I came to Matthew Ryan a little later than most people I know. The first song of Matthew's I heard was "The World is on Fire" from the album East Autumn Grin. The song was on a mix tape from a friend sandwiched between The Clash ("Somebody Got Murdered") and Leonard Cohen ("Chelsea Hotel #2"). Knowing Matthew the way I do now, I'm not sure he didn't somehow engineer that himself. Matthew Ryan is one of the most gifted, original and inspiring songwriters I'm aware of, and a listen to any of his records will yield that conclusion but he has done my favorite work of his career within the last five years, between the soaring, anthemic beauty of Vs. the Silver State and the jagged, pulsating brilliance of From a Late Night High Rise and Dear Lover. His voice is not just an instrument, it's a weapon. Coincidentally, Matthew covered "Somebody Got Murdered" a few years back for an album called The Sandinista Project, and here we are, talking about Leonard Cohen. Like I said, I'm not so sure he didn't somehow mastermind that mix tape placement.

Do you remember what it was that drew you initially to Cohen? Was it early on or did you find him by way of other artists, moving backwards through influences?

I remember hearing "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye." The girl I was with at the time had blonde hair. I was 16. The song humbled me, almost put romance in perspective. But you know nothing can stop you from digging in, investing in that unwritten future. But that song hit me hard. Made me think of my mom and dad, as well. It led me down the path with Cohen. Once a writer does that for you, gratitude isn't enough of a word. It just kept going from there. Cohen really is the only songwriter that matters in my opinion. The others are good, but Cohen is great. How about you?

I found him through Dylan. I heard a bootleg of Dylan covering "Hallelujah" from a tour he did in 1988, I think, and that was my first exposure to that song, and to Cohen. I was probably 15. It was right around that time that Dylan did Unplugged and had a sort of resurgence. Of course, over the next four or five years, I heard every singer in the world cover "Hallelujah," but it was one of those hair-stands-on-end songs. I went backwards from there, and found Songs of Love and Hate, and "Famous Blue Raincoat" stood me straight up, y'know? "It's four in the morning, the end of December." Oh, okay. Not ten words in and there's a whole world in your head already.

Maybe that's what sets him apart for me. What is it for you about Cohen that sets him apart?

Ya know, these days artifice is status quo. Arrogance and posturing are so much the main dish. Cohen is perfect humility. He's confident yet humble; in complete service to his art, his expression. This kind of commitment isn't something you happen upon. It's something that is worked towards. And that's another thing, his pleasure in the work. The follow through, the often perfect rhyme schemes and balance. And all of this, achieving almost natural beauty -- like high cliffs with softly gutting landings and clarity. "Famous Blue Raincoat" is a perfect example of his gifts. It's calm in the massacre of pretense, and somehow becomes heroic in its ability to express gratitude. Some may think it's a jab when he says, "thanks for the trouble you took from her eye, I thought it was there for good; so I never tried." I always believed him. Cohen taught me that there is no ownership of a woman or her heart. Not to say there isn't jealousy or pain in losing, but that there's also beauty and revelation. He's a generous writer.

My favorite couplet in the song, and maybe my favorite couplet of Cohen's, is: "you treated my woman to a flake of your life / and when she came back she was nobody's wife." That's the whole song distilled to two lines, how little was given and how much was taken from it. I remember reading an interview (from 1975, I think) where Cohen said the raincoat in question was actually his, a Burberry coat he had loved. Clearly he's not writing directly to himself but that was really representative to me of the way he constructs characters and narratives, and how his writing remains so true, even when the details are fudged, or amalgamated. There has to be some level on which he's writing to himself here, no?

Ya know, I think that's often the case that writers include themselves in the tapestry (for lack of a better word) of character pieces. It seems only natural and possibly even more honest. I mean, it's a full disclosure to the tenth degree. "Famous Blue Raincoat" is a masterpiece, an absolute necessary verse in the cannon that explores the distance and struggle between men and women. It just has a physicality about it; it feels lack that room on that night after revelation and medicine. And that directs me to another aspect of it: the performance is perfect. Cohen is one of my favorite singers, he's not an actor, he's a prop of sorts. It's almost like he exists only to support the words and the mood.

Yeah, he's almost a conduit, you know what I mean? Like, of course this is the voice that delivers these words. No other voice could do them justice. I think of Waits as one of the great "actors," and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. You always get the sense that Waits is making his voice a part of the song - an instrument - whereas Cohen is conveying something. I don't know that one is "better" than the other, I guess it depends on what you're listening for.

