Album Description
Â"I saw Maria in the great Martin Scorsese documentary about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home,Â" says Elaine Martone, production supervisor for the project. Â"She had recalled many great stories and anecdotes about the early days, and there was some great footage of her performing in the Village in the early ‘60s with the Kweskin Jug Band. I was struck by the fact that sheÂ’d had a direct association with Dylan during his formative years, which I knew because she and I had spoken about from previous conversations. When Bob [Woods, executive producer] approached her about doing a recording of Dylan songs, she narrowed the focus and suggested an album of DylanÂ’s love songs. We thought that was an even better idea, and the result is a stirring, sensual album.Â" Blues and folk chanteuse Maria Muldaur, a contemporary of Bob Dylan during his Greenwich Village heyday of the early ‘60s, brings it all back home by delving into the various ballads and love songs in DylanÂ’s rich catalog and interpreting them in her own trademark style. Among the eleven tracks are Â"Buckets in the RainÂ" and Â"Meet Me in the Moonlight Tonight.Â"
The incomparable Maria Muldaur has always traversed a wide expanse of American music--in 2003, she recorded A Woman Alone with the Blues, a tribute to jazz icon Peggy Lee--and so perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that she has now applied her interpretive gifts to the love songs of Bob Dylan. Choosing from among his classics ("I'll Be Your Baby Tonight") and lesser-known works ("Golden Loom"), Muldaur bravely recasts several songs in disparate grooves (reggae, Cajun, swing), and even allows keyboardist David Torkanowsky to sneak a few bars of the jazz standard "Ain't Misbehavin'" into the end of "Moonlight." As expected, Muldaur is most at home with lazy, country-blues treatments ("Buckets of Rain"). But she can also effectively pull off the intense drama of total sublimation, especially on "Wedding Song" and "Make You Feel My Love," which she renders so tenderly as to elicit a tear. The title track finds her trying to talk herself out of an unsuitable lover, yet one suspects she won't be able to outsmart her heart. On both "Lay Baby Lay" (the gender-switching version of "Lay Lady Lay") and "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," she eschews Dylan's urgent and poignant sexuality for sensuality, making both songs a study in how the sexes approach the chemistry of love. --Alanna Nash
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