{"id":2443160,"date":"2019-04-18T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=304235"},"modified":"2019-04-18T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T22:00:00","slug":"joan-osborne-on-her-years-long-bob-dylan-covers-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/joan-osborne-on-her-years-long-bob-dylan-covers-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Joan Osborne on her years-long Bob Dylan covers project"},"content":{"rendered":"
Joan Osborne photographed during a 1997 performance in Snowmass VIllage.<\/strong>
Aspen Times file<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Joan Osborne<\/a> felt Bob Dylan\u2019s presence before she ever saw him in person.<\/p>\n

In 1998, Osborne \u2014 hot off of her mega-hit \u201cOne of Us\u201d \u2014 was set to record a new duet of Dylan\u2019s \u201cChimes of Freedom,\u201d with Dylan himself, for the TV mini-series \u201cThe \u201960s.\u201d<\/p>\n

She got to the New York City studio early, she recalled, and was hanging out with his band when he entered in silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy back was to the door and when he arrived, even through I couldn\u2019t hear him, I noticed how the weather in the room immediately changed,\u201d she said in a recent phone interview from her country home in upstate New York. \u201cNo one really looked at him or talked to him, but all of a sudden everyone became hyper-aware of him, gauging his mood.\u201d<\/p>\n

She soon learned the response was from musicians who\u2019d grown used to trying to keep up with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who work with him develop this low-key vigilance,\u201d she explained, \u201cbecause he changes his mind very quickly. He has this restless intelligence, where he tries out an idea and by the time he has tried one version of the idea he\u2019s already moved on to something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lifelong Dylan devotee, Osborne\u2019s singer-songwriter career always had been infused with his music and his influence. Her global sensation of a debut album, in 1995, included her take on the hidden Dylan gem \u201cMan in the Long Black Coat\u201d and she\u2019d frequently included Dylan covers in her live sets.<\/p>\n

But she\u2019s gone all in for the past three years, with a full album of Dylan covers and a tour that comes to The Temporary at Willits today. (It\u2019s been several years since she\u2019s been back in the Aspen area, though Osborne has been playing here since a 1997 headlining slot at Jazz Aspen\u2019s Labor Day Festival.)<\/p>\n

The current project started with a 2016 residency at the Caf\u00e9 Carlyle, the legendary cabaret room that\u2019s been running in Upper East Side Manhattan\u2019s Carlyle hotel since 1955. Given two weeks of shows and no creative restraints, Osborne decided to use the residency to immerse in Dylan\u2019s songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were uncertain if people were going to like it, but from the very first night it\u2019s been really fun and it\u2019s been a joy for us to do this deep dive into this material,\u201d Osborne said.<\/p>\n

The Dylan catalog is deeper than the ocean, of course, spanning six decades and 38 albums and the ever-expanding trove of his \u201cBootleg Series.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was definitely a difficult thing to choose from the hundreds and hundreds of great songs that Bob Dylan has,\u201d Osborne said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there\u2019s so much to choose from. On the other hand, how do you decide?\u201d<\/p>\n

After the residency, she got to work on what would become her \u201cSongs of Bob Dylan\u201d album, released in 2017.<\/p>\n

Throughout her long career, Osborne said, she\u2019s kept in the back of her mind the late 1950s run of records by jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald that each tackled the catalog of an iconic American songwriter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always thought this was a great idea and something that I would like to do with writers who I feel uniquely drawn to, who are from my era,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Osborne\u2019s Dylan record offers new spins on the classics and shines a light on some overlooked Dylan compositions.<\/p>\n

Her \u201cHighway 61 Revisited\u201d is a dark and ominous country song, her \u201cRainy Day Women #12 & 35\u201d is a slow and soulful blues. In \u201cMasters of War,\u201d Osborne puts her formidable voice up front, with a steady acoustic guitar in the background and a gradual build of piano.<\/p>\n

The enduring relevance and resonance of Dylan\u2019s early work continues to strike Osborne.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese things that might have been written about something that was happening in his youth are very relevant to what is going on in the world right now,\u201d Osborne said. \u201cIt\u2019s particularly genius in the way that he wrote them that they could be timeless in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

But along with those iconic early Dylan classics, the album spans five decades of the Dylan catalog and unearths some deep cuts like \u201cDark Eyes\u201d (off Dylan\u2019s largely forgotten 1985 album \u201cEmpire Burlesque\u201d) and \u201cTryin\u2019 to Get to Heaven\u201d (off the definitive late-career Dylan album \u201cTime Out of Mind\u201d from 1997) and \u201cHigh Water\u201d (from 2001\u2019s \u201cLove and Theft\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to put things on the record that people would know, but also to dig a little deeper to allow people to discover something they didn\u2019t already know,\u201d she said. \u201cWe really wanted people \u2014 even who are fans of Dylan \u2014 to find out something they didn\u2019t already know about him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Osborne admitted that even she didn\u2019t know \u201cDark Eyes\u201d until Patti Smith \u2014 who recorded a live duet version of it with Dylan \u2014 told her about it. Osborne also has widely expanded her Dylan repertoire as she\u2019s toured with the material over the past two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you\u2019re on the road and doing the shows night after night, you want to keep it fresh for yourself and for the audience,\u201d she explained. \u201cSo we put in some live-only bonus tracks and we are never really sure what those are going to be from night to night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dylan is a towering culture figure and Nobel laureate who also is, somehow, an unknown and seemingly unknowable cipher of a human being. He has worn so many masks, taken on so many personas, revealed so little about his personal life, written and recorded so many hundreds of songs that he is beyond comprehension.<\/p>\n

Though she\u2019s spent time with the man and has now spent years studying and performing his work, Osborne remains in the dark like the rest of us.<\/p>\n

When Osborne sang with the living members of the Grateful Dead for a stretch, beginning in 2003, they co-headlined a big summer tour with Dylan. They saw each other every day and sang together often onstage, but Dylan \u2014 true to form \u2014 managed to not quite be there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say he and I were hanging out a lot and that I got to know him as a person,\u201d she said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like we were sitting down and rapping about our childhood experiences or something. He was funny and nice and charming and all of that, but it was a work situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Osborne released her album of his songs, she didn\u2019t hear from Dylan directly but he did post a compliment on his Facebook page.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was surprised even to get that,\u201d Osborne said with a laugh. \u201cHe\u2019s got an awful lot on his plate and talking about someone else covering his work is not something that he has to do. So it was very generous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Osborne this spring has been finishing up a new album of original material. After her yearslong deep dive into Dylan\u2019s world, he naturally seeped into her songwriting.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very funny in this wry, droll kind of way,\u201d she observed. \u201cI\u2019ve tried to bring that out in this new record. \u2026 When you immerse yourself in this, it lets you be free in that way \u2014 and be humorous and real and bizarre.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joan Osborne photographed during a 1997 performance in Snowmass VIllage.Aspen Times file Joan Osborne felt Bob Dylan\u2019s presence before she ever saw him in person. In 1998, Osborne \u2014 hot off of her mega-hit \u201cOne of Us\u201d \u2014 was set to record a new duet of Dylan\u2019s \u201cChimes of Freedom,\u201d with Dylan himself, for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2443160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 22:56:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2443160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2443160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2443160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2443160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}