You're right on about Waits. He's deserves an Oscar. I've always felt it was through his characters that he found and built upon that language. What started out as a curiosity turned into a brave path through poetry, jazz, romance, humor, dogma, bravado and strange posture.

Do you think Cohen poops?

In ways you and I cannot even fathom.

***

Kasey Anderson is a songwriter, singer, dog owner and bacon enthusiast from Portland, Oregon. His three albums, Dead Roses (2004), The Reckoning (2007), and Nowhere Nights (2010) have earned plenty of praise from critics (No Depression, USA Today, The Onion) but, unfortunately, have not as yet yielded the Swedish Fish endorsement Anderson so badly desires. If you'd like to have Kasey Anderson sing, play harmonica and strum a guitar at you, you'll find him on tour all spring and summer (dates and info available at www.kaseyanderson.com), or if you'd simply like to read on as Anderson discusses various songs with other artists, writers, friends and cohorts, you're in the right place.

I started this column two years ago with the intention of interviewing fellow musicians, actors, comics, friends, and enemies (which would be difficult as I have none – ask around, that’s a science fact) about the songs that matter most to them. Unfortunately, after a few installments, and for any number of reasons, everything fell by the wayside.

With Blurt’s move, we figured now might be a good time to dust this thing off and see what we can do with it.

Here goes.

Kasey Anderson

Portland, Oregon

April 4, 2012

Yes, Dave Holmes was on MTV. He "lost" the Wanna Be a VJ contest to Jesse Camp in 1998, but was subsequently hired by MTV anyway because somebody had the good sense to realize that, while Jesse's batshit persona was charmingly annoying, Dave Holmes actually knew a good deal about music. Holmes probably could have worked for MTV in some fashion forever (God knows many have tried), but moved on to a variety of gigs, including but not limited to appearances on Reno 911, Best Week Ever, and FX's DVD on TV. While, for better or worse, Camp has been written off as a disposable product of the ‘90's, Holmes has remained a relevant, intelligent, and charming Pop Culture commentator, humorist and actor, finding a new generation of fans via Twitter (Twitter.com/daveholmes) and Tumblr (daveholmes.tumblr.com).

The process of narrowing down one song to discuss with Holmes was arduous as there is an enormous amount of crossover between our respective record collections, but the song that kept coming up was "Stuck Between Stations," from the Hold Steady's Boys & Girls in America record. Seeing as how a new Hold Steady record is on its way, that seemed like an appropriate enough choice.

Kasey Anderson:  Do you remember the first time you heard "Stuck Between Stations?" Did it make an immediate impact or was it a song that gradually worked its way into your life until it had burrowed in?

Dave Holmes:  Boys & Girls In America was one of the first albums I downloaded right at the stroke of 9pm Pacific time the night before its release. I was a big fan of Separation Sunday, I had seen them live a couple of times, and I was teenagery in my anticipation for the new one. And I think I listened to "Stuck Between Stations" 15 times before I moved forward. In fact, according to my iTunes, it is the most-played song in my library. I probably listen to it most while running; when I was training for the NYC Marathon, I put it on my "training playlist," timed for the exact moment at 13 miles when I become delirious.

KA:  I love and hate that "downloaded at the stroke of 9pm Pacific time" has replaced "picked up at the stroke of midnight at [local record store]." What is it that the tune would do for you at the 13 mile mark? Restore sanity or make delirium more tolerable? It's such a frantic song, lyrically and musically, that it could really go either way, but "soothing" is certainly not the first word that springs to mind when I think about the Hold Steady.

DH:  Thirteen miles is when my energy really starts to flag, and a song like "Stuck Between Stations" just picks me back up. Plus the endorphins make it easier to imagine myself performing the song in a packed and rowdy 3-to-5,000-seat theater. (Anything larger diminishes the intimacy I like in my imaginary concerts.)

KA:  Who is your backing band?

DH:  California Dreams, obviously. No. It's an ever-changing assortment of old friends who used to want to be in a band but are now bankers. There's something really exciting about this wave of bands made up of regular working guys in their 30s (The Hold Steady, Wormburner, Action Toolbelt). I imagine this is what black teenagers felt like when Grandmaster Flash et al came out.

KA:  I guess the first and most obvious question about the song itself is, do you think that Sal Paradise was right? Do boys and girls in America have such a sad time together?

DH:  Boys and girls in America do indeed have such a sad time together, and boys and boys and girls and girls don't fare much better. (If I ever do a one-man show, I'll call it "Boys & Boys In America," so let's all hope I never do a one-man show.) The active ingredient in the sadness is revealed a couple of seconds later, in one of the most succinct and devastating lines ever: "Crushing one another with colossal expectations." Now there's a line I could have stood to hear in my early 20s.

