Update June 2023: The books are now available to order and this campaign is closed!
- For hardcover, head to Lulu (the printer).
- For paperback, Amazon's the place.
- For ebook, find a bunch of options here
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There have been, at a conservative estimate, 80 million books written about Bob Dylan. (Okay, I'm exaggerating. It's probably just 60 million.) It might seem unlikely after all that to imagine a whole new category not yet explored. But one exists.
Through a series of new, in-depth interviews I've conducted with over 40 people who have played onstage with Dylan – from his earliest days in the '60s all the way through the 21st century Never Ending Tour – Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members will be the first look at Bob Dylan's career entirely from the perspective of the musicians standing a few feet away from him on stage.
Pledging My Time is an outgrowth of my newsletter, Flagging Down the Double E’s, where I write about Bob Dylan concerts throughout history. For such a niche topic, it has reached a large audience; it’s one of the ten biggest music newsletters on Substack. And, throughout its two year lifespan, my most popular entries have been the interviews. Even though few of the interviewees are household names, they are the people who worked most closely with the man himself. Pledging My Time collects the best of these interviews and adds many new ones conducted just for the book.
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The world of Dylan's bands and his backstage life has seemed fairly impenetrable for decades now. Many people in this book have never spoken before about their time with Dylan, or certainly not in as much depth. As one of my newsletter readers put it in a comment on an interview I posted there, “Until this series of interviews you've done of people who have played with Dylan, I'd never read so many accounts of what it's like. I had started to wonder if all these guys signed a pre-nup or something.”
So What's This Indiegogo Campaign About?
I love the direct connection with readers in the newsletter, so I decided to try a similar approach with this book, self-publishing it myself rather than going through an old-school publishing house like I did for my first two. That means I need your help! Which is where this crowdfunding campaign comes in.
This Indiegogo campaign partially functions as the preorder for the book - in hardback, paperback, or Ebook. Your support buying it in advance, rather than waiting until it comes out, will help me make the final product as good as it can be, by hiring an editor and a designer as well as licensing photos.
Plus you get a signed version. I’m going to try to personalize each one with a different Dylan lyric. (That’s just for the physical books presumably, but if you think of a way for me to sign an Ebook I will do it!)
Who Have I Interviewed?
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The book combines lengthy, in-depth interviews with Dylan band members across the decades all about their time with Bob with shorter stories from people who overlapped with Dylan onstage in one way or another. One guy backed Dylan for his surreal cameo on ‘90s sitcom Dharma & Greg. One was there for his first public performance, at a Jewish summer camp in Minnesota in the 1950s. And one you might know by his mysterious two-word pseudonym: Soy Bomb.
Below I’ve bulleted out the full-time band members I’ve interviewed, followed by list of everyone else. Even the names that won’t mean anything to you are people with amazing stories. I’m hoping to add a few more as well before the book comes out. (Do you have a connection to anyone else who should be included in a book like this? Email me: rfpadgett@gmail.com)
Bob Dylan Band Members
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Colin Allen - 1984 Real Live tour drummer
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Ronee Blakley - Singer, actress for Rolling Thunder Revue and Renaldo & Clara
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Harvey Brooks - Bass player for Highway 61 Revisited and New Morning and Dylan’s first post-Newport electric shows
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Gary Burke - Percussionist for 1976 Hard Rain Rolling Thunder tour
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Larry Campbell - Never Ending Tour guitarist from 1997-2004
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Billy Cross - At Budokan and 100+ show 1978 tour guitarist
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Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Folk-era friend and Rolling Thunder Revue featured performer
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Kinky Friedman - Ramblin’ Jack's replacement on the second Rolling Thunder tour and wild 1991 Chabad telethon partner
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Barry Goldberg - Newport ’65 keyboard player, only person to produce Dylan and be produced by him
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Jim Keltner - Drummer across more decades of shows and sessions than anyone
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Freddy Koella - Cult favorite Never Ending Tour guitarist (2003-4) whose short tenure left a big mark
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Stan Lynch - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers drummer
