The poetry that is Bob Dylan!

Ray Padgett interviewed around 50 musicians who have played with Dylan from all eras of his career. Many have never spoken about their time with Bob before.

Ray Padgett writes Flagging Down the Double E’s, one of the most popular music newsletters, all about Bob Dylan in concert….which turns out to be less of a niche topic than he'd expected!

This is the first book on Bob Dylan to offer a direct window into his work and life from the perspective of the people who have worked with him.

Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members

by Ray Padgett

"More fine stories than you can count" — Greil Marcus

Collecting around 50 original, in-depth interviews, Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members (out June 27 on EWP Press) is the first look at Bob Dylan’s career entirely from the perspective of the musicians standing a few feet away from him on stage – from his earliest days in the ‘60s all the way through the 21st century Never Ending Tour. With a few exceptions, these artists are not household names, but they have in many cases spent years making music with one of the most revered and mysterious artists in the world.
 
The world of Dylan’s bands and his road 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. Interviewees span every era of Dylan’s career, from Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Martin Carthy talking about the early folk scene up through Benmont Tench and Alan Pasqua talking about recording Rough and Rowdy Ways. This guest list guiding the backstage tour also includes one-off sit-ins, behind- the-scenes touring personnel, and even a notable Grammy Awards stage-crasher.
 
If Dylan is, as he famously put it back in 1965, a “song and dance man,” these are the people who have sung and danced alongside him.

Some fun anecdotes for interviews from the book:

·        The first time Stan Lynch, one of several members of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers interviewed, met Dylan, they went on an impromptu date together to see Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.

·        When Jeff Bridges acted with Dylan in the 2003 movie Masked & Anonymous, one day he got a knock on his trailer door. It was Dylan. “Wanna jam?” he said.

·        One day in 1975, an unknown violinist named Scarlet Rivera was walking down the street carrying her violin. A car pulled over. Bob Dylan leaned out the window. “Can you play that thing?” he asked. By the end of the day, she was in his band.

·        Many musicians compare playing Dylan to the same thing: jazz. Even though he’s not literally a jazz artist, the feeling is the same: Every night has to be different, stay on your toes, never play the same thing twice.

·        In 1997, Bob Dylan played for The Pope (who looked half asleep). Longtime guitarist Larry Campbell shared a funny story: Right in the middle of one song, an Italian stagehand came running up. “He’s a-gotta go meet-a the Pope!” he kept shouting to Larry.

·        When on tour with Petty and the Heartbreakers, Dylan invited an unknown musician to open a show. He’d never even heard her play. He’d just asked when he met her: “Tell me the first line of one of your songs.” So she did, then she asked back “Now you tell me the first line of one of your songs.” He didn’t expect that. He leaned in and say, “There must be some way out of here…”

·        Drummer Winston Watson’s six year old daughter was on the road with him a lot. She called Dylan “Uncle Bob.” One time, Winston found her backstage deep in discussion with Dylan, holding up the show. Right before the band went onstage, Dylan stopped Winston. “We gotta do something about that girl,” he said. He didn’t mean Winston’s daughter; he meant a bully in her art class she’d been telling him about.

Praise for Pledging My Time:

“Ray Padgett is the ideal interviewer—he really knows his stuff, so he can draw the best out of every musician he talks to. This is a tremendous collection of acute, revealing, often funny stories from those who’ve played on stage with Bob Dylan.”

— Michael Gray, author of Song and Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan

“There already is an endless supply of books about Bob Dylan in the world. What could possibly be written now that seems fresh, much less indispensable? Enter Ray Padgett, one of the great modern Dylanologists, who has done the Lord’s work of tracking down Bob’s many collaborators over the years and getting the inside story. The result is insightful, fascinating, hilarious, illuminating, and, yes, indispensable.”

— Steven Hyden, author of six books including Long Road and Twilight Of The Gods, and the co-host of the Bob Dylan podcast Never Ending Stories

“These talks open up like running streams. There seems to be no guile, no self-promotion, no agendas: maybe because Ray Padgett doesn’t either. There’s less I Was There than ‘and then I wasn’t’—and more fine stories than you can count. I love Louis Kemp on negotiating with Walter Yetnikoff—even if he does have a 13-year-old Bob Dylan singing Jerry Lee Lewis and Chubby Checker in 1954.”

— Greil Marcus, author of Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs

“Ray Padgett's Dylan scholarship combines obvious enthusiasm, deep knowledge, broad understanding, and an abiding need to get things right. This is essential work both now and for the future.”

– Caryn Rose, author of Why Patti Smith Matters

“If you're like me, you've waited your entire adult life for this book. Padgett digs deep and shines a spotlight on the people standing (and sitting) behind the man behind the shades.”

— Jon Wurster, writer/performer/drummer (Mountain Goats, Bob Mould, Superchunk)

About the Author:  Ray Padgett is a music writer based in Burlington, Vermont. He is the author of Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members (2023), Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time (2017) and, in the 33 1/3 series, I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen (2020). He writes the Substack newsletter Flagging Down the Double E’s, about Bob Dylan in concert, and is the founder of the cover-songs blog Cover Me. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, SPIN, Vice, and MOJO.