KA:  Ditto. And I could probably stand to hear the line occasionally now, though I've crossed the threshold into my 30's. So, is this a cautionary tale to you, or is Finn saying, "this is something we all go through because it's something we all HAVE to go through?" Say you had heard the line in your early 20's, would it still have hit home and, if so, would it have been advantageous to avoid some of that sadness and disappointment?

DH:  I think I went into relationships expecting these poor gentlemen to just make everything right for me. I think if I'd heard this line at age 23, I might have realized I needed to do a certain degree of that work myself. Actually, no- I still would have been an idiot. But the lesson got learned nonetheless.

KA:  The thing I like about Finn's writing in this song in particular is that there's a sort of fatalism to it without being especially pessimistic. There's a push and a pull. "There was that night we thought John Berryman could fly / but he didn't, so he died." In one couplet he sort of sums up the grand delusions of youth and art and contrasts them with the reality of life and death. If I were in my early 20's and heard that song, it would have sent me spiraling into a month-long depression. But hearing it at 26 or 27, it just sort of hung there and reminded me of a time when I thought John Berryman could fly - when hero worship and ambition were boundless. Do you think Finn is too fatalistic or is he just being a realist?

DH:  There's a definite undercurrent of disappointment running through this song, a sense that the things you want in your youth (fame, love, booze) can't sustain you forever. For me, the key line is "He was drunk and exhausted and he was critically acclaimed and respected." It's not but, it's and, which suggests that acclaim and respect are injuries. That line blows my mind.

KA:  That, to me, is what makes a great line great. The difference between "and" and "but." Do you agree with Finn's assessment of acclaim and respect, at least in that context? Are they, to some degree, albatrosses that lead to a compounding, albeit different, set of colossal expectations?

DH:  Acclaim and respect can make a man think he's getting called up to the majors, where everything is going to be easier and better and shinier, but everyone everywhere is confused and frightened. 

Plus, recognition can insulate a person from actual human connection. Once you're published- or put on TV or played through stereo speakers or whatever- suddenly there's a character out there with your name who looks and sounds like you, but isn't exactly you. Sometimes you get confused as to which one you're supposed to be, sometimes people are attracted to the public, published you who doesn't really exist. Relationships get crowded and confusing and become critical injuries for poets and sensitive types like John Berryman. (Some just become their fake selves, and you can see examples of this kind of soul death on reality TV literally all day long.)

KA:  This is something Springsteen has addressed a couple of times, mentioning that the Bruce Springsteen wouldn't allow Bruce Springsteen to visit strip clubs, which, evidently, is something Bruce Springsteen liked to do on occasion. Because of that rift between public and private personae, when private Bruce Springsteen acted out in defiance of the Bruce Springsteen, private Bruce tended to go overboard in his misbehavior. Or so the story goes. The thing is, at some point, Craig Finn became the Craig Finn, right? I'm curious as to how he reconciles those colossal expectations he is now saddled with. Have you ever had instance where you caught private Dave Holmes behaving in a way the Dave Holmes wouldn't approve of, or vice versa?

DH:  A good friend of mine met Craig Finn recently, and went into insta-gush mode, as would I. As the story goes, Craig waved it off graciously and asked my friend about his band, and they had a nice, long conversation. So it seems like Craig's got his head on straight, which is what happens when you get recognized a bit later in life. Of course, this tracks perfectly with the the Craig Finn in my mind. It's a hall of mirrors. 

My career didn't pick up until I was pushing 30 either, so I haven't really had to wonder who the real me is. Sometimes if I'm working on a live shoot for a long time, I find it hard to switch off the quip machine, but that's just a mild annoyance for my boyfriend.

KA:  From a purely musical standpoint, the song is very cinematic and sweeping - I suppose this is why the default comparison is the E Street Band. For me, that makes as big an impact as Finn's lyrics. From note one, this song is huge. If it had just been Craig Finn reciting lines over somebody fingerpicking an acoustic guitar, would the impact have been the same for you?

DH:  Yeah, I'm not interested in hearing a stripped-down version of this song. The driving-ness of the song is a perfect counterpoint to the weariness of the lyrics. To me, it says, "No, things don't work out the way you want them to, but you can still go on joyfully." Life is long and weird and sometimes really sad, but we're all in it together. That's kind of what Hold Steady shows are all about, and that's why I see them every chance I get.

