I’m not sure why I didn’t pay attention to Two Times Intro the first time around. At the time I was a huge R.E.M. fan, had been for 15 years by the time this came out in 1998. And I had finally discovered Patti Smith by that point, her comeback in 1995 propelling her onto my radar. Perhaps it was the beginning of a period of ambivalence about Michael Stipe, a sort of “how can we miss you if you won’t go away?” vibe, or the thought that an artist as visceral as Smith couldn’t adequately be captured on the printed page.

Whatever the reason, I missed out. Thanks, then, to Akashic Books, which has brought the book back into print. It’s an opportune time. For Smith, it always seems opportune. Times like these call for a cultural mother who can guide us, and Smith is as good a candidate as any. And for Stipe, newly freed of the band that seemed like a constraining dayjob, the book is a reminder of what he offers in the form of artistry beyond singing pop songs.

In Two Times Intro, Stipe captures life on the road for a short tour during which Smith and her band opened for Bob Dylan. It was 1995, and this was her return after years away from music to be a wife and mother. As such, the feel one gets from the photos is that of someone trying to create a homey atmosphere in the by now common backstage setting. We see blurry photos of musicians sprawling on couches, sitting in airports, killing time. This is a pivotal point in Smith’s career — her groundbreaking first four albums behind her, her elder-states(wo)man catalog of the next 10 years still to come — and these pictures are an intimate portrait of that time.

Interspersed throughout are reminiscences from friends and colleagues, from a short poem by Tom Verlaine to longer, more analytical offerings from Lisa Robinson and Paul Williams, and more. At first, I assumed these would hope the real value of the book, the meat and potatoes surrounded by the gravy that is the photos (surely Smith is a vegetarian, right? Horrified at the metaphor… alas). Not so. The text is fine, if predictably laudatory. Instead, it is the photos to which I’m drawn again and again, Stipe’s odd yet compellingly composed windows into Smith’s world.

It long has been fashionable among rock snobs to declare that R.E.M.’s period of relevance ended somewhere around 1987′s Document; a charitable few give the band a few more years, declaring it was Bill Berry’s departure in 1996. Anyone who compares the five albums the band made after his exit with the 10 that came before would be hard pressed to argue that the band’s music was as vital, on the whole, as it once was.

Dismissing the ludicrous notion that albums like Out of Time and Automatic for the People somehow aren’t worthy of inclusion in the band’s canon, it still is shortsighted and spiteful to suggest that R.E.M. did nothing after 1996 of merit. The band’s low-key announcement on Wednesday that it had broken up will surely bring floods of re-evaluation, but here is a simple fact: though flawed, the five albums the band made after Berry’s departure include more keepers than most bands record in a lifetime.

If forced to create an R.E.M. best-of from those five albums, today mine would look something like this:

Up: At My Most Beautiful, You’re In the Air, Daysleeper
Reveal: Imitation of Life, Saturn Return, Beat a Drum
Around the Sun: Leaving New York,  I Wanted to Be Wrong
Accelerate: Living Well Is the Best Revenge, Until the Day Is Done
Collapse Into Now: Discoverer, Uberlin, Oh My Heart, Every Day is Yours to Win

I’d choose any of their first eight albums (save for Green) over this mix if selecting some R.E.M. to play, but this would win out over the career-spanning greatest hits of many other bands.

Were these latter-day albums occasionally misguided? Certainly. I’d argue that Up is a classic on par with anything the band created outside the first four classics. The rest are unquestionably flawed. But anyone who considers himself a fan of the band would find something to like on any of them. Yes, the band was foundering, unsure what it meant to be a Berry-less trio in an era when electronics and post-ironic posturing were popular. But traces of what made the band special reveal themselves everywhere, from Stipe’s inventive melodies to Buck’s chiming drone to Mill’s soaring counter-melodies.

On the band’s last two albums, it seemed to retrench. Well, it didn’t seem to — it flat out did. After casting about for a post-Berry sound, it returned to the template for what it did with him in the fold, first with the sub-Lifes Rich Pageant sound of Accelerate, then with the late-period pastiche of Collapse Into Now. Despite the diminished quality of imitation, these were hopeful signs for those of us who stuck with the band. After exploring the various corners of its sound and then rediscovering what it did best, it seemed reasonable to expect future music that finally reconciled the two and pushed the band toward something both grounded and new.

