Happy Solstice to my Dylan friends all over the world.

May '09 be filled with health, happiness, and hope, and may Bob play in your backyard.

Volume one of my book The Answer Is Blowin' In the Wind: A Bob Dylan Lyric Quiz is now available online.

There are dozens of multiple choice questions based on Dylan’s lyrics along with my photographs. Some answers will come right away, others will have you scratching your head.

I invite you to take a look. Just click on the title above.

It's a pleasure to listen to the Bootleg Volume 8 songs stream out from my computer. I feel like I'm listening to a radio station far away in a place where they know good music. A place I haven't visited for a while.

Bob continues to tour in 2008 much to my surprise. New dates beginning in late October have been announced for a swing from western Canada to the north-central U.S. Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline."

My surprise comes from the shear distances he, the band, and his road crew have traveled this year: from Tierra del Fuego to Iceland, a loop through Europe and across the USA. Is this fall swing tying the knot? To tie up the time most forcefully?

A gaunt, older man in a suit is driving a pickup truck in the American southwest. On this nameless two-lane road, he stops at an abandoned gas station, which may be named, “Bob’s Highway Service.” The pumps are gone, the paint is faded. Pulling a well-used hard-sided suitcase adorned with traveling stickers from his truck, he walks up to and opens the one garage door. Such are the first 20 seconds of the "Dreamin' of You" video.

What song do you hear when your heart is aching?

It came over me in the wine section of my co-op: heartache, longing, desire, passion, lost love. A bottle of merlot, tall and dark brought it on. A warm September evening, table for two, stone patio, lighted fountain in the pond down through the bamboo shoots. We talked from twilight to dawn: hearts open, plans made, lives changed, futures assured. Then times changed

You Angel You
The way you walk and the way you talk
It sure plays on my mind.

Things Have Changed

Isaac Hayes passed away today. I owe him as much as I do Dylan. If Bob Dylan opened my eyes, Isaac Hayes shocked me awake. Motown came rappin' at my door, Isaac Hayes kicked it down.

I was in college. Isaac just won an Academy Award for his song Shaft. He was on tour and came to my town. This was the most Black Power, the most Soul, the most contemporary musical energy a little white Pennsylvania town had ever seen. Not even the Angelic Gospel Choir that toured with Lenny Kanovitch's Polka Band came close.

Bob starts the 54th concert of his 2008-touring season tonight in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city of brotherly love. I grew up in Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia, in the coal seams of the Appalachian Mountains. A place where eastern European émigrés came to feed steel mill blast furnaces and practice their Russian Orthodox religion. A place of hard work, thick accents, and unfiltered Scotch-Irish fiddle music and rhyme.