I am fucking crazy about the Hold Steady.

So here's the disappointment that this song reminds me of: In 1989, I graduated high school and had myself narrowed down to two colleges: Boston College, which I had gotten into, and Holy Cross, which wait-listed me. Because they didn't like me as much, I decided I had to go to HC. (This pattern would repeat throughout the next 21 years.) I got into Holy Cross in August, and spent the next four (and a half) years adrift in a sea of boozy self-hatred in a college full of sportsy lawyery New Englanders. Had I gone to Boston College- had I just known myself a tiny bit better- Craig Finn would have been in my class. How we would have gotten each other back then! The late-night conversations about music! Regrets, I've had a few.

Kasey Anderson is a songwriter, singer, dog owner and bacon enthusiast from Portland, Oregon. His three albums, Dead Roses (2004), The Reckoning (2007), and Nowhere Nights (2010) have earned plenty of praise from critics (No Depression, USA Today, The Onion) but, unfortunately, have not as yet yielded the Swedish Fish endorsement Anderson so badly desires. If you’d like to have Kasey Anderson sing, play harmonica and strum a guitar at you, you’ll find him on tour all spring and summer (dates and info available at www.kaseyanderson.com), or if you’d simply like to read on as Anderson discusses various songs with other artists, writers, friends and cohorts, you’re in the right place.

By now, you've heard any number of people fawn over Visqueen's phenomenal album, Message to Garcia. Perhaps you heard the folks over at NPR rave about the record, or maybe you read a reviewer somewhere falling all over him-or-herself to heap praise upon Rachel Flotard and company's collection of songs paying homage to her late father. If you're lucky, you caught one of Visqueen's blistering, visceral sets somewhere out there in wherever it is you are. At any rate, you're aware of just how good Rachel Flotard and her band are.

I first saw Visqueen five-ish years ago at the 3B in Bellingham, Washington. Kim Warnick, who is no longer with the band, was on bass, which delighted the hell out of me as I was a massive Fastbacks fan. But then, as now, it was Flotard's songs that caught, and kept, my attention. Rachel Flotard is one of the best writers in Rock ‘N' Roll and, if you're not already aware of that, you ought to be.

In between gushing emails from me about how much I dig her band, Rachel and I talked a bit about the Beastie Boys. Specifically, Licensed to Ill and, more specifically, "She's Crafty."

You performed the tune at a talent show, right? What were the other contenders and how'd you narrow it down?

In high school, my friend Janine and I had to pick a song for our freshman chorus final.
We thought we were real wise guys and busted "She's Crafty" instead of some "Wind Beneath My Wings" action.

Keep in mind, this is 1986. And I almost had the Licensed to Ill plane tattooed on my face. Every 15-year-old in suburban New Jersey was singing "The New Style" and "No Sleep "Till Brooklyn." They were just skaters across the bridge from us having parties and throwing pies. For me It was as if Def Jam threw a huge pie on our entire high school. We had our moms packing our lunches and taking away our best porno mags.

We almost did "Hold It Now, Hit It," but someone got high and lost the coach whistle. What a bunch of A-holes. I can recite every word of that album. Today, probably. It's hardwired. I'm glad.

I feel like Licensed to Ill, more than any other Beasties record, is so firmly entrenched in the East Coast. Am I way off?
 

Licensed To Ill, to me, is the silhouette of the tri-state area.

It's like a map of the east in my head. But then so is Paul's Boutique. The coolest thing about those albums, in retrospect, and maybe because I was 17 or so, was that they became a language. If the person next to you lost their mind when "Shake Your Rump" came on, you were friends. That's it.

I loved the super-flyness of it. It's "Johnny Ryall"... The Beasties have everything. They are masters at what they do, and their discography twenty years later feels as familiar as penciled-up kitchen wall growth chart at your parents' house. For those of us at a certain age, they're a lucky Polaroid.

Why didn't the Beastie Boys get written off as sophomoric white boy rap? I don't think about Licensed to Ill that way, but maybe that's just retrospect and knowing that Paul's Boutique was next. For you, at the time, what made them more than just a punchline?

The whole thing was different. It was a movement. Even though it was ‘86, and they had a frat following and it was a little too "Girls," and MTV date-rapey, there was something going on that was not sophomoric white boy rap in any way. The effing sampling alone made the whole world split open. Rock and rap fused.

They were on tour with Public Enemy when I saw them. It was my first ever concert, I was scared shitless and had the best time.

Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ. Their stage prop was a giant 50-foot penis that came up from the stage floor. The hardcore band Underdog opened. Effing Joey Ramone walked out at one point. I said, "Who the hell is that? He's tall." At 15, I knew this was a force. I went to see them at MSG a few years later with RUN DMC on the Together Forever tour. Even thinking about that arena while I type this gives me a contact high. It was out of control amazing.

The Beastie Boys seem like such amazing people now. Fathers, brothers. I think that record is their freshman year, as it was mine. And they grew up. And rightly went all Tibet on their asses. I love them so much.

Kasey Anderson is a songwriter, singer, dog owner and bacon enthusiast from Portland, Oregon. His three albums, Dead Roses (2004), The Reckoning (2007), and Nowhere Nights (2010) have earned plenty of praise from critics (No Depression, USA Today, The Onion) but, unfortunately, have not as yet yielded the Swedish Fish endorsement Anderson so badly desires. If you’d like to have Kasey Anderson sing, play harmonica and strum a guitar at you, you’ll find him on tour all spring and summer (dates and info available at www.kaseyanderson.com), or if you’d simply like to read on as Anderson discusses various songs with other artists, writers, friends and cohorts, you’re in the right place.

Marc Maron is a lot of things but, above all else, he is a stand up comic. If you've seen Maron in films, on television, or on stage, you know he can act, but Maron is not an actor; if you've read his memoir, The Jerusalem Syndrome, you know that Maron is a hell of a writer, but he's not an author; and if you heard his voice on Air America or, more recently, on his revered podcast, WTF (which Ira Glass referred to as "the New York Times of comedy podcasts"), then you know Maron is an eloquent and adept interviewer and storyteller, but he's no "on-air personality." Marc Maron is an immensely intelligent an gifted performer and writer, but above all else, Marc Maron is a stand up comic, and Marc Maron is as good at being a stand up comic as you or I could ever hope to be at whatever we choose to do (or whatever chooses us, or whatever).

If you're not familiar with Maron's work, he tells a story that sums it up pretty well:

"Recently a young woman who had just seen me came out on to the street, came up to me, excited, and said, ‘You were really great. You're like Woody Allen.' Of course, I found a way to make that a negative and said, ‘Really, I think I'm a little angrier than Woody Allen.' In response she said, ‘You're like an Iggy Pop-Woody Allen.'"

It's an honor and a great pleasure to start this column back up again by talking to Marc Maron about the Stones and, more specifically, "It's Only Rock and Roll."

"It's Only Rock and Roll" is a really interesting choice. It's maybe not as iconic a Stones tune as "Satisfaction" or "Brown Sugar," but it does serve as a sort of musical mission statement for the Stones. What is it about this tune that stands out to you?

There seems to be a groove, a bounce, between Charlie and Keith, that to me is Stones perfection. Keith running that pure Chuck Berry drive shaft fueled on his entire musical life and near-deaths up to that point. Charlie is crisp and forceful; Bill fills those holes in a big, smooth way. It seems that Keith shifted his sound on this album. Maybe it was the drugs, the exhaustion, or the stress of the drugs and the exhaustion, but there is a dirty rumble and raw crunch to it. I don't know if it was to compensate for or complement Mick Taylor's methodical, lyrical sweetness but this is definitely a wall of Stones rhythm and a deep-dug crumbling dam of Keith. Jagger lives this song laid back, wired, nasty and swampy at the same time

"It's Only Rock and Roll" is a grand filthy anthem that blew my mind. It is creepy, beautiful, menacing and sexy to me. I believe the first time I encountered it was maybe on the Merv Griffin show when I was like 11 or 12, and the Stones were on the show in sailor suits playing the song and they did all this weird shit with the camera lenses -- fish eyed and moving around. It blew my little mind and planted some serious bad seeds and sexual weirdness in me.

Yeah, Keith's playing seems more fluid on this record, but not in a boring or languid way. The evolution of his playing is pretty wild to go back and listen to, but by this time he had really settled into a groove. Is this the Stones record, or era, you reach for most often?

No, I reach for the Beggars, Exile, Let it Bleed era first but lately I find myself reaching for this record and Love You Live. I do go back to Black and Blue occasionally and Some Girls. Rarely the early stuff, other than the very first album.

It has always seemed to me that, by the mid-'70s, a lot of Jagger's thing was contrived. Do you think there's a level of self-parody in "It's Only Rock and Roll," or is this one of the last few honest Jagger moments?

