“There’s not enough music in his music.” That is the best I can do, this hopelessly circular argument, when trying to explain why I didn’t appreciate the records of Bob Dylan when I was a fanatical young fan of prog, jazz, classic rock, funk, psychedelic pop and more. It wasn’t an opinion I shared often back then, however. Typically, I was free and exuberant with my judgments, whether they were ecstatically pro or disdainfully con, but regarding Dylan, I kept the blather to myself. You had to.
The critical climate surrounding Lord Zimmerman’s work — much like the Velvet Underground’s — seemed, by some sort of Teflon miracle, to shift the scrutiny from the music to the listener. If you didn’t like it, the fault was yours, an irremediable deficiency of depth, heart and cool. Anti-Dylan sentiment was sacrilege, then as now, and I never made a point of broadcasting my lukewarm dissatisfaction.
In retrospect, my problem digging Dylan wasn’t a failure of understanding. Of course I knew that he was an outrageously opulent and gifted poet/lyricist, a master shaper of phrase and melody with a profound grasp of tradition as well as modernist tendencies that might have pleased Ezra Pound. Of course I knew that he could cram verbose Biblical parallelisms into four bars and rescue them with a rhyme just as easily as he could craft elegant, strictly metrical ballad verses. I knew he was bottomless.
Of course I heard the daring and the emotion, the playfulness and gravity, the topical and the timeless, the continual surprise and the personality. And of course I knew that, somehow, he made that crazy voice not only work but prevail, in the process of creating opportunities, markets, justifications and confidence for generations of singer-songwriters with unconventional and sometimes homely voices, including, as it turned out, me, when I started to sing, in my thirties.
But, alas, there just wasn’t enough music in that music, not enough harmony, counterpoint, groove and general intricacy. So instead of Dylan, I enjoyed the relative sophistication of worthy peers like Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon. But I also obsessed over the instrumental latticework of Kansas and other quasi-spiritual prog blowhards when I could have been acquainting myself with, I dunno, Townes Van Zandt or Richard Thompson, if only I had let Dylan in earlier. Influences are rarely by choice, and it was environment and natural affinity that made me this way, not pretense. I grew up in a house where J.S. Bach and Bill Evans were played 24/7. That wired me a certain way, without my permission.
So it goes. But I made it to Dylan finally. The wonderful thing about changing your mind easily and without feeling bound by consistency or hypocrisy is that you wake up to undiscovered worlds of genius, wonderlands remaining for you just when you thought the well was dry. For me it started with Blonde on Blonde and went in both temporal directions from there.
On Saturday, June 5, Family of Woodstock presents the 12th annual Bob Dylan Birthday Celebration at the Bearsville Theater, a concert benefiting Family as well as the John Herald Fund for musicians and artists in need. It is a special show for at least three reasons. First, the great Dylan is 80 and still at it. Second, the concert falls in this liminal, uncertain period as we transition back to limited-capacity indoor culture, testing the waters in a lavishly remodeled Bearsville Theater that was dark throughout its first year of new ownership.
Finally, the show features an incomparable lineup of performers, including peers of Dylan like the great player and educator Happy Traum; ace players who recorded with Dylan like multiple Grammy-winner Cindy Cashdollar multi-instrumentalist and original Bruce Hornsby and the Range member Dave Mansfield; a variety of notable songwriters like the pop wizard Marshall Crenshaw.
Great players of all ages abound, from the talented and highly visible mid-Hudson guitarist and songwriter Andy Stack to veteran Joe Jackson drummer Gary Burke, Utopia’s Kasim Sulton, singer-songwriters Mary Lee Kortes and Jennie Muldaur, and the Band-collaborator and local institution Professor Louie.
Exactly how this virtual orchestra of players and singers is going to make it work is one of the main attractions of the ticket. If there is one thing that I used to disdain about Dylan but deeply appreciate is now, it’s that for all his prolific, chameleonic range, Dylan never wanted to write a song that a kid with gumption could not figure out how to play in her bedroom. It’s that paradoxical collision of singularity and universality that may be the secret to his magic. Somehow, these great performers are going to figure it out.
Community-based nonprofit organizations like Family of Woodstock rely heavily on fundraising, especially through charity events such as this. As the pandemic threat widened in the last year, event cancellations followed like dominos, a perfect storm of both need and limitations, a major blow at a particularly challenging time.
“In unprecedented times like these, grass-roots organizations like Family are essential to the wellbeing of the community.” says Tamara Cooper, Family of Woodstock Hotline Team Leader and Program Director. “Fundraising events like the Bob Dylan Birthday Celebration help pay bills, keep food pantry shelves stocked and assists with emergency requests for assistance. We could not operate at this level without the community’s support.”
Covid protocol will be strictly followed, with seating limited to 100 at $100 a ticket. At the time of this writing only a handful of seats remain. Each ticket purchase includes entry into a drawing to win an original Elliott Landy photo of Bob Dylan, donated by the photographer.
For tickets and additional information, visit www.bearsvilletheater.com. The Bearsville Theater is located at 291 Tinker Street in Woodstock.
Join the family! 
