In this ongoing Monday Series we will be exploring various artists versions of Bob Dylan song's. Today's artists, Old Crow Medicine Show doing a live cover of "4th Time Around"
Certain months RtBE has a special focus during our Dylan Covers series. Sometimes it is harder, sometimes it is softer. Sometimes it is jazzy and then each April we get ready for the upcoming Jazzfest, which isn't always jazzy.
This month it's the Old Crow Medicine Show's live celebration, 50 Years of Blonde on Blonde.
Thoughts on Original:
From the first time we tackled a cover of this song:
This is a weird one, as I heard this track after I had already fallen in love with The Beatles "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" and didn't know what Dylan was getting at with this track. After checking out Wikipedia, I guess I am not alone as John Lennon was all over the map with his reactions to it. The music is the same and the lyrics are a mix of lazy and nonsense, reading into anything Dylan says too heavily can cause one to go mad, but why he chose to do this song so close to when the Beatles had their first lyrical success is a mystery. Social commentary, goof, stoned malaise? Anywhichway, the song was never one of my favorites and not up to anywhere near the version he was praising or mocking, take your pick.
The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up.Cover:
Thoughts on Cover Artist:
We have actually tackled Old Crow Medicine Show before in this Monday Dylan Cover series. Here is what we had to say about them then and it still stands:
Old Crow Medicine Show have always been a fun folkise root rock ride when we have heard them, but also that hasn't been too often.
Regarding this album:
50 Years of Blonde on Blonde was recorded live at the CMA Theater at the Country Music Hall of Fame, in Nashville, Tennessee, in May 2016. The concert coincided with a Hall of Fame exhibit exploring Dylan's time in Nashville.In an interview, band members Ketch Secor and Critter Fuqua described how they had bonded over Dylan's songs as teenagers, and that the 50 Years... project was a natural extension of that collaboration. While the new recording follows the sequence of Dylan's original track-for-track, Old Crow took considerable liberties with the arrangement of individual tracks. The recording was released as an album on April 28, 2017. It was the band's first release on their new label, Columbia Records, which had released Dylan's original album in 1966.
Thoughts on Cover:
The band makes this version more of an emotional waltz with piano leading the way as violin and steel guitars color the weeping backgrounds with pretty lines. Musically the group nails this one about as cool as you can and actually is an improvement on the original to these ears.
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