I don't think the Jagger thing was any more contrived on this album than it was anywhere else once he figured out what that thing was. I think it was just habit and style but the singing is great. I didn't get a sense that he was a self-parody until Some Girls, really. He sings the fuck out of this album and he sounds great. There are some GREAT Stones songs on this album -- as good as any other songs they ever wrote. "Till the Next Goodbye," "If you Really Want to Be My Friend," "Dance Little Sister," "Short and Curlies." Come on. 

Those are great tunes. I just put on Black and Blue recently and there's some stuff on there that I had forgotten about completely: "Hand of Fate," "Crazy Mama," "Fool to Cry." I sort of drift away from their catalog after Some Girls, as well. It's too hit-and-miss after that.

The Stones were always hit-and-miss. I mean, come on. They're not the fucking Beatles.

Yeah, that's true but, from Beggars to Exile is a pretty unbelievable creative run. It's 32 years of a few peaks and way too many valleys since Some Girls. Are the Stones a band that strikes you as still being capable of great work, or are they just a Brand now? Does it even matter at this point?

I think it is possible that between them there is another album there. I haven't cared about them in any real way since Bill stopped touring with them. I really stopped at Some Girls, though I like a couple of songs on Emotional Rescue and Tattoo You. I think if they stripped it all down and got back to what they were very early on sound-wise - a blues band - it would make for a great record. I think if they did a studio record along the lines of the El Mocambo disc of Love You Live it would be awesome - but a dream. They would have to let someone else produce it, they'd have to get Bill to give a shit about working again and Keef and Mick would have to get along. I think those obstacles are probably too big.

Kasey Anderson is a songwriter, singer, dog owner and bacon enthusiast from Portland, Oregon. His three albums, Dead Roses (2004), The Reckoning (2007), and Nowhere Nights (2010) have earned plenty of praise from critics (No Depression, USA Today, The Onion) but, unfortunately, have not as yet yielded the Swedish Fish endorsement Anderson so badly desires. If you’d like to have Kasey Anderson sing, play harmonica and strum a guitar at you, you’ll find him on tour all spring and summer (dates and info available at www.kaseyanderson.com), or if you’d simply like to read on as Anderson discusses various songs with other artists, writers, friends and cohorts, you’re in the right place.

At this point, the fact that Peter Case is one of the most important American songwriters of the last 30 years goes without saying. However, in my never-ending quest for superfluity, I just said it. And I'll say it again, but this time using different words. To attempt to classify Peter Case's songwriting, or quantify his impact on American rock ‘n' roll and roots music, would be an exercise in redundancy. Between his time fronting the Plimsouls (whose recently released Live: Beg, Borrow & Steal, recorded in 1981, finds the band in particularly blistering from) and his extensive solo catalog, Case's sphere of influence is damn near all-encompassing.

To that end, I can not think of a better way to kick off this series than to discuss songwriting - specifically, the songwriting of Bob Dylan and, more specifically, Dylan's tune "Jokerman" from the 1984 album Infidels - with Peter Case.

Do you remember the first time you heard the tune? I was pretty young when Infidels was released but, growing up, my dad would usually put on a Dylan record and then play me his favorite tune from each record. "Jokerman" was that tune from Infidels.

It was 1984 and I was still in the Plimsouls, but outside of a couple tours that year, we had wound down, and I was just knocking about, living alone in a tiny pad up in Laurel Canyon. (In the same cottage the Melvins eventually moved into, after I split!) I was writing songs for what was gonna be my first solo LP, and felt like I was on the moon, 'cause I was living at night, isolated, kinda living in my dreams and musical ideas, and I didn't have to show up anywhere or anything, it was woodshed time. It was a good time. I was 30 years old, freed up for the first time from a lot of things that had been bugging me.

So I picked up the new Dylan LP at Tower on Sunset, and took it straight back home, threw it on, and was completely transfixed by "Jokerman."

The first thing that got me about it was the Sly and Robbie groove, unlike anything I'd heard before; it's not rock or reggae either, but something new, very open. As usual with a Dylan record you hear every word. He delivers that very clearly.

On first listen the song hits you with a strong sense of life, of what it's like to be alive in the world at that moment, a sense of now. The complexity, color, seductive sensual lure, sense of danger, of freedom, of possibility that one feels in the world - call it the modern world - is all communicated so vividly, that the flash of recognition I felt upon hearing it, even though I had no reasonable idea what he was on about, gave me a rush of companionship. That's the first thing about the art of his songwriting, he wins you with the representation of what it's really like to be alive. And you feel that before you understand it.

