Caught in the Carousel

Third Annual Forever Young Bob Dylan Birthday Tribute

Mystic Theatre, Petaluma, CA
May 23, 2009

Performing song covers is a risky business. All too often, the amateur highlights his own mediocrity by failing to do justice to the master he is interpreting. I always thought college students should be banned from performing Shakespeare, because half the time the pipsqueaks don't understand the import of the lines they memorized, so their performance sounds like Beethoven on a kazoo. Covers of great songs are almost never as good as the originals, because musicians who perform covers seem to get off on one element, or one surface layer, of the classic they are re-doing. For every Jeff Buckley version of "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen there are the thousand Alexandra Burke versions of "Hallelujah" attributed by her fans to Shrek. Rare is the Johnny Cash rendition of Trent Reznor's "Hurt," or The Beatles' remake of the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout." More often, we get the Scissor Sister's "Comfortably Numb," Limp Bizkit's "Behind Blue Eyes" or Madonna's "American Pie." Most covers exploit the composition to attract attention to the artist, then immediately descend into obscurity where they belong. Paul McCartney's "Yesterday" has been re-recorded over 3,000 times. Ever heard any of them?

If covers of classics are artistically risky, covers of Dylan classics can be artistic suicide. The performer is saying, "Look at me! Look at Dylan! Compare!" Dylan fans ask with every note: Did you add depth to something deep, or did you desecrate something sacred, or—worse, so much worse—did you make it banal?

Attending a concert of Dylan songs, performed by a dozen artists, most of whom you've never heard of before, is a leap of faith. Each artist was charged with performing three or four Dylan compositions, which meant each set would be long enough to make failure excruciating, and each too long for the performer to get by with a one-off.

The audience was far too versed in Dylan trivia not to be intimidating. The emcee posed Dylan stumpers from the stage, and half the audience spontaneously called out the correct answer. The only one that stumped them was, "Which fraternity did Dylan belong too?" Hippies don't know Sigma Alpha Mu from Alpha Centauri Three, but they know that Dylan once claimed his "real message" was "Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb."

Emily Jane White had the unenviable position of being first to please these fanatics. Alone with her guitar and piano, she reached into audience hearts and plucked out flowers by employing an ancient but frequently forgotten insight: the singer is the servant to the song. Her ego disappeared behind surprisingly affecting versions of "Shelter From the Storm," and "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." I felt a lump in my throat. White reminded us of the point of true art: to make your chattering brain shut up for once and experience something greater than yourself. When she was finished, Dylan fans looked at each other, rubbed their hands together, and said, "Oooo, this is going to be goooood."

A slight cop-out was worked into her third choice, though. "One More Cup of Coffee" is about an illiterate gypsy, and the melody is striking for its difficult cantor-inspired quaver that gives it the Middle Eastern flavor. White dropped that challenge, replaced it with a pulsing groove, and sang it straight, no frills. But doing it the easy way robs the song of the musical/thematic synergy that makes it great.

You see what I mean about Dylan fans. We're tough to please. Even Dylan cops out of the cantor quaver when he sings it live.

Next up was Jerry Hannan, announcing that he would sing a song he'd "just learned" in the last few days. With an acoustic guitar and harmonica, he pulled off a pitch-perfect performance of "Just Like A Woman" that dangled perilously close to a Dylan impersonation. Even Dylan doesn't play that song that much like Dylan.

Hannan didn't transcend his mere skillfulness until he invited an old friend onto the stage who was not listed on the bill. After making jokes about how they "used to date," they harmonized on "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" and "To Make You Feel My Love" with a richness of feeling that comes from long friendship. They had that rare alchemy that made them both became larger than the sum of their persons-- like spicy hot wings and cool ranch dressing that, mixed together, become something much, much more, and you would never know unless you tasted it. They were a tough act to follow, and they knew it.

As several other artists took admirable chances and failed, or took no chances at all and blandly succeeded, Hannan and his unnamed lady friend started to seem cruel in retrospect for performing so well.

But once Crooked Roads got up there, the show was rescued and hit its stride. The show was emceed by their manager, so CR got to perform five songs, yet nobody complained, because they did it all with passion and grit. Chris Dingman can sing with unapologetic vulnerability when the song calls for it. Their songs were well-chosen and remained conservatively within the musical and emotional range of the band. You got the sense they'd perfected these songs over time, yet the drummer was brand new.

It got late. The audience dwindled. I started looking at my watch and contemplating the long ride to my bed. I wanted to stay for the Z-Trane Band, because I'd enjoyed bassist Fritz Mueller and guitarist Jeff Zittrain in other bands for years, and I was curious to see how they played together with keyboards and a seventeen-year-old drummer named Evan Monroe.

Then the Z-Trane Band got up there and knocked it out of the park. As soon as they opened with "Shot of Love" it seemed like they belonged inside that song, breathing dragon fire into the words. Zittrain's vocals made us realize the difference between flawless singing and guts, and I wanted to make a PA announcement to the ladies: "Don't ever give that man a shot of love. I want him this hungry every time he sings this."

The Z-Trane Band kicked out all the standard crutches used to pull off a Dylan cover. They didn't go for the passing grade with a merely fine performance. They didn't stick religiously close to the original so as not to offend purists. They didn't choose songs that fit comfortably within the band's standard sound. They didn't bury the songs beneath their instruments. The Z-Trane Band leapt way over the edge, no net, with a unique arrangement, and belted it out from the center of the song with great feeling. This kind of thing can only miserably fail or spectacularly succeed, and the Z-Trane Band pulled it off. They nailed an ending that made you say, "You better sit down. You can't top that."

Luckily it's never about topping, but devotion to the spirit of each song. They followed with a ragged version of "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," a song covered too many times by too many people, yet this might have been my favorite yet, sung at low registers, sad and redemptive at the same time.

"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" was a lesson for all present in what can happen when musical prowess and heart coalesce. Dangling on their high wire, the Z-Trane Band pounced into the ultimate in risky moves when it comes to Dylan covers: an improvised guitar solo that must not serve as a diversion from the classic, but adds something you never heard before. You can always count on Zittrain to rip an inspired solo, and with this band it was buttressed much by the inspired bass-playing of Fritz Mueller. Whatever happened to bass players who can mix it up as they follow the soloist? Together with keyboardist Lee Haddad and, yes, the seventeen-year-old drummer, the Z-Trane Band showed us the difficult is doable: You can add your fresh personal stamp to classic Dylan songs if your bring respect for the spirit in which each song is made: as a blueprint for something unique on stage. That's the only way Dylan ever performs his own songs.

For a Z-Trane closer: Ever heard "Chimes of Freedom" rocked out as an anthem? It was the one talked about in the lobby. I hate to break it to you, but you weren't there.

—Joe Quirk