But with Wednesday’s announcement, we’ll be left to imagine… or will we? The cynic would suggest that the band, disillusioned by the collective yawn that greeted its last two albums — this despite massive self-promotion in the form of a near-constant online presence in the months leading up to the release of each — has decided to test the maxim “how can we miss you if you won’t go away?” Seeing the career boost afforded bands like the Pixies, Pavement and Guided by Voices, groups that returned from decade-plus hiatuses to crowds considerably larger than they had left behind, must have made an impression on R.E.M. If the band had made good on its promise to split if any one member departed, then returned 15 years later with Collapse Into Now, it would have been massive. Rather than accuse the band of being uninspired old farts without an original idea, critics would have lauded them for recapturing and then updating their classic sound.

So, a prediction: R.E.M., with Bill Berry in tow, will return in 2020 with a critically acclaimed album and a (gulp!) 40th anniversary tour. A fella can dream, can’t he?

listening to the 25th anniversary reissue of R.E.M.’s Lifes Rich Pageant didn’t spark the kind of nostalgia I perhaps expected, and if I think about it, that’s not a surprise.

Nostalgia comes from remembering the past. But with Lifes Rich Pageant, I’ve never allowed it to gather dust, to fall out of rotation. It might go a couple of months here or there, but it’s the R.E.M. album I come back to most often. That stems in part from the fact that it was the first I heard around the time of its release.  A stash of records left home one summer by a friend’s older college brother coupled with my box of Maxell XLIIs  meant that I discovered R.E.M. and a lot of other great music midway through high school, and never looked back.

One reason I return to this album again and again is that it is the most fun the band ever had. I love the three albums that precede it, and will readily admit that all three are artistically superior. But this one, particularly coming after the dour Fables of the Reconstruction, lets it all hang out.

So, with no real revelations to be had from the album itself, I looked instead to the disc of demos that accompanied it. There, one realizes that the album could have been very different.

I’ve always been a fan of the band’s earliest, pre-Chronic Town music. One of my favorite R.E.M. albums has always been the bootleg So Much Younger Then, which collects a dozen songs from an early set at Tyrone’s in Athens. I’ve since digitally collected several bootlegs that capture the same handful of shows, always hoping to discover one more early gem.

The band has let some of these songs leak out previously. “All the Right Friends” ended up on the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe’s “Vanilla Sky,” “Mystery to Me” was on the band’s double-disc IRS Years best-of, and “Permanent Vacation” was on a live iTunes collection a few years back. But with this demo disc, the best contemporaneous collection of these songs is now available. Early staples like “Wait” and “Mystery to Me” can now be added to the official canon.

These songs were demoed for Lifes Rich Pageant but ultimately left by the wayside. Can’t say I blame the band. I could do without “Underneath the Bunker,” but that’s the only thing I’d ever think of leaving off the finished album.  I have advocated for the band to get Bill Berry back in the saddle and spend an afternoon cutting a fanclub-only release of those early tracks, but I’m confident the drips and drabs of these archival releases is the closest I’ll get to that.

It’s always dicey business accusing a band of sounding like its earlier self. What exactly, one might reasonably ask, should a band sound like? While some bands continue to evolve and explore sounds with some ear-anchoring through lines to keep listeners grounded, others continue to mine the same territory with diminishing returns.

R.E.M. has taken both paths in its three-decade career. For the first half of its life, the band continued to strive for new sounds. It was never difficult to hear that it was R.E.M. – after all, no one sings like Michael Stipe – but these twists and turns were occasionally exciting and never dull.

But once that exploration failed to yield the desired results – I’ll point to the vapid but beautiful Reveal, the supermodel of R.E.M.’s back catalog, as the starting point – the band began to retrench. That was seen as a welcome return on Accelerate, as the band of fifty-somethings rocked like their thirty-something selves with songs that seemed as much homage to the past as attempts to populate new territory.

On the new Collapse Into Now, the band continues this path, with some initially pleasing but ultimately troubling results. It sounds good on first listen; great in spots. But that’s because it’s as if the band cut up its best bits, tossed the pieces of tape into the air and then assembled an album from the disparate segments. It’s the same reason we like the occasional new Rolling Stones song – what’s not to love about yet another blast of those Keith Richards’ riffs? Then you realize you’ve heard it all before and would rather go back to the source.

Given that, R.E.M. is in a damned-if-they-do spot at this point in its career. Try too hard to do something new and the band will be accused of attempting a hipness transfusion (at a time when hip replacement is more likely). Maintain the old sound and they’ll be slagged for being mired in the past. Accelerate ultimately transcended both arguments by injecting so much youthful energy in the band’s look back that the members were able to successful walk the tightrope between them.

