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Considering Bob Dylan, in the Berkshires

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  • Arlo Guthrie interviewed Nov. 1998 at The Guthrie Center

    by Dave Conlin Read; posted November, 1998
    [Ed. note: Mr. Guthrie's plans for doing business in downtown Pittsfield did not pan-out.]

    Arlo
    Read more …

  • Bob Dylan concert review – Pittsfield, MA August 26, 2006

    August 26, 2006 concert review by Dave Conlin Read

    Poster for the Bob Dylan concert -
    Wahconah Park, Pittsfield, MA,
    August 26,
    Read more …

  • Bob Dylan concert review – Saratoga, NY Aug. 17, 2008

    By Dave Conlin Read, in reference to Bob Dylan’s Aug. 17, 2008 performance at Saratoga, NY.

    Lawn gone wrong at SPAC

    Desolation
    Read more …

Bob Dylan in the Berkshires

By Dave | Published: January 30, 2010

By Dave Conlin Read; (article pre-dates Bob Dylan’s 2005 and 2006 Pittsfield concerts.)

Bob Dylan has given only two concerts in the Berkshires, both at Tanglewood (July 4, 1991 and August 4, 1997), but he has played here four times (that we know of), the other two being a mini-set as Joan Baez’s guest at the Pittsfield Boy’s Club on August 14, 1963 and, on November 7, 1975 at Mama Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge in Becket, when he played – in many senses of the word – all day long with the cast and crew of the Rolling Thunder Revue.

The performance with Joan Baez at the Boy’s Club came in the midst of a crucial time in the parturition of Bob Dylan, cultural icon:

  • May 27 – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (his second album) released, containing such masterpieces as:
    • “Blowin in the Wind,”
    • “Girl of the North Country,”
    • “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Allright,”
    • “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall;”
  • July 6 – Dylan performed at a Civil Rights Rally in Greenwood, MS (the movie “Don’t Look Back” includes his performance that day of “Only a Pawn in their Game”);
  • July 24, 25, 26 – he performed five times at the Newport Folk Festival;
  • first week of August – New York to begin recording The Time’s They Are A-Changing
  • August 28, 1963 – he sang 3 songs at the March on Washington, two with Joan Baez.

Joan Baez introduces Bob Dylan at Pittsfield Boy’s Club, August 14, 1963

Berkshire Music Barn 1963 program; compliments of Billy WeigandAfter writing that the capacity crowd received more than the price of their admission entitled them to when Baez brought on “folk singer and composer Bob Dylan, the hottest young man in the business…” Berkshire Eagle entertainment editor Milton R. Bass went on to write a succinct critique of Dylan’s performance that includes a sentence deserving of a place in the canon of Dylanology.

1963 Bob Dylan review by Milton Bass: “His voice is not a pretty one, his guitar playing is just plain old banging away, but there is an intensity about him, a dedication, that forces one’s attention where it belongs.”

The songs Dylan sang that night were “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” “Blowin in the Wind,” and “A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall.” Baez had earlier sung “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Allright” and “With God on Our Side.”

Rolling Thunder Revue visits Becket

Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Ramblin Jack Elliott at Mama Frasca's Dream Away LodgeDylan’s 1975 Berkshires visit came between gigs in Springfield, MA and Burlington, VT. (We’ve heard that North Adams State College declined an invitation to host a Rolling Thunder show; could that be true?) Berkshires resident Arlo Guthrie, who joined the Revue for the Springfield shows, told us in a 1998 interview how it came about: “I had been going to the Dream Away for years, I knew Mama Frasca real well – she was a terriffic, wonderful, crazy, wild woman. I really loved her and used to bring the kids up to her place every weekend….

“So after we did the Rolling Thunder Revue in Springfield (November 6, 1975), I tought it would be fun to take everybody up there. We came up with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Bobby Neuwirth and Ramblin Jack Elliott. They just loved it there; we were fooling around with Mama Frasca, and it became a part of the film, “Renaldo And Clara.”

