires,
hopes, as well as loss and even regrets are all one.

Despite whatever bleakness lies in the lyrics, Dylan is having a
great time singing this stuff. That of course is what the blues is
about, rising above. He uses the increasingly gravelly remains of
his voice to great effect. One of the best moments is near the end
of "My Wife's Home Town" a rewrite of the Muddy Waters classic, "I
Just Want To Make Love To You" (for which songwriter Willie Dixon is
credited), where he alternates between phrasing like Muddy, and
phrasing like Howlin' Wolf.

This isn't an album where you can pick one or two songs, and say
they're the definitive track. If one could pick a song as sounding
like arrangement-wise, the typical Bob Dylan song, that would be, "I
Feel A Change Comin' On," much the way "Mississippi" was on "Love And
Theft." The melody, one of the nicest he's come up with awhile has
echoes of his work with The Band. More accurately it's the sound one
always hoped would evolve from that collaboration. All the songs
have what is perhaps a deliberate familiarity to them. The
difference this time is the music and the production is spot
on. There's not a note that's out of place, though sometimes on "If
You Ever Go To Houston," the omnipresent accordion riff can be a bit
much. At the same time, the way Hidalgo uses the accordion to
recreate Little Walter's Harmonica on "My Wife's Home Town" is brilliant.

"Life Is Hard," the song that initiated this album could be Dylan's
best attempt yet at writing a '40s style ballad.

There's been a tendency over the past decade to proclaim every Dylan
album a masterpiece, which is unfortunate. At this time, I wouldn't
put it in that category. What it is, is a good, solid album of songs
that have a way of growing on you, where the music, the sound, the
feel and the groove, are just as important, if not more important
than the lyrics. If there's a problem with this group of songs,
it's that Dylan's current style of writing songs, borrowing lines
from old songs, whatever he happens to reading, and innumerable other
sources rolling around in his mind, is starting to approach being
formulaic and more about craftsmanship than inspiration. However, if
there's one thing I've learned in listening to Bob Dylan for most of
my life, it's that he never stays in the same place too long. I
remember wondering when Nashville Skyline came out, if it was gonna
be those kinds of songs for the rest of time, and ten years later
having similar thoughts during the "gospel period." That said,
Together Through Life is the first Dylan album, you can put on and
dance through the whole thing, and maybe that's good enough for now.
--

Peter Stone Brown is a musician, songwriter, and writer. He can be
reached at: psb51@verizon.net

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