On Collapse Into Now, they again echo the past, but without that same verve. This is a more studied attempt at capturing the past, and as such, it never takes off the way Accelerate did. I wrote a similarly negative review of that album before spending much of the year with it in my CD player, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this follows a similar path. But I’ll expect neither album to merit a place in the band’s canon in the long run,

1. Discoverer – When I first heard this, it felt flat and without hooks, an R.E.M. pastiche without punch. After a few listens, however, the hooks revealed themselves. All it took was that transition from the verse to the chorus, driven by the drums and Peter Buck’s chunky riffs. It’s not a great song, but it’s a good lead-off in the same way “Begin the Begin” was 25 years ago, setting a take-no-prisoners tone. It’s too bad that isn’t maintained throughout the album, but this song is a grower worth repeat spins. And credit for lifting an interesting sound for that opening guitar line. Every time I hear it, I’m reminded of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

2. All the Best – If this isn’t a leftover from Accelerate, I’ll be surprised. It has the same feel, perhaps with a bit more of the glammy feel of Monster. Pretty unremarkable.

3. Uberlin – The first direct reference to the past with what feels like a pretty obvious younger cousin to “Drive” – it’s a bit peppier and has a faster beat, but it’s there. Stipe seems to acknowledge as much in the first verse, with “crash land no illusions” to rival “smack crack bushwhacked” from the earlier song, speak-sung in the same cadence. That said, it has a more reliable melody than its predecessor and ultimately stands on its own.

4. Oh My Heart – Another song that feels like an Accelerate outtake, another post-Katrina lament to rival that album’s “Houston.” Stipe again directly references the previous song lyrically, responding to “if the storm doesn’t kill me the government will” with “the storm didn’t kill me, the government changed.” It’s a beautiful song with a soaring, heartbreaking chorus, and is the first true standout on the album.

5. It Happened Today – Yet another song that seems to recall past work. In this case, it feels like a sped-up “New Test Leper.” And yes, again you can draw lyrical comparisons, with mentions of Bible stories here to rival the Jesus-centric lyric of the earlier track. There are some nice wordless harmonies between Stipe and Mills (Mills’ rehabilitation on Accelerate seems to have taken root, as his vocals are prominent once again). More than half of the song is given over to this, and it puts a smile on the face of a long-time fan. The song doesn’t have much more than that going for it, but it’s enough in the short term. Oh, and Eddie Vedder is apparently on here, but I’m hard pressed to hear it.

6. Every Day Is Yours to Win – A lullaby of sorts that is the first song on the album that doesn’t sound like R.E.M. 2.0 trying to sound like R.E.M. 1.0. I’ll give them credit for trying something new (ish… this wouldn’t have sounded too out of place on Up), but it’s a fairly slight track that could have used a more adventurous Stipe vocal to combat the rudimentary music-box backing track.

7. Mine Smells Like Honey – Do record company executives still snarl behind a soggy stogie and growl, “I don’t hear a hit… get back in the studio!”? If they do, this is the kind of song R.E.M. would cut in response. Like the product of a generic R.E.M. song generator set to “rock,” the song has those big guitar chords, a deadpan Stipe verse and a soaring chorus. The saving grace: Mills’ backing vocals, which are heavenly. Sticking point: I don’t want to know what smells like honey, and have a hard time not thinking about that every time this song plays.

8. Walk It Back – Another ballad that is perfectly pleasant and yet something I could live the rest of my life without hearing again. This kind of undistinguished filler is what dragged down the band’s worst album, Around the Sun, and it does nothing to elevate this album. In fact, it’s the beginning of a long slow slide on what would be the album’s second side if we demarcated things like that anymore.

9. Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter – I never thought I’d write this, but Peaches is the best thing on this track. R.E.M. can do big, dumb and stupid with the best of them, but in the past that manifested itself as “Superman” or “Strange” (maybe they can only do big, dumb and stupid when it’s someone else’s big, dumb and stupid). Harking back to the dreck of “I’m Gonna DJ,” the band allows Stipe to take a bludgeoning riff of a song and actually make it worse.