“Live 1975″ and Mama Frasca

On p. 36 of the booklet that comes with Bob Dylan Live 1975, there is a photograph of Baez, Dylan, Guthrie, and Ramblin Jack Elliott at the Dream Away bar, and on the album, Baez introduces her duet with Dylan on “Mama, You Been On My Mind,” “We’d like to dedicate this song to a lady named Mama, who’s sitting in the front row – Here’s to you, Mama.” And, from the account of the Dream Away party told to us by a friend of Mama Frasca’s, you can add “Be Bop a Lula” to the list of songs sung by Dylan in the Berkshires.

Tanglewood ‘91 and ‘97

Bob Dylan in concert at Tanglewood, August 4, 1997The Tanglewood concerts of 1991 and 1997 were light years apart in Dylan’s performance and demeanor. Although he was uncharacteristically chatty during the first one, which set a Tanglewood attendance record of 20,516, he raced through an 18 song set in a manner that got the gig listed on Dylan Pool (defunct website) in response to the request, “What was your worst Bob Dylan concert?”

The 1997 concert was just his second after recovering from a near-fatal heart infection. He was his usual laconic self, nattily-clad in a shiny blue western suit, and did an abbreviated set of 13 songs, notable for an especially fine rendition of “Tangled Up in Blue,” and for the omission of “All Along the Watchtower,” which Dylan had sung at every concert since 1992.

The opening act that night was BR5-49, whose multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron is now a member of Dylan’s band. The June 23 Wahconah Park concert will be Willie Nelson’s second gig in the Berkshires; his first was Sept. 19, 1996, a brilliant 46 song performance in the courtyard at the just a-borning MASS MoCA in North Adams, produced by Mort Cooperman, an old Dylan hand from his days as proprietor of the Lone Star Cafe in NYC, as frequent a haunt of Dylan’s as he’s ever been known to have.

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Bob Dylan talks about Christmas in the Heart

By Dave | Published: November 26, 2009

Bob Dylan talks about Christmas in the Heart, in an exclusive interview with Bill Flanagan for Street News Service.

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Bob Dylan video

By Dave | Published: November 14, 2009

Here’s a clip from BobDylanTV’s Channel (that’s what they call it), from a Rolling Thunder Revue show at the Music Hall (now Wang Theatre) in Boston, Nov. 21, 1975, just a couple weeks after we saw the show in Springfield.

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Dave Van Ronk interview, Jan. 21, 1999

By Dave | Published: August 31, 2008

Jan. 21, 1999 interview by Dave Conlin Read

Dave Van Ronk listening to Garth Hudson in Albany, NY

Dave Van Ronk listening to Garth Hudson
at the Eighth Step Coffeehouse, Albany, NY

We spoke with Dave Van Ronk the day before he was to perform at the Eighth Step Coffeehouse in Albany, NY. After congratulating him on receiving ASCAP’S Lifetime Achievement Award, we mentioned that Ramblin’ Jack Elliott had been honored recently by the USofA. Typically, Dave was ready with an anecdote:

“Yeah, at the reception he tried to convince Clinton to sneak off and come with him to a Dylan concert. Bobby was in DC giving a concert that night, and Jack was trying to get Clinton to ditch his secret service and come with him to the concert.”

the importance of teaching to Van Ronk

You give the lie to the adage that “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” You’ve been a teacher your entire career; how has teaching affected your career as an artist?

“You can’t teach without learning. The first thing you have to do when you start teaching is to organize what you know. In the course of organizing what you know into a coherent body, you discover that you know alot more than you thought you thought you did.

“Also, you discover gaps and holes which you can set about filling. So, in systematizing what you’ve picked up here and there and in fragmented ways – incorporating it into a coherent whole – you learn a great deal.

“And students are a stimulus. I’ve had students sort of gang up on me, and get me to work out this or that or the other piece, pieces I wouldn’t have done. And in one or two cases, things have subsequently become mainstays of my repertoire.

“For example, the Entertainer – the classic rag, which I was just reviewing with a student this week. Much more than just a useful performance piece, as it turned out, it became a seminal piece in learning more and more about how to play guitar in drop-D-tuning.