I think "Like A Rolling Stone" did that for its time. And the song "Dignity" hit me with that kind of force, when I first heard it on the radio, and had to pull the car over. It's a hugely exciting thing. I'm not sure to this day that I could say I understand the song really. But I find it really moving.

The lines about ships, mist, snakes, glowing eyes... all were like kindling. I went up in flames when he hit: "freedom just around the corner for you / but with the truth so far off what good will it do?"

That's what I mean about him reflecting the true complexity of being alive, instead of the party line, which would be something like : "Gotta get free!" or "I'm free but with freedom comes responsibility." You know, "freedom: good!" I was in a period of my life when I felt a bit of freedom, but the nagging thoughts about the validity of what I was doing were unexpressed, kinda murkily swimming about in my mind, then presto! Dylan's said it, and I'm pushed into a new dimension of thought. All of this I just felt, though, on that first listen.

"So swiftly the sun sets in the sky," yeah especially if like me you're getting up in the afternoon and turning night into day. "You rise up and say goodbye to no one." Check. "Shedding off one more layer of skin, staying one step ahead of the persecutor within." He does it again with this one. Shedding off skin: sounds good, that's what I was trying to do; reinvent myself, renew my musical vision, evade the weights and mistakes of my past. "One step ahead of the persecutor." It was like he was reading my mind. I'd been feeling guilty for my impulse to ditch the band and go solo, though it seemed necessary from a purely artistic point of view. So, those lines hit me too.

As they would anybody I think, who was actively going through the kind of changes life threw on individuals at that time, which is still this time, by the way. The struggle of freedom, guilt, knowledge, power, foolishness, that we all experience.

The groove, the Sly & Robbie thing. Not to get too anthropological about it but I have always found White Guy Reggae and White Guy Blues to be really hollow and hokey, with a few exceptions - you and Dylan being two of them. What do you think it is that he taps into, and that you tapped into, that so many imitators can't get their heads and hands around?

White guy blues? Well, the first thing about that is, a white guy can't really be a blues singer now. I'm not sure there really can be any blues singers now, in the way there once were.

Bob Dylan uses roots music to tell his story, his way. That's what I try to do as well. But you have to know your limits. Dylan is the best at that, he's got that "bullshit detector" that lots of people talk about. It better be real or forget about it.

I grew up in a house when blues and jazz and early rock and roll were just coming out, and the records were constantly being played on our record player, and my sister and her friends (who were all about the same age as Dylan) were attempting to play the music, too, on piano and other instruments. And that 50's music was all blues-based, or country. And then there was Elvis, who I experienced as a three-year-old. He's the original white boy with the rockin' blues. I feel like he died for my honky ass, so I could sing any kind of music I can feel. He had the feeling on the Sun Records, and the early RCA, and I just soaked it up. Also the Everly's, Chuck Berry, Link Wray (the first heavy guitar), Ritchie Valens, Fats Domino, and Little Richard and Jerry Lee on TV. All of that is blues.

Then Dylan and the Stones, Beatles too, and I followed the streams and discovered Muddy Waters, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, and I just loved all of that so much. And it got deeper from there. Howlin' Wolf, and Robert Johnson, McTell, Gary Davis, etc. I just loved it and listened endlessly. And kept trying to play and sing it, and I hated what I sounded like at 17, 18 years old, so young and white and reedy. It was embarrassing. The story of all this is in my book, As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport.

Somewhere in there it all opened up to me, but you still gotta keep a sense of humor, and the bullshit detector trained on yourself. Look out!

You gotta work to be yourself, sing through the influences.

I often wonder about Dylan's tunes - as many do, I'm sure - how much of himself does he put into the characters? Do you feel at all like this song is Dylan addressing Dylan?

"Jokerman," that's him singing about himself, and maybe about Jesus in verse three, and maybe about the silence of God at the end. But it's also anybody. The Fool, jokers trying to get serious (by that I mean living with their eyes open), not "asleep 'neath the stars with a small dog licking your face"; an image of a childish, maybe foolish sort, but also attractive in a way.. The nightingale's tune, is that like Keats' Nightingale, the Muse, or Imagination? Flying high by the moon, that is almost in the dark, moony, lunar, almost lunatic inspiration, like the sub conscious, or unconscious (I mix them up!) which it always seems like Dylan relies on. For example, he always insists the songs come "through him" and the creation of his early work had to do with "power and dominion over the spirits."

It does seem like he is singing, at least in part, about himself. And it's relevant to you and me, to the degree we want to apply it.