10. That Someone is You – I’ve long advocated for the band to go back and re-record more of its first batch of songs (from which tracks like “All the Right Friends” were culled). They seem to have taken the spirit of the idea to heart, if not its intent. The band could have played this punchy number at Tyrone’s in 1981 without anyone batting an eye. It’s a fuzzy blast of nothing that ends up being one of the best songs on the album because it’s among the few where the intent and the execution are perfectly in synch, and it points out all that is wrong with the over-bearing track that precedes it.

11. Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I – Awful title aside, the song has appeal, but it’s elusive. I suppose most of that appeal revolves around Stipe’s vocal, as there is little else to grasp, but it’s an atmospheric song that forces the listener to pay attention. That’s not a bad thing, as it likely means it will be one of the few songs here with staying power.

12. Blue – I loved this song when it was called “Country Feedback.” R.E.M. has mined its own back catalog for ideas for the past several years, but this is as blatant as it gets. The music feels like a note-for-note lift of the Out of Time classic, and if that isn’t obvious, Stipe then talks in a hushed, distorted tone to drive the point home. Patti Smith’s presence is nice, but it feels as if her vocal from “E-Bow the Letter” was grafted onto the track. The saving grace: The reprise of “Discoverer” at the end of the track, nicely bookending the album.

So, a year ago, I decided to start keeping track of every full album I listened to. I did this in part as justification for my still-insatiable desire to acquire new music decades after my first purchase, and in part to simply help me to see if my actual listening was as broad as my self-image indicates.

The results were interesting. Over the course of an entire year, I listened to 732 full albums. That equates to 61 a month, or almost exactly two per day. That last figure is a bit misleading, as I would often go a day or two without listening to anything all the way through, while other days spent chained to the computer at work would find me spinning five or six.

I set ground rules: These needed to be albums, not EPs or singles. I needed to listen to them in whole. And once something was heard, it couldn’t be listed again, no matter how many repeat plays. So, while I listened to well over 8,000 songs in this exercise, the total is likely double that or more, as hours and hours spent with the iPod on shuffle, repeat listens of favorite discs and partial spins all were omitted from the total.

The most interesting thing I found is that I changed my listening habits because of this exercise. I’m often chided for not listening to things all the way through, often surprised when listening to old discs while distracted by other things to find an uncredited bonus track at the end or some other unknown treasure toward the end of the tracklist. Because I couldn’t record the album on the list unless I heard the whole thing, I forced myself to hear every last note.

I also listened to a lot more new music than I might have otherwise. There were few albums in the past year that earned a rave review anywhere (and that sounded like they would remotely fall in my musical wheelhouse) that I didn’t track down some way and hear. That expanded my palette, as I found myself embracing much more electronic music than ever before, but also led me to confirm the long-held belief that while an awful lot of of well-reviewed music might offer immediate visceral pleasure, they are lacking in the long run and rarely demand a repeat spin.

I set a goal at the beginning of this calendar year to listen to more classical music, hoping to move from completely ignorant to marginally knowledgeable of the genre’s best works. I did better given that concerted effort than I have in the past, but with only 18 classical collections having been played (though, in my defense, some were multi-disc sets), I have a long way to go.

A look at what I listened to the most meshes pretty well with a list of my favorite artists. Push comes to shove, a list of what I would have expected to listen to the most created at the beginning of this exercise would look a lot like the actual result… with a couple of exceptions. First the list:

That’s the top 10. I keep a blog about Robert Pollard’s music, and that coupled with the fact that he puts out 5 or 6 albums a year means he’ll probably always top this list. I’m a huge fan of Crowded House, R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub and Big Star, so those make sense. I got on a serious Steve Wynn kick last year that continues unabated. The Beatles boxed set accounts for their presence here, while reading the 33 1/3 series book on the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime helps explain their spot. Devo and Richard Thompson were both driven by live shows. However, I hadn’t listened to Devo in years before pulling them out in July, so their strong showing is pretty remarkable. I’m always listening to Thompson, so that’s no surprise.

My year came to a close on July 31. When Aug. 1 rolled around, I listened to a CD and then headed to the computer to record it. A funny thing happened, however; I decided to let it go. I have been listening to things at pretty much the same pace I did before, but in just a few days, I find I’m already more willing to listen to a handful of songs and then swap something out if it’s not working for me. If I can maintain the adventurousness and patience afforded by the exercise while injecting some much-needed flexibility, my listening experience is sure to improve.

So, in the forward march that is the revision of history, R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction is now a classic, not the disappointment that the band and other declared at the time of its release 25 years ago.

That’s all relative, of course. I came to R.E.M. later than some (and well before most), jumping aboard with the band’s fourth album, Lifes Rich Pageant in 1986. Falling in love, I quickly went back and picked up its debut, Murmur, and the third album, Fables (in a fit of Puritan delayed gratification that would never again govern my purchasing decisions, I held off on Reckoning in a bid to save a great R.E.M. record for later. I didn’t get it until my freshman year of college in 1988, after the disappointment that was Green). To me, Fables was another masterpiece. A bit more difficult than Pageant, but no less satisfying.

I later read (in books!) that the band was not satisfied with the album. I read about the difficult recording process during and English winter with producer Joe Boyd. I foolishly developed an antipathy toward Boyd (then learned of all that he had done that made such a stance ridiculous at best). None of this affected my enjoyment of the album, which continued unabated for two decades.

Now comes the 25th anniversary remastered/expanded version of the album, which sheds even more light on the process. Plenty has been written elsewhere that ought to be read by anyone even casually interested in the subject — the true value of most reissues is not the remastering or bonus tracks, but the renewed analysis that is broader and deeper than any contemporaneous efforts simply because of the benefit of critical distance.

My point to add to this conversation is this: What Boyd brought to the project was a subtle nudge that pushed the band’s evolution a couple of steps further than it might have taken otherwise. That might sound slight, but the impact was huge. Hearing demos for Fables’ songs, I’m struck by how much many of them sound like a direct extension of the sound of Reckoning. “Green Grow the Rushes,” for example, would have fit comfortably on that preceding album. Yes, the dissonance of “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” was new, as was the frenetic claustrophobia of “Life and How to Live It.” But hearing those demos, I can imagine a very different Fables that would like have pleased listeners at the time, but that would have been seen as a troubling holding pattern in the rearview.

The other point brought up by the demos, however, is that the band, contrary to guitarist Peter Buck’s liner notes that mention feeling unprepared for the pending recording session, show songs that nearly identical to their finished versions. The various parts are in place, the arrangements, for the most part, are set. On first listen, I wondered why the band felt the need to go to such lengths to record the album — literally by flying across the ocean, and figuratively by leaving the comfort of friends and using someone like Boyd.

But Boyd’s gift, at least in this case, was the ability to simultaneously protect what the band had already created while pushing it ever so subtly toward something a bit more challenging and new. The result is the one R.E.M. album I gravitate toward when I want to my music to confront me just a bit, to force me to work for my comfort. It would be more than a decade before the band would veer so far from the obvious with late-stage curve balls New Adventures in Hi Fi and Up. Like no album before or since in the band’s catalog, it is the one where the level of challenge yields the greatest reward.

Thirty years ago today, Mike Mills, Bill Berry, Peter Buck and Michael Stipe were prepping for their first public performance, a show at the St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Athens for the birthday of Berry’s girlfriend.

It sounds as if Athens has been abuzz the past week in anticipation of the anniversary, with tribute concerts, exhibitions and a five-hour marathon of the band’s hits and obscurities on the University of Georgia student radio station, WUOG.

It’s fairly amazing to think that the band has chugged along on a nice bell curve of success since that show. Save for Berry’s departure, the core has remained the same, and for all of the stylistic diversions along the way, continues to mine the same guitar-bass-drums-vocals territory it did at that first show.

For the fan, there is a lot of material out there to peruse. Slicing Up Eyeballs has a probable set list from that first show and a short video about the church where the concert was held, while YouTube is home to several videos culled from an April 3 tribute concert in Athens. R.E.M. HQ has a lot of material, including a list of 30 places meaningful to the band assembled by Bertis Downs, and some archival photos from shooters like Sandra-Lee Phipps and Laura Levine (that’s Phipps collage of shots from that first show above).

Downs also submitted to an interview with Flagpole, the Athens free weekly, and there are several other things to be found by scouring the web as well. Spin some R.E.M. and celebrate.

I have been remiss about getting this interview with Steve Wynn posted because I’ve been doing things like… traveling to see Steve Wynn. So, I’ll wrap a review of Wynn’s recent Baseball Project show in Chicago in with this short Q&A about his new self-released CD, Steve Sings Bob.

