Cover Your Idols: Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay”

Bob Dylan turns 80 years old today. I grew-up in a house full of Dylan, The Beatles, Otis Redding, and Smokey Robinson, but it wasn’t until I was 13 and bought "The Times They Are A-Changin’' on CD that my brain was changed.

I had gotten Bar Mitzvah’d that year but Dylan did to my mind what the Bar Mitzvah didn’t do to my soul and what my hormones weren’t quite ready to do to my body (still waiting, pituitary!) I was still green and naive, of course, but mentally I ticked over into adulthood. From that point began a lifelong love of Dylan in all of his genius, his inconsistencies, his fabrications, his self-creation, and his distance. I got my first guitar when I was 15 with the sole intent of learning to sing Bob Dylan songs.

So here’s a Bob Dylan song that I covered with Ward Williams on cello and Mike Hunter on violin. We recorded it live with a single microphone and some 1/4” tape on the Handsome Lady Records reel-to-reel. I think it sounds lovely.