The Nitty Gritty Filth Band is a quintessential American group. Fashioned in 1966 in Lengthy Seashore, Calif., the country-rock band — equally as influential in folk-rock’s transition to country-rock because the Byrds — has launched two dozen studio albums and collaborated with a unending listing of greats throughout its lengthy profession. They’re now tackling one other epitome of American music: Bob Dylan’s catalog. The Nitty Gritty Filth Band’s twenty fourth LP, Dirt Does Dylan, which options 10 Dylan covers, is out as we speak.
It has been greater than a decade for the reason that Nitty Gritty Filth Band’s final album, 2009’s Pace of Life, however when the thought of a single-sourced LP got here up, Dylan appeared like an apparent selection. “He is been in our collective DNA for thus lengthy,” singer, guitarist and founding member Jeff Hanna tells UCR. He can nonetheless vividly recall the primary time he noticed Dylan carry out at Woodrow Wilson Excessive Faculty in Lengthy Seashore on Dec. 5, 1964.
“I took my highschool girlfriend and a few my buddies. We had been simply enthralled,” Hanna remembers. It was just some months earlier than Dylan famously went electrical. “It was simply him and a Gibson guitar and a harmonica in a rack round his neck, all by himself on that stage. It was phenomenal, actually transcendent.”
Hanna had already been hooked on Dylan for 2 years by that time, having purchased Dylan’s eponymous 1962 debut. He and the opposite early members of the Nitty Gritty Filth Band — Bruce Kunkel, Ralph Barr, Les Thompson, Jimmie Fadden and, at one level, Jackson Browne — had all been fascinated with folks music. Hanna spent hours in his bed room studying the guitar half to 1963’s “Do not Suppose Twice, It is All Proper,” which exhibits up on Filth Does Dylan. “It was type of a proper of passage amongst me and my pals to be taught that little sample that he performs,” says Hanna.
“Do not Suppose Twice, It is All Proper” was an apparent selection for Filth Does Dylan, however narrowing down the listing to only 10 songs was a troublesome course of, Hanna admits. Their first flip at trimming acquired the ultimate to 80 songs, which had been then whittled all the way down to 40 by the point the band arrived on the studio. From there, they started taking part in by way of the songs to see which labored and which did not.
“The stuff that we might play and sing with authority is what sort of ended up there,” Hanna says.
Watch the Nitty Gritty Filth Band’s Video for ‘Nation Pie’
The ultimate monitor itemizing ended up together with songs from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), The Instances They Are a-Changin’ (1964), Bringing It All Again Residence (1965), Freeway 61 Revisited (1965), Nashville Skyline (1969), Self Portrait (1970) and Planet Waves (1974), plus a model of “I Shall Be Launched.” (A whole monitor itemizing will be seen under.)
By means of all of it, Hanna admits, he did his greatest to not sing within the model of Dylan, although it often got here by way of anyway. “I slipped in a pair elements,” he says. “And I am not going to inform you the place.”
Watch the Nitty Gritty Filth Band Carry out ‘I Shall Be Launched’ With Larkin Poe
There was loads of Dylan to go round, so Hanna known as up some pals to contribute to the album, together with Jason Isbell, Rosanne Money, Steve Earle, Larkin Poe and the Conflict and Treaty, who seem on a rendition of “The Instances They Are a-Changin,'” which was launched as a charity single for Feeding America.
There’s additionally a canopy of “Endlessly Younger,” a track Dylan wrote with considered one of his sons in thoughts. For the Nitty Gritty Filth Band’s model, Hanna traded vocal strains along with his son, Jaime Hanna, who joined the band in 2018. However, as Dylan typically does along with his work, the band reinterprets “Endlessly Younger.” As a substitute of the same old ballad kind wherein the track is usually carried out, Hanna took inspiration from the second model Dylan included on Planet Waves – a way more up-tempo recording.
“Then we acquired within the studio and we had been all speaking about it, and everyone mentioned, ‘That is actually nice, however he did not do the bridge. He did not do the chorus. He did it on the ballad, however he did not do it on the [up-]tempo model,” Hanna remembers. So, they discovered how you can incorporate the bridge, “rearranged it, made it match our tackle it.”
Watch the Nitty Gritty Filth Band’s Music Video for ‘Endlessly Younger’
Hanna met with Dylan over time however prefers to focus on the physique of labor. There’s an excessive amount of thriller in Dylan the person, he says. “He is acquired that Charlie Chaplin impish grin, you recognize?” Hanna says. “He is acquired that court docket jester factor, and he is by no means gonna let that [go.]”
The Nitty Gritty Band at the moment are on the street performing songs from Filth Does Dylan, together with lots of their favorites from the previous many years. For Hanna, the album has been a chance to return full circle with a lot of the music that formed his early life. Nevertheless it’s additionally proof that Dylan’s music is simply as rousing and efficient as we speak because it was six many years in the past, he says.
“He covers a lot floor,” Hanna notes. “Do I believe he knew what he was speaking about or knew that it will have the impression 60 years later, nearly, when he wrote “The Instances They Are a-Altering’? I do not assume so. It is the unintentional genius, I believe, of his work, that is so profound. … I am grateful for each word and each phrase.”
Allison Rapp, UCR
The Nitty Gritty Filth Band, ‘Filth Does Dylan’ Monitor Itemizing
1. “Tonight I will Be Staying Right here With You”
2. “Lady From the North Nation”
3. “It Takes a Lot to Chortle, It Takes a Practice to Cry”
4. “Nation Pie”
5. “I Shall Be Launched” (feat. Larkin Poe)
6. “She Belongs to Me”
7. “Endlessly Younger”
8. “The Instances They Are a-Changin'” (feat. Rosanne Money, Steve Earle, Jason Isbell and The Conflict and Treaty)
9. “Do not Suppose Twice, It is All Proper”
10. “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)”
Bob Dylan Albums Ranked
Not so surprisingly, Bob Dylan’s recording profession has a lot of ups and downs. That is certain to occur whenever you stick round for greater than 50 years and launch three dozen albums throughout that point.