“In terms of spinoffs, that led to possibly ten or fifteen different arrangements. And that was because 2 or 3 of my students wanted to learn how to play the piece. Initially, I didn’t want to work that out – it seemed to me like a great deal of work for a very, very small gain. I was wrong. Things like that are constantly happening.”

Dave Van Ronk moved from jazz to blues

You began your career as a jazz musician; how did your move to the folk scene come about?

“My committment to jazz also led, on the side, to listen to country blues. And since I was already playin the guitar – I had a guitar in my hand – I wanted to figure out how people like john Hurt and Lemon Jefferson did what they did. To begin with, it was a side-line. Most of what I was actively performing was working in the rhythm section of a traditional jazz band.”

“As the folk music revival gained momentum in the mid-50s, my emphasis gradually shifted, so that by 54-55 or 55-56, I was primarily working as a solo entertainer.”
Dave’s musical education

Would you call yourself self-taught?

“To a certain extent. I studied jazz guitar with a man named Jack Norton in Queens in the early 50s. I learned a great deal from him. Then in the mid-50s I met Rev. Gary Davis, although at that point I had learned to finger-pick, sort-of, with an assist from Tom Paley. So I could do some finger-picking already when I met Gary Davis, and I learned a great deal from him, too.”

His brilliant songwriting in addition to his great muicianship?

“Very much so.”

Cocaine Blues, Rev. Gary Davis, Jackson Browne

At a recent Tanglewood concert, Jackson Browne talked about Rev. Gary Davis.

“Jackson recorded Cocaine Blues and he thought it was mine when he learned it. Eight months after he recorded it, he came down to catch me at aclub in Los Angeles. He came back to the dressing room and he said, “You know, I recorded that song of your’s “Cocaine Blues,” and I’d like to know where do I send the royalties?”

“So I said, ‘What you do, is you send them to Rev. Gary Davis’ estate and you get out of here, unless you want to see a grown man cry.’”
advice to a young musician today

If you were to addressing the young up-and-coming singer/songwriter, What would you say to someone who wants to go on to have a 50 year career?

“The way you have a career is by doing it – you just have to keep on performing, any possible pretext. The main problem people have now is there are so many performers, and so few places to work it’s very hard to It takes a very long time for a performer to get enough stage experience to be knowledgeable about stagecraft.

“That’s the one thing you can’t practice at home; you can practice singing and you an practice the guitar all by yourself. But the only way you can practice stagecraft is on the stage witha n audience.

“It takes a long time the way things are set up currently for a young performer to get that experience. So the main thing that you have to do is to find every possible excuse to get on that stage.

Dave Van Ronk recommends the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music

What record would you recommend to someone wanting to learn folk music?

“The Harry Smith anthology, that’s where you start, there is no better collection of American traditional music anywhere. It cost a lot but there’s alot of music too – 80 or 90 cuts on that anthology. Familiarity with that will take you a long way.”

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Posted in Featured, Interviews | Tagged cocaine blues, dave van ronk, harry smith, jackson browne, ramblin jack elliott, rev. gary davis | Leave a comment

Arlo Guthrie interviewed Nov. 1998 at The Guthrie Center

By Dave | Published: August 31, 2008

by Dave Conlin Read; posted November, 1998
[Ed. note: Mr. Guthrie's plans for doing business in downtown Pittsfield did not pan-out.]

Arlo Guthrie, interviewed at The Guthrie Center, Housatonic, MA

Arlo Guthrie, interviewed at The Guthrie Center,
Housatonic, MA in Nov. 1998. Photo: Chris Perilli

Arlo Guthrie first came to the Berkshires in the late ’50s to attend the former Indian Hill camp in Strockbridge, where his mother was the dance teacher.

His Berkshire roots were further established while he was a student at The Stockbridge School and he became involved with the Berkshire Folk Music Society, then headed by the late Hank Grover, David’s father.

Guthrie recently bought the Kresge Building on North St. in Pittsfield. Besides moving Rising Son Records there, he is looking into the possibility of developing an entertainment center.

