Q & A with Joan Osborne

Dylanology (Live) album cover. Photo courtesy of All Eyes Media.

For Grammy nominated musician Joan Osborne, Bob Dylan is deserving of his title as one of the greatest American musicians to live. His decades spanning career and contributions to music are just a couple of the reasons why Osborne has chosen to cover his works again and again. Back in 2017, Osborne released Songs of Bob Dylan, an album of covers by the legend sung and produced by Osborne.

More recently in April of this year, Osborne released another album of Bob Dylan covers, this time the album is full of live recordings while Osborne was on the road touring. Titled Dylanology (Live), the album features musicians like Jackie Greene, Amy Helm, and Robert Randolph. Osbourne chatted with us about the recent release, what fans should expect from her current tour and why she keeps coming back to Bob Dylans music, despite still being perplexed by his aloofness. Read on for the full discussion.

 TL: Hi Joan! I’ll just start off by saying that I had met you years ago when I was around eleven when my dad brought me to one of your shows, so me interviewing you is very cool.

JO: That is so cool! I love when parents bring their children to see me in concert, especially when they bring their younger kids and daughters. Sometimes I’ll get three generations of family members who will come to see me which is super special. I can’t imagine a bigger compliment.

TL: This tour is in support of your most recent album, Dylanology Live. You’ve also done so many shows in celebration of Bob Dylans music and even covered his songs in a 2017 album. What about his work makes you gravitate towards his discography?

JO: Well, I mean, he’s a great American genius. He’s rightly considered one of the greatest songwriters that our country has produced. To me, he’s an artist on the level of Pablo Picasso or William Shakespeare. It’s really hard to overstate the influence that he’s had on American music so there’s just a million things about his work that make it worthy of doing the deep dive that I’ve been doing for the last several years. I also feel such a personal connection to a lot of his songs. I love to write my own songs, and that’s a wonderful thing to do, but I also like to consider myself something of a pure singer as well. I like to walk on both sides of that street, so I don’t want to just limit myself to only the songs that I write. There are a million other songs out there to sing and his just happen to be among the best. He has such a deep perspective and such a lucid perspective on many things. Take Masters of War for example. I can’t imagine that many people have been able to put into song that kind of incredibly lucid perspective about the nature of war, about why it continues even in a time where everyone professes to want peace. It’s because there are people who are benefitting from the war and they do not seem to care about all the destruction that happens and all the misery that happens because of it. People think we have to defend our honor, or we have to defend democracy, or we have to make the world a safe place. I think Dylan’s incredibly clear-sighted vision was to cut through all of that and say, this is what its really about. To have that kind of perspective I think is really amazing. So, you know, in a lot of ways he’s similar to William Shakespeare, where he’s got this incredible range to do these songs which are very deep and dramatic or very lush and romantic or very comedic. He’s an incredible artists and I’m just one of hundreds of people who cover his songs and appreciate him, which has been really rewarding for me as a singer.

TL: You talk about him on a more personal level. I know you’ve shared the stage with him back in the 90’s which was the first of many times. Where was your mind at when first performing with him?

JO: The first time I sang with him was either ’95 or ’96, after the Relish album had come out. I did a version of his song Man in the Long Black Coat on that album and it was brought to his attention. I was invited to go into the studio with him and re-record his song Chimes of Freedom as a duet with him. He certainly didn’t need to do this but he invited me into the studio to sing with him and it’s still one of those career highlights I think back on. It was a great experience but also really challenging too. In the studio he’s sort of well known for being very mercurial and doesn’t go over arrangements with you in advance. He doesn’t tell you what he’s going to do, he doesn’t tell the band what hes going to do. He just launches into the song in the way that he feels like doing in that moment. You kind of have to hang on for dear life. He and I were singing on the same microphone, so I was just inches from his face and had to really sort of be laser focused on his mouth so that I could get the right phrasing because he was doing a completely different phrasing than he had done in the recorded version.

TL: They always say don’t meet your heroes. Did working with him change how you think of him?

JO: I think in a way the fact that I had to be so focused on the task at hand was kind of a blessing because it made it so that I wasn’t nervous. I just had to do the job that I was supposed to do and kind of throw my whole attention at that. So the realization that I was on stage with Bob Dylan or in the studio with him, it kind of had to take a back seat to just getting the work done and keeping up with what he was doing. I have to say, despite the fact that I’ve met him and worked with him and been around him a little bit when he was the co-headliner for the The Dead tour that I was singing on, he still was a very mysterious figure. I guess he held himself somewhat aloof and you know it wasn’t like he was inviting me to go out and get a beer with him or anything. He was still sort of separate and so there was still this sense of mystery and this aura of, you know, charisma about him that I did not really see. So in a way he kind of still has that status for me. My conjecture is that he might be very lonely because every room he walks in, hes this great genius. I imagine that’s pretty hard for him, but that’s just me making a guess.

TL: You always hear that the smartest people in the world are the loneliness, especially when it comes with that fame too.

JO: I mean imagine being him in the 1960s where everyone was just looking to him to be this prophet or this leader of the youth movement. I’ve had my own brushes with fame, but nothing on the scale of what he’s experienced.

Joan Osborne. Photo courtesy of All Eyes Media.

TL: Now this is a live album. What made you chose this route instead of in studio?

