[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is a part of the.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: FM Podcast network, the home of great music podcasts. Visit
[email protected] you are listening to the Dylan Taunts podcast.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another episode of.
[00:00:26] Speaker C: What is it about Bob Dylan? I'm your sometimes host, Aaron Callahan, and I'm here live and in person with Henry Bernstein in Chicago.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: So to give you a little bit.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: Of background on who Henry is, he's quite impressive. Last year, a New York Times article opened with Henry. Bernstein has seen Bob Dylan 27 times in concert and owns three items autographed by him, a copy of the Freewheel and Bob Dylan, a photograph of the singer and a John Wesley Harding songbook. His favorite song is tangled up in blue. Henry says this is a double crowning achievement in his life. When he's not obsessing over Bob Dylan, Henry works in operations and logistics for a local jewish day school in Chicago. His other great loves besides his family and Bob Dylan are Superman, Star Trek and the Chicago White Sox. In 2018, Henry, along with his friend Rabbi Brandon Bernstein no relation, took their love of Judaism and comic books and started a podcast called funny they don't look jewish. Henry describes the podcast as a deep dive into explicit jewish content. Within superhero comic books, this can be a character identifying as jewish, practicing Judaism, speaking Hebrew, learning the Torah and everything in between. Henry also co hosts a podcast with Sam Brody called Superman and Lois and Pals, an episode by episode review of the popular CW tv show. Henry can be heard talking about Bob Dylan often on Pod Dylan. Henry credits his dear friend Rob Kelly with introducing him to the Bob Dylan Twitter community and giving him a platform to be a voice in the group. You should check him out. Henry lives on the north side of Chicago with his wife, a guitar playing rock star rabbi, and his two young children, all of whom enjoy Bob Dylan and tolerate Henry's obsession.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: Welcome Henry. Thank you for being here.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: I'm so happy to be here in my own home, in front of my own Bob Dylan library. I'm really happy you're here and it's really been really special seeing these shows with you and thank you for having me. I'm honored.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Thank you for being here. So what is it about Bob Dylan?
[00:02:34] Speaker B: I think for me, and I listen to a lot of the previous shows and I hope they didn't inform my answer too much. But for me it's changed over time. When I was first getting into Dylan as a young 18 1920 year old, it was the lyrics and seeing him, the young Bob Dylan, seeing him, his his 18 1920 year old self in me, whatever that is about young people getting into Bob Dylan at that period of time and searching for meaning as a young adult, that was that for me. Then it was like when I got into my twenty s and started playing guitar, it was like more about the craftsmanship of the musicianship. Like this is a really interesting chord progression or it's a not interesting chord progression, but Dylan makes it interesting because he's Bob Dylan or finger use. No one to this day has figured out how he finger picