Tom Dunne's Music & Me: Blonde on the Tracks proves it is possible to do decent Dylan covers
Emma Swift is winning widespread acclaim for her album of Bob Dylan tracks.
Emma Swift’s Blonde on the Tracks, her album of eight exquisitely chosen and performed Bob Dylan covers is an album for our times.
It has origins in the pandemic and although not perhaps a vaccine against it, it will sure help until one gets here. It’s a joy from beginning to end and a timely reminder, the second of the year, of the enchanting power of Dylan’s songs.
It probably won’t surprise you to know that the list of artists that have covered Dylan runs to 69 pages in Wiki and is yet glaringly incomplete. Some, like Joan Baez, The Byrds and Jimi Hendrix have done well with his songs. Others, like (gulp!) Duran Duran, Golden Earring and (sigh!) Ronan Keating not quite so. Emma is not yet on the list, which is odd, because as of now, she should own it.
Dylan songs appear simple, at least to play, but are deceptively difficult to pull off. To sing ‘With her fog, her amphetamine and her pearls,’ and not look like an absolute plonker is no easy task. It’s just “three chords, a guitar and the truth,” but the truth is the hard part.
This album started life in 2017. Emma, an Australian singer songwriter, had moved to Nashville to pursue her career.
But then the songs stopped coming and she was enduring the type of depression that will stop you getting of bed. She turned to Bob’s music and recorded six of his songs. But then her own creative juices returned and she put the project aside.
It might have stayed there had the pandemic not hit. Emma went into lockdown, condemned like us all to follow the news and wonder what on earth was happening.
Then, in our hour of darkness, Dylan unexpectedly released two songs in quick succession. In Dublin, it was 'Murder Most Foul' that hit me. In Nashville, for Emma, it was 'I Contain Multitudes'.
She finds it hard to describe the impact it made on her. She listened to it over and over and recorded her own version almost immediately.
Once it was done she says she found herself possessed with the kind of urgency to finish the album that she had generally only ever exhibited previously when a barman shouted ‘last orders'.
It became a labour of love. A ‘proper’ release was planned, on vinyl, CD and Bandcamp. A most excellent video was made for 'Multitudes', stunning art work created and a release date set. It has become a complete cottage industry. If you buy the album, it will be Emma herself posting it to you.
'Queen Jane Approximately', from Dylan’s 1965 Highway 61 Revisited was the first single. I was once again staring at the radio. I saw that the album would have two tracks from Blonde on Blonde and two tracks from Blood on the Tracks.
It would also have all 12 minutes of 'Sad Eyed Lady'. It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
So why does this work when so many others have failed? Reviewers have mentioned the sparse and delicate instrumentation, Emma’s beautiful voice, the pitch perfect production from Patrick Sansone from Wilco.
All of this is true, but if tasteful production and a good voice was all it took to make a great Dylan covers album, our inboxes would be jammed with them.
There is something more here. I think it is no coincidence that the two times Emma has been moved to record the songs of Bob Dylan have been times of tumult and disharmony in her life.
In 2017 she was depressed and turned to Bob’s music. In 2020 she was, like us all, a little bewildered and adrift when she turned to him again.
There was something inside her that drew her to these songs, and something in them that resonated with her. Some need of hers was met in those lyrics and this is why they fall so lightly from her tongue, unselfconscious, unadorned and true.
I have always used the analogy of a great song being like a suit of clothes. Some people will try on the suit and just not be able to carry it off.
It will have looked better on the owner. Others will put it on and make it their own, some to the point where you can’t imagine it now on anybody else.
No one will ever do Bob better than Bob, but Emma, honestly, that suit looks great on you.