JO: All the live recordings on this album are from the tour we did after the 2017 Bob Dylan covers album came out. Rather than me just going out with my regular band and just singing the songs myself, I really wanted to turn that tour into something bigger and more fun. Something that felt more like an event. That’s when we reached out to all these amazing guests and put together this show. It was kind of an extravaganza with all these different people. Inviting the guests and choosing the material was really where my involvement was. We consulted with the guests and asked them if there was any material that they particularly wanted to do and if they had arrangement ideas. We wanted to make it a collaborative effort. If I’m being completely honest, I actually forgot that the tour was being recorded and didn’t even remember that the recordings existed until the beginning of 2024. I was looking through my files and the recordings kind of just tumbled out. I remember thinking ‘oh my gosh, what is this?’ I don’t usually like to listen to recordings of myself, I can be very critical, but I didn’t have any complaints about the way that the recordings sounded. I knew right away I wanted to put it out in the world, that’s how Dylanology (Live) came to be.

 TL: I think that that’s hilarious that you forgot about the recordings.

JO: It’s a pretty busy life, for sure (laughs).

TL: You had so many amazing special guests join you, including Jackie Greene, Amy Helm and Robert Randolph. What do you think they all added to the album?

JO: Oh, they all added immeasurably to the album. For example, on the duet I did with Amy we couldn’t help but randomly in the middle of the song sort of crack each other up. We’ve been friends for a while, and we just couldn’t stop laughing. Listening back at first, I felt like we couldn’t use the track because of the laughing but then I thought more about it and liked that it captured the spontaneity of live performances. It was a really nice moment between two friends that gets captured in such a raw way. Things don’t have to be perfect and polished for them to be moving and for them to really speak to people. Jackie Greene and Robert Randolph are both amazingly talented and having them there really just added to the excitement from the audience. When you’re able to work with people like that, everyone’s energy goes up and everyone is really on point. They want to make this into something special because they’re enjoying themselves so much.

TL: You’re performing at The Odeum on December 14^th. You’ve performed there a number of times in the past. What do you think makes it a standout venue to play at?

 JO: Well, if I’m not mistaken The Odeum is one of those venues that was built with live music in mind. I don’t fault anybody for putting live music wherever they can, but there’s something special about performing in a place that was designed for music. Especially the historic venues, you can kind of sense everybody who’s been there before you and sense what this place means to the community. It’s nice to be a link in that chain.

TL: What can audiences expect during this tour?

JO: We’re doing a show in New York City that has special guests but for this iteration it’s just going to be sort of down and dirty. As part of a trio we’re stripping the songs down to sort of elemental parts. They can expect to hear songs from the studio album that we put out in 2017 and the most recent album too. Expect to hear some surprises and things that we’re doing just because we feel like it. That’s the beauty of exploring the material of an artist like Bob Dylan. You’re never going to run out of amazing songs to do, so we try to keep the show fresh and always have something different to bring to people.

TL: You’ve said in a previous interview that there’s a whiff of misogyny in some of Dylans lyrics. How does it feel for you, a woman, to perform some of his songs and are there any works by him that because of that whiff of misogyny are off limits?

JO: That’s a really good question. I think I struggle with that. When I first kind of started exploring his music when I was in my early 20’s I think I had to come to terms with the fact that this person wrote a handful of songs that have these lyrics that are sort of venomous towards what appears to be a woman who rejected him or a woman who thought she was better than him or something. I could say that the whole rest of it means nothing to me because of that but that’s just not the truth. The truth is he’s been writing songs for about sixty years and there are songs that are beautiful and amazingly delicate love songs while there are others that have that venomous attitude. I’d never say that all the rest of Bob Dylan’s songs mean nothing to me because majority of them do. I feel like it’s a matter of degree. Is an artist an asshole to people? Sure, it happens all the time. That doesn’t mean that I think that their art isn’t worth of being enjoyed despite that. If you expect artists to be perfect, you’re going to be disappointed because artists are human just like everyone else.

Photo courtesy of All Eyes Media.

TL: I have to ask, has Bob Dylan listened to any of your recordings, like your 2017 album or the most recent release?

JO: Well I don’t know if it was him personally, but he did put on his social media when my 2017 covers album came out for people to listen to it and said kind words. That was a wonderful recognition. I don’t expect him to call me up on the phone or anything but it’s nice to get a nod like that.

TL: He didn’t even show up to his Nobel Prize ceremony, so I think that is for sure a stamp of approval.

JO: (laughs) it was way more than I expected, and I was very happy to get it.

TL: I only have a couple more quick questions for you. If you could choose someone else to rerecord some of your songs, who would it be?

JO: I haven’t thought about that at all. I mean I would love to hear Jeff Buckley take a stab at some of the stuff on Relish. He was one of my favorite singers and I just feel like he had such an amazing, amazing voice. Amy Winehouse was one of my favorite singers, but I don’t know that the material I’ve put out would be something she would necessarily gravitate toward. Having Loretta Lynn would be a dream too.

TL: You’ve done such beautiful work reinvented Bob Dylan songs, who would be next on your list of musicians to cover?

JO: You know I’m very interested in maybe covering some Yoko Ono material because she’s such an interesting songwriter. Of course, people know as a visual artist and John Lennons widow much more than they know her musical output but I’ve been digging into that lately and have been really fascinated by her lyrics. That might be something to turn my attention to next.

To listen to the album and find out more information regarding Osbornes tour, visit her website here.