Bob Dylan's Shadow Kingdom 'livestream' adds like everything he does to his legend and his myth. Was it really a livestream, did the band play the songs live, did Bob mime the words hidden behind a vintage microphone, why the all new band, does the Bon Bon Club in Marseille really exist?
Whatever the answers to those questions and the attendant conspiracy theories are is immaterial as the legend and the myth has been added to and then some.
Billed as the songs of a young Bob Dylan the selection of songs was definitely a choice of songs from a younger Bob Dylan - nothing from the recent 'Rough & Rowdy Ways' album. The 80 year old Bob reading his back pages was in my view a wonderous thing. The interpretations musically followed a format that that we've grown accustomed to recently a precise and simple blues with a smattering of rockabilly on the more up tempo tunes. Not a note wasted and not a note more. His voice is richer with age, and seems like the most important instrument. Songs of his younger days even his middle age take on a poignancy and truth that sure he was aiming at back then but age has given the wisdom to deliver them effortlessly. He is like an old bluesman knowing instinctively how to deliver these songs and catch that balance between recognition and freshness. He delivered that whatever the myths wrapped up and spun out of this livestream are or become.
In 2017 Dylan released 'Triplicate' a three disc set of covers taken from the great American songbook and watching Shadow Kingdom I came to the conclusion that Dylan has no real need for the great American songbook. It's pretty obvious really, his canon of work is its own great American song book with its own memories, myths and legends.