I love the notion of Dylan conveying clearly what it means to be alive. I've read a lot of criticism of his writing as cold, detached, esoteric, inaccessible, and I think that's just nonsense. What he does is tap into the most universal experiences and distill their complexity into one or two lines. Had you heard "Jokerman" ten years earlier or later, how drastically different would the impact have been?

Well, there's a great difference between his best work and his other stuff. "Jokerman" is one of his great songs, right in there with the best of the early work, and the best of the 70's. One of the things that makes it great is this really alive quality it has, which isn't present in some other songs. "Neighborhood Bully" doesn't have this kind of impact, whatever you think of its message. "Man Of Peace," likewise. I think "Union Sundown" is a great piece of work, but as a song lyric, though it's good, maybe someone else could have written it. He merely covers the subject. Another song like that, from a later album, is "Everything's Broken" from Oh Mercy. It's strong, complete, but not necessarily "Dylan-esque," in that it's not communicating that super-vivid and 360 degree sense of life, of what's it like to be alive at that moment. And when you hear the songs that have that quality, it's like a mirror, or a trick window. You almost feel as if you're looking through reality, getting a glimpse "behind the screen," and that's what makes it so valuable.

So some of it is cold, detached, etc., but people need to hear his great stuff. His Greatest Hits, Volume 3 is pretty powerful, for that reason.

If you don't get Bob Dylan, you don't get much, in my opinion. Complaints about his voice are a sure sign of ignorance of music and history. It's not a matter of taste. It's a matter of mind or not. I know as time goes on it may be harder for younger people to get in on, but it's worth trying to find the door in. A whole universe opens up.

A lot of it comes down to words. Can you relate to another mind, as related in language? Beyond the either/ors of binary choice: Democrat/Republican? Hot/Not? Young/Old? Yes/No on this or that issue? Pro choice/Pro-Life, etc. Talk about manipulation and dream twisting. The media are reducing everything to sound bites and pablum.

But we all know that. Sorry. The point is love of language.

Dylan comes into that spiritual and mental gridlock and makes entirely new roads through it, expresses true thoughts of a lightning mind, and we get a huge blast of energy from it. Which is why it's always Christmas when his records come out.

Kasey Anderson is a songwriter, singer, dog owner and bacon enthusiast from Portland, Oregon. His three albums, Dead Roses (2004), The Reckoning (2007), and Nowhere Nights (2010) have earned plenty of praise from critics (No Depression, USA Today, The Onion) but, unfortunately, have not as yet yielded the Swedish Fish endorsement Anderson so badly desires. If you’d like to have Kasey Anderson sing, play harmonica and strum a guitar at you, you’ll find him on tour all spring and summer (dates and info available at www.kaseyanderson.com), or if you’d simply like to read on as Anderson discusses various songs with other artists, writers, friends and cohorts, you’re in the right place.

The thing about music is, whether you like it or not, it envelops your brain. It is at times mathematical, poetical, political, historical and, you get the idea. A lot of –icals at play here. I hate to lean so heavily on a cliché but how many times have you heard the words “soundtrack of my life?” Probably enough that you just cringed reading them, right? Understandably so. Platitudes aside, the fact is that most people can identify certain songs, albums, and artists with particular periods in their lives. Put on a record and sense memory kicks in. Suddenly you’re back in your first apartment, trying to figure out where to hang your weathered, signed-by-Fred-and-Toody Dead Moon poster, listening to “Old Shoes and Picture Postcards.” Or something like that. Point is, for better or worse, some songs are just ingrained in our memories, inseparable from our experiences. They are (go ahead and cringe again) the soundtrack of our lives.

That’s what this column is about. The songs that made lasting impressions, and the people they made the impressions on.  For as long as Blurt will allow me to, I’ll be interviewing fellow songwriters, journalists, novelists, actors, comedians, friends, and enemies about the songs that burrowed into their memories – about what the songs might mean, and what the songs mean to them. They will be interviews, in the most technical sense of the term, but, if I do my job right, they won’t be the kind of interview you’re used to.

The folks kind enough to lend their time and song choices to the interviews, you’ll have heard of (Jason Isbell, Matthew Ryan, Peter Case and Bill Janovitz, to name a few), but me you may not have. To that end, I’ll keep it simple. I write songs and make records. Maybe you’ve heard ‘em, maybe not. For the purposes of this column, that’s really neither here nor there. My job, as it applies to Blurt, is simply to allow some of my favorite artists and writers a platform to discuss some of their favorite songs. Where it goes from there, is up to them. Or, more accurately, up to the songs.

Hopefully I’ll see you around.

Kasey Anderson
Portland, Oregon
April 5, 2010