Together Through Life

The period since Time Out Of Mind has been particularly fertile for Bob Dylan's songwriting particularly when compared to the period between Infidels and Oh Mercy. In that period, as he wrote in Chronicles, he "felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck." His own songs had become strangers to him, there was a hollow singing in his heart and he couldn't wait to retire and fold the tent.

What changed him was a moment of revelation that came during a concert in Locarno, Switzerland as he stepped up to the mic, panicked and felt unable to sing. He has said that "it was almost like I heard a voice ... I'm determined to stand, whether God will deliver me or not." That's when he knew, as Larry Sloman writes in the Tell Tale Signs booklet, that he had to "go out and keep playing those songs."

Those songs are the old, traditional songs of Americana: songs that he sang on his first album; songs that he sang on the two solo acoustic cover records that he recorded in 1992 and 1993; songs that he plays thematically on his successful radio show. With the publication of his memoirs and his radio show, there has been a renewed reflection on his own past and his own influences; one that seems to have released a stream of inspiration that is continued on his new album Together Through Life.

In many ways, this stream of inspiration has involved reworking and rearticulating the classic Dylan song, 'Blind Willie McTell', that was left off Infidels. Predominantly blues-based and extending the blues/folk metaphor of the drifter, Together Through Life finds Dylan's characters rambling through apocalyptic landscapes, experiencing life's hardness, grasping and eulogising love with a wry and sardonic irony wherever they can find it before the change that death will bring.

Dylan has said that:

"Those old songs are my lexicon and my prayer book. You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. Hank Williams singing 'I Saw The Light' or all the Luke The Drifter songs. That would be pretty close to my religion. The rabbis, priests, and ministers all do very well. But my belief system is more rugged and comes more from out of the old spiritual songs than from any of the established religious attempts at overcoming the devil."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bob Dylan - Beyond Here Lies Nothin'.