I Contain Multitudes

At Magnetic Sound, Nashville TN / Photo by Danielle Holbert

Got a tell-tale heart, like Mr. Poe
Got skeletons in the walls of people you know
I'll drink to the truth and the things we said
I'll drink to the man that shares your bed
I paint landscapes, and I paint nudes
I contain multitudes

Back in 2017, amid a wave of existential malaise brought on by seasonal depression and the first flush of middle age, I booked time at a tiny recording studio on Dickerson Pike in East Nashville to record some Bob Dylan songs. I didn't really have a plan (I almost never do), but I liked the idea of going into a studio and trying out some Dylan. Though I'm a child of the '80s and '90s, I grew up listening to brilliant interpreters of the '60s and '70s like Linda Ronstadt and Joan Baez and Nina Simone, and I think nestled somewhere in my not-very-well-thought-out Dylan covers idea was a romantic dream about handing down songs from one decade to the next, of keeping words and melodies and stories going, folk-style. There was also the less-than-romantic reality of my own writer's block, which I'd been haunted by for a couple of years and couldn't seem to shake. I figured if I could just try Dylan's songs on for a little while, perhaps I'd find a way back into writing my own. Did this work? Yes. Did it take longer than I thought it might? Absolutely, totally, most definitely, also yes.

Going into the studio, I should have felt intimidated by the many wonderful singers who have covered Bob Dylan, but for some reason (not confidence or bravado, let me assure you), I wasn't scared. That would come later. And so we laid down six tracks pretty fast: "Queen Jane Approximately," "The Man In Me," "You're A Big Girl Now," "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)," "Going Going Gone," and, just for the heartbreaking, blatantly non-commercial thrill of it, all 11 minutes and 58 seconds of "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." The band was small but mighty:

Patrick Sansone - producer/ guitars/ McCartney of the group
Robyn Hitchcock - guitars/ hardcore Dylan nerd/ emotional support Boomer
Jon Estes - bass/ secret jazz genius
Jon Radford - drums/ professor of Good Vibes
Jon Little - engineer/ studio owner/ elite collector of golden era of print magazines featuring Bob Dylan

It was a fun and lively and productive couple of days, followed by a more intimate, nuanced couple of weeks in Sansone's home studio, where he recorded my official vocal takes (the ones on the tracking days were merely guides) and lovingly shaped the songs into being, bringing in beautiful, shimmering keyboards, more guitars, and all kinds of secret studio stuff that the best producers know will elevate a song, but those of us who are neither as clever or savvy can only describe as "vibes".

I can't remember the exact timeline, but before too long, we had everything done, and it was now up to me to work out how to release the thing, which is, of course, where I fumbled the project. I'm not great at pitching myself, so I didn't know how to sell the idea to a record label, and I had no idea how to put it out myself. So, I did what any masterful procrastinator would do. I let the album languish on a hard drive and returned to writing my own (far weaker, but at least all mine) songs in the Notes app of my phone. I started (and again, fumbled) recording some original material. And I didn't think altogether too much about it until the pandemic of 2020 came rolling in, and suddenly I had too much time on my hands and a terrible fear that, despite being utterly obsessed with recorded music since I was a small child in the Australian countryside taping B52s songs off the radio, I'd die a grown adult woman living in Music City who had lofty dreams, but failed, in reality, to make very much music at all.

And so I decided to look at my much loved but abandoned Bob Dylan covers project once again. Upon returning to the initial recordings, with the surreal crisis of the COVID lockdown giving the project an urgency it hadn't previously had, it became clear to me that I didn't have enough material. I wanted a full album, and six songs was an EP at best, even with "Sad Eyed Lady." But what to record next? Enter: Mr Dylan himself, who began releasing new material in March with the devastating and brilliant "Murder Most Foul," closely followed by the majestically wry, name-dropping, dreamy and philosophical "I Contain Multitudes" on April 17. Between the two songs, "Multitudes" was the winner. Not just because it capsized my heart and mind, but from a practical standpoint, unlike "Murder," it clocked in at under 17 minutes. While my ambition was strong, my faith in my home recording abilities was not. I needed something a little less overwhelming than the soliloquy to end all soliloquies that also happened to be the longest song Dylan had ever recorded.

Thus, "I Contain Multitudes" was committed to (digital) tape at my kitchen table in Nashville on or around April 23 (I must have the date stamp on a WAV file somewhere) with Robyn Hitchcock on his beloved Fylde guitar and myself singing through a Shure SM-57, going through a four-track Zoom recorder. We also recorded "Simple Twist of Fate," which, to my mind, is one of Dylan's most desolate love songs, to round out the album. Once we landed on the right takes, I sent my best-of-intentions-but-sketchy-at-most home recordings to Patrick Sansone, who graciously accepted my limitations as a recording engineer, and he added his production sparkle, making these two new recordings sound intimate and tender, with a very intentional sparseness as a nod to the hollowed out times we were living through.

A little older and less overwhelmed by the thought of putting out a record without the legitimizing comfort of a record label, Blonde on the Tracks was announced on my indie label, Tiny Ghost Records on Bob Dylan's birthday the next month. Suddenly something that started out slow came into being quite fast. The release exceeded all my expectations and then some and introduced me to the wonderful world of Dylanologists, many of whom I'm happy to call friends today. Sometimes I get asked if I'll make another Dylan record, and I sincerely hope that will happen at some point. But, true to my nature, I've got a few unfinished projects I have to complete first.

You can listen to "I Contain Multitudes" and more songs from the Blonde on the Tracks album, here and here.