First up, the Baseball Project. The show was a triple bill, with the BP, the Steve Wynn IV and the Minus 5. However, it was all the same band, with Wynn on guitar and vox, Scott McCaughey also on guitar and vocals, Peter Buck on bass and Linda Pitmon (Wynn’s wife and drummer in the Miracle 3) on drums. They decided to play one big show rather than separate band sets, and that was a wise choice. They opened with the Dream Syndicate’s “That’s What You Always Say,” which set a nice tone: laid back but with blisteringly good guitars. From there it was a mix of tunes from Wynn’s latest, disc, Crossing Dragon Bridge (“Manhattan Fault Line”) Dream Syndicate (a scorching “Medicine Show” and “Days of Wine and Roses”) and even Gutterball (“Trial Separation Blues.”) The first hour-long set closed with “Amphetamine,” which was so good I feared the second set couldn’t top it. Yes, there was some fall off, but not much as, McCaughey dominated that set with a sprinkling of Minus 5 tunes new and old.

The Baseball Project songs were the highlight of the night. “Harvey Haddix” got an update to include Mark Buehrle’s recent perfect game (with a nice, harmonious bridge to note his accomplishment), while “Past Time” smoked and “The Yankee Flipper” had a few heartier souls in the crowd saluting with their middle fingers raised high. A new Baseball Project song was debuted, “Tony,” which tells of player Tony Conigliaro, who was hit by a pitch in the eye.

All in all it was a fantastic show that reaffirmed my fandom of everyone involved. Strangest was seeing multimillionaire Peter Buck quietly playing bass on stage in a small bar. He’s surely the richest person to set foot on that stage, which is testament to how much he must love playing live.

The band pulled out one cover: Neil Young’s “Revolution Blues,” passing on the chance to cover Bob Dylan and give me a less clunky segue into my interview with Wynn. Oh well.

Wynn has performed several Dylan songs over the years, and recently decided to gather a bunch of them on CD. The result, Steve Sings Bob, is a limited-edition (of 300) collection of Dylan covers from 1982 to present. Most are live, some more polished than others, but all are good and fully fitting the spirit of the material. In the liner notes on his site, Wynn shares one interesting story about “Blind Willie McTell.” It was recorded by the latter-day Dream Syndicate in 1988 on a radio show, and released on a Bucketful of Brains magazine flexi the next year, “marking the first time the song had officially seen the light of day, a few years before Dylan’s version was released on the first of his bootleg series. We even had to get the permission of his publishing staff to put out our version before he did.”

The tracklist:

1. Blind Willie McTell (The Dream Syndicate)
2. Positively 4th Street (Steve Wynn and Loose Change)
3. Watching The River Flow (Steve Wynn and Friends)
4. Honest With Me (Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3)
5. Knockin’ On Heavens Door (Steve Wynn with the Alejandro Escovedo Band)
6. All Along The Watchtower (The Dream Syndicate)
7. Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar (Steve Wynn Quintet)
8. Outlaw Blues (The Dream Syndicate)
9. Gotta Serve Somebody (Hazel Motes)
10. Like A Rolling Stone (Steve Wynn and Jason Victor)

I asked Wynn a few questions about the project, and he graciously responded, “from the middle of a van rolling across northern Washington….”

TIRBD: You’ve done a few covers here and there, but nothing to compare with the number of Dylan songs you’ve done. What is the appeal of his music from an interpreter’s standpoint?

SW: Well, the most obvious answer is that he’s a great songwriter with an incredible catalog of amazing songs. But, beyond that, the songs are usually easy to learn and leave a lot of room for interpretation (witness his own wide varieties of takes on his own material over the years). It’s also a common language for musicians — almost everyone loves at least one period of Dylan or another so it’s easy to name a song when you’re looking for a quick cover and know that there HAS to be one Dylan song in common between the various memory banks of the guys on stage.

What challenges do you face when tackling Dylan’s work?

That’s easy: remembering the words. Every song has at least 5 or 6 verses. I was joking to the band before our Italian show (Steve Sings Bob in Ravenna last month) that they had the easy job. And it’s true. You can learn the music on the spot but it’s not easy to fake the lyrics. Fortunately, so many of his songs are firmly embedded in my DNA.

Were there songs you’ve done that you wanted to include where you couldn’t find a decent recording?

Not really. In fact, my favorite song on the CD was the version of “Gotta Serve Somebody” that I recorded with my “punk gospel” band Hazel Motes. And that version is VERY lo-fi, just an audience recording.

Is there a favorite Dylan song that you don’t feel you can pull off?

I really wanted to do “Highlands.” All 18 minutes of it. And I will definitely do it one day. But I’ll need a teleprompter or a music stand.