Graham Reid | | 1 min read
Tombstone Blues
During lockdown tireless old Bob Dylan released his exceptional double album Rough and Rowdy Ways (yep he was old, 79 at the time) and also -- in a typical sleight of visuals – presented a 50 minute black'n'white concert film (by Israeli director Alma Har'el) where he went way back in his catalogue for songs like Tombstone Blues, It's All Over Now Baby Blue, The Wicked Messenger and Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.
This being Dylan – then 80 – it was not quite what it seemed: it wasn't in Barcelona's Bon Bon Club as it appeared to be (that club doesn't exist) but was shot on a California soundstage. The masked and anonymous band with him mostly weren't musicians but actors who mimed the pre-recorded parts and -- as expected however -- Dylan overhauled the songs into drum-less arrangements with accordion (Jeff Taylor).
Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan was much a fiction as his feature film Masked and Anonymous. But better.
The film which was broadcast as a live-stream has now appeared for download and rental, and the standalone soundtrack is available on single CD, as a double album in a gatefold sleeve (one side blank) and digitally.
Recorded in LA with the likes of Don Was on acoustic bass, T Bone Burnett (guitar) and Greg Leisz (mandolin, pedal steel) and others, the lack of percussion loosens Dylan's approach to these familiar songs and his delivery.
He speak-sings passages of Tombstone Blues like a poet reading to an audience in a Beat-era bookshop. It sounds like it might have been written around the time of Rough and Rowdy Ways.
Equally as impressive is the mysterious menace of What Was It That You Wanted – the most recent song here, from Oh Mercy, 34 years ago – and elsewhere he swings croakily through To Be Alone With You, the sentimental Forever Young here sounds like blessing from the old man. Pledging My Time becomes a roadhouse blues before the noisy crowd arrives, or after it has left.
The stripped back musical setting here – no drums or keyboards – is wonderful in the sparseness where small filagrees of guitar add colour or drama at the end of lines, the accordion bringing emotional exoticism where required.
All the music recorded live in the studio.
The final piece is a cantina instrumental Sierra's Theme.
Guitarist Tim Pierce who was on the sessions speaks of dozens more songs, including Masters of War, they recorded.
This album is as unexpected as it it is interesting.
Actually this is way more than interesting, it's like a companion volume which sits alongside Rough and Rowdy Ways.
Yet another new way to hear Bob Dylan.
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You can hear this album at Spotify here
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