“You’ve got to understand folk songs, and a lot of the folk songs in the tradition, to understand how he’s turned them in his own direction,” says Melbourne music hero Shane Howard. “Like ‘I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.’ You go back and Maggie’s Farm is devised from an early folk song. There’s a lot of that in Bob’s work – there’s a new idea every now and then that hadn’t been tried, but he frames it in such a way that it seems inevitable.”
This weekend, Howard will figure prominently in the third annual installment of Bobfest. Over two-nights at the Memo Music Hall, the likes of Tex Perkins, Stephen Cummings, Chris Wilson, Suzannah Espie and Van Walker will perform songs from Dylan’s immense repertoire. Howard’s playing guitar in the house band alongside some of the hardest working men in Australian music. “It is great to work with guys like Peter Luscombe, Bruce Haymes, Steve Hadley and Jeff Burstin,” he says.
The Bobfest setlist will explore widely through Dylan’s vast catalogue, which spans five decades and 36 studio LPs. For instance, while Espie will do Blowin’ In the Wind, Perkins is having a crack at Love Sick and Not Dark Yet from 1997’s Time Out of Mind. Howard himself will take the spotlight for a version of the early-‘60s deep cut Lay Down Your Weary Tune. “It’s a lesser known song,” he says. “It’s beautiful poetry really – that period of magical realism.”
When it comes to the most covered songs of all time, The Beatles’ Yesterday and The Stones’ Satisfaction probably top the list. However, it’s difficult to think of anyone who’s had more songs covered than Bob Dylan. This statistic has nothing to do with creative laziness. Rather, Dylan’s catalogue encompasses such variety and nuanced appeal that it continues to elicit inspiration. “It’s a formidable body of work,” says Howard. “You can always trawl back through and you find some other little gem hidden away in there.”
Along with keeping up a steady stream of new releases, throughout his career, Dylan’s live shows have largely consisted of reworked versions of his own material. Every couple of years he tours Australia, and with each visit he upsets a contingent of puritans who long for a precise reenactment of the original recordings. Bravo to Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones for presenting their songs in exactly the same manner for 50 years. But since writing Blowin’ In the Wind in 1963, Bob Dylan (who turns 74 this Sunday) has never stood still.
“Any creative work is in a state of transition,” Howard says. “I just love seeing the artist at work. He’s constantly refusing to be a nostalgia show. I got switched onto Bob at a young age, to The Times They Are a-Changing, and it lit a fire in my head. He’s kind of become a bit of a benchmark through my whole career. And here he is this far down the track, still going as an artist, still creating relevant work.
“We don’t want [Bobfest] to be just a nostalgia show,” he adds. “You’ll hear some really beautiful interpretations. Mick Thomas last year did Most of the Time, but he completed rejigged the whole setting of the song. It is great to fiddle with the songs. They’re given new life.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