We visited with Arlo on November 16, 1998 at The Guthrie Center, in the former Episcopal church that his friend Alice Brock used to live in, and where much of “Alice’s Restaurant” was filmed.

“I’ve been trying to get something going in downtown Pittsfield for 25 years. I was interested in the old Palace Theater, or even the Capitol before they turned it into the Senior Center. None of that ever panned out because nobody had a clue as to the value of live entertainment.”

Relating the results of a recent study, commissioned by the city of Pittsfield, that stresses how important providing live entertainment is to the revitalization of downtown, Guthrie continued,

Arlo Guthrie interviewed Nov. 1998 at The Guthrie Center

Arlo Guthrie, Nov. 1998.
Photo: Chris Perilli

“We want to see if we can be a part of that process. We bought the building and we’re hoping that we can make a go of it. I want to develop a nightclub facility, maybe with a little food, but not a big-time restaurant. What I really know is not the restaurant business, it’s the nightclub/theater business.”

After talking about the various “cultural centers” and “tourist destinations” of Berkshires, Arlo continued,

“I see no reason why Pittsfield can’t become a part of all that, even add something to it and tie together all the different crowds. This is a beautiful part of the world, every part of it. We’ve been let down by the major industries. The only big industry that keeps growing is our cultural industry, so I’m anxious to see if we can all benefit from that.”

The legacy of The Music Inn figures prominently in Guthrie’s motivation to extend his commitment to the Berkshires. His father Woody played the very first show there and Arlo played the last, exactly 25 years to the day later.

“The thing we do in Pittsfield will be the closest that we can get to re-doing the kind of music that we had at The Music Inn. It’ll be a big enough club to bring in some of the same kinds of people – maybe the same people. With the help of the City of Pittsfield, I think we can make that happen. We also want a place for young people to go; we’re thinking of establishing a kind of folklore center there.”

“It’s not something I have to do business-wise; I’ve got enough going on to keep me busy for a long time. However, one of the things I’d like to do is spend less time on the road. I’m on the road ten months a year, and I miss the Berkshires. I love it here and I think that we have an obligation to try and retain the best part of who we are for future generations.”

Where did the name “Arlo” come from?

“When my mom was growing up, there was a series of children’s books, called “Arlo Books”, about a little Swiss kid named ‘Arlo’. They were in all the primary schools on the East coast, and she drew a picture for a class project of this kid. And my mom was one of these packrats who saved everything – every ticket stub of every place she had ever been to. She was incredibly organized.

“While she was pregnant with me, walking down the beach one day with my dad, she suddenly realized that the picture she had drawn of this kid ‘Arlo’, in the fifth or sixth grade, looked exactly like my father. He was wearing the same clothes, the same kind of striped shirt, walking on the same kind of beach. And so she went back and found this old picture, and sure enough, she had drawn my dad.

“So they decided that that was an auspicious sign, and that they were going to name me after the kid. But they didn’t know if I would go for a name as awkward as that, so they gave me the middle name ‘Davy’. So I was named after Davy Crockett. She figured he was a popular figure, sort of a rugged, mountain guy, and if I didn’t like the name ‘Arlo’ – which, she wasn’t sure what that was gonna do to me – that I could always call myself ‘Davy’. So I was named ‘Arlo Davy Guthrie.’

Mama Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge

“I had been going to the Dream Away for years, I knew Mama Frasca real well – she was a terriffic, wonderful, crazy, wild woman. I really loved her and used to bring the kids up to her place every weekend. I actually did some recording with her at the old Shaggy Dog studio in Stockbridge. We did a great record there – all these great songs with this old gal. She made a single, and one song was called something like, “God and Mama”.

“So after we did the Rolling Thunder Revue in Springfield (November 6, 1975), I tought it would be fun to take everybody up there. We came up with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Bobby Neuwirth and Ramblin Jack Elliott. They just loved it there; we were fooling around with Mama Frasca, and it became a part of the film, “Renaldo And Clara”. (For details of the party: Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue party at Mama Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge

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Posted in Featured, Interviews | Tagged arlo guthrie, Featured, mama frasca, pittsfield, rolling thunder revue, woody guthrie | Leave a comment
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