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David Mansfield - multi-instrumentalist, 1975-78
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Regina McCrary - Backing singer for three years of gospel tours and albums
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Spooner Oldham - Gospel-era organ player, 1979-80
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Christopher Parker - The first Never Ending Tour drummer, 1988-1990
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Alan Pasqua - 1978 tour and Street Legal pianist, brought back into the fold years later for Nobel Prize lecture and “Murder Most Foul”
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Scarlet Rivera - Iconic Rolling Thunder Revue violinist
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Luther Rix - Rolling Thunder’s percussionist mystery man
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Duke Robillard - Time out of Mind guitarist and, briefly, Never Ending Tour member in 2013
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Rob Stoner - Rolling Thunder Revue bassist and bandleader
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Fred Tackett - Guitarist for the entire gospel run, 1979-81
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Benmont Tench - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers piano player, returned for “Murder Most Foul” and “Key West”
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Winston Watson - Never Ending Tour drummer, 1993-1996
Other interviewees (musicians who sat in with Dylan, touring personnel, assorted miscellany)
Rich Alderson, Ray Benson (Asleep at the Wheel), Dickey Betts (Allman Brothers), Jeff Bridges, Cindy Bullens, Marshall Crenshaw, Karl Denson, Keith Dircks, Leslie Dowdall, Richard Fernandez, John Fields, Fuzzy Frazer, Paul James, Louis Kemp, Dickie Landry, Claudia Levy, Xanthe Littlemore, Chris O'Dell, Michael "Soy Bomb" Portnoy, David Robb, Larry “Ratso” Sloman, Noel Paul Stookey (Peter Paul and Mary), Richard Thompson, Happy Traum, Bobby Valentino, Jon Wurster
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Can you identify everyone here? They're all in the book
Who Am I Anyway?
In addition to writing the aforementioned Flagging Down the Double E's live-Dylan newsletter, I have written two previous books. Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time (Sterling Publishing) came out in 2017. My entry in the 33 1/3 series, I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen (Bloomsbury), came out in 2020.
I also run Cover Me, the largest blog devoted to cover songs on the web, and write a second newsletter on Tom Waits songs. My writing has appeared in The New Yorker, SPIN, The AV Club, Vice, and MOJO. You can find more information about my work here.
What Can You Get Here?
There are a variety of tiers and options to support this campaign. The book preorders are probably self-explanatory. I will release both Hardcover and Paperback versions at the same time next year, and will sign them all, writing a different Dylan lyric in each.
Maybe you'll get a line from "Forever Young." Maybe you'll get one from "Wiggle Wiggle." Only one way to find out. [Update: If you are outside the USA, shipping on signed copies is quite expensive. Check out the new perk "Paperback - non-US shipping" for a cheaper alternative]
If you are interested in buying more than one copy of the book, click here for some bulk discount options.
Beyond the straight preorder levels, there are some higher-tier perks as well for anyone feeling especially generous:
• For $80 (or $50 without a physical book), you’ll get access to at least two, and maybe more, private Zoom book parties with some of the musicians I interviewed. Which musicians? You’ll have to wait and see. But it’ll be your chance to ask some of Bob’s band members any questions you might have.
I’m pretty excited about the possibilities for these, and already have commitments from a number of the musicians. A Rolling Thunder reunion? A Dylan-drummers summit? A couple Heartbreakers? Stay tuned.
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Will any of these people turn up?
• For $100, you can get the book parties, a hardcover version of the new book PLUS signed copies of my two previous books. They’re both about music, and both include plenty of Dylan content.
Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time includes chapters on “All Along the Watchtower” and “Make You Feel My Love.” My 33 1/3 on tribute albums through the lens of 1991’s I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen includes a lot about Dylan tribute albums, and Bob’s role in making “Hallelujah” famous as well.
• If you really wanna go nuts, there are a couple tiers for extreme acts of generosity. $500 gets you everything above – all the books (including all three formats of the Dylan one) and all the parties – plus a thank you in the book’s acknowledgements and a lifetime subscription to Flagging Down the Double E’s.
And – I don’t really expect this one to get claimed, but who knows? – for $5000 I will dedicate the entire book to you or a friend/loved one of your choosing.
One last note: The "Goal" target I've set is a bit arbitrary. The book will happen whether I reach it or not (this is not like some crowdfunding campaigns where if I don't hit the target, I don't get anything). But the more preorders I get in advance, the better I can make the final product!
