Monday, December 20, 2010

From a Buick 6

A happy Monday to you all.  The Monday Morning Blues continues today with the third selection in our Bob Dylan December.

Today, I’m posting a cover of “From a Buick 6,” again from the great Highway 61 Revisited album.  This song certainly has appeal to a blues musician—I think it’s one of Dylan’s most succesful transformations of the old time blues feel into an updated lyrical presentation & (in his case) electric sound.  Because I wanted a bit of that raw sound in my version, I used the Regal resonator guitar—the metal body can be easily coaxed into a natural distortion that seems just the ticket for this song.  The guitar is tuned to drop D—for those non-guitarists out there, that means the lowest sounding string is tuned down to a D rather than an E as in in standard tuning.  The guitar is capoed, so the actual key is Eb.

Please check in on Friday, Christmas Eve, for a seasonal tune from the Alice in Wonder Band archives.  & next Monday will wrap up our Dylan feature!

Hope you enjoy it!

8 comments:

  1. Wow! You give it a spooky, Delta blues feel. Good work, John!

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  2. Hi Roy: Thanks! It seems to fit--glad you liked it.

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  3. Love IT!
    If you have time take a listen to 'Monday Morning Coffee" on my site.
    http://shearsshorts.blogspot.com/
    The music is on the right side of the page. They're all originals by me, but I think you'd dig Monday Morning Coffee....

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  4. Spooky, indeed! Because Dylan rarely moves very far from his progenitors, his songs will take arrangements that move them back towards their roots. Sounding good here, John!

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  5. The mysterious 'n. smith' is me with a too-quick trigger finger!

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  6. Hi Kevin: Sounds great! I'll definitely be checking this out. & glad you liked the tune.

    Hi Dick (AKA n smith!): Yes, Dylan at his best is about as "roots" as a modern white musician gets. Glad you liked it.

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  7. Nice pick. I'm a die-hard Dylan fan, and I love the way you've transformed this song (which I always thought of as satirical) into a very haunting, understated and traditional delta bluesy acoustic take. Great line I'd forgotten: "--need a steam shovel mama to keep away the dead..."

    I actually just got through linking a 1978 Dylan tune today at my place...great minds etc.

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  8. Hi Hedwitch: The song as Dylan does it has a satirical edge, yes--satire seems to underlie pretty much all of Highway 61 Revisited. Glad you liked this version! I'll swing by to hear your "Street Legal" cut soon--I remember when that album came out.

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