Love On The Tracks
Digital detox Dylan discoveries
First Sunday of the month, first letter of the year, hello!
I turned my phone off before midnight on New Year’s Eve 2024 and didn’t turn it on again until late morning on January 2nd 2025. A whole year without my phone! At least it felt like a whole year… I can’t explain how long that day was. Slow and stretchy in the most wonderful, eye-opening ways. Time sat next to me, patiently, instead of slipping away. I did one thing at a time. I experienced silence! The amount of times I reached for my phone, wondered where I’d left it, wanted to look something up, thought to load up a podcast, to fill a few free minutes by scrolling Instagram… The amount of times I didn’t check the news! It was cleansing. We built a Lego dinosaur. I read Orbital! If I tell you I’m going to try and do it once a week will you hold me to it?
No phones also means no Spotify, and no Spotify means listening to vinyls. (This is my lazy segue into the next subject...) My parents are not big on ceremony. Ask them how long they’ve been together and they’ll shrug you off. Push them further and they might indulge you a little while by trying to do the maths before giving up. Depends on when you count from, they’ll conclude sheepishly. I however am good at maths. And love a jubilee. So when I noticed the inscription on the back of Blood On The Tracks (just by the tracklist, far too private to share here) and was reminded that it was the first record my father bought my mother, I decided that was an excellent place to count from. The album had just come out, January 1975. Which, as several articles are no doubt about to remind you, makes it 50 years old this month. So I wrapped up the vinyl (which had been in my inherited collection for many years) and gave it back to my parents — an unsolicited Golden Anniversary present.
I really got into Blood On The Tracks during my divorce. I love saying my divorce for dramatic effect, it makes me sound so old and wise. The songs killed me and I fell in love with them one by one. I think I read somewhere that Dylan wrote the album after hearing Joni’s Blue and realising he has to up his game, hence Tangled Up In Blue. On his 80th birthday I was asked to sing in an online tribute show - online because we were deep in lockdown. I was also deep in pregnancy (different husband). I sang Big Girl Now, which might be one of the best breakup songs ever written. I shared it on Substack a year later - right here if you want to watch. When I turned 40 my father even quoted the song in this birthday artwork he made me from a photo we once took playing with shadows…
Meanwhile! If you were offline for the holidays I commend you — but you may have missed Could Be Worse, our new duo single, which came out last week. I encourage you to listen on Spotify etc until it exists on vinyl…
See you next month, by which time I’ll have finally seen A Complete Unknown (they’re making us Brits wait patiently). I don’t think they sing Boots Of Spanish Leather in the movie — actually I don’t think Bob & Joan ever sang it together — but JF & I attempted it at our Christmas show — it lends itself so perfectly to being a duet. Here’s a little glimpse…
Over and out x
p.s. This post begins my forth year on Substack…
Finally found who plays a guitar with off center fret inlays like your dad’s guitar. Larry Graff of Painted Mandolin plays one. He’s a local Dylanologist too.
Best of his career - in general, a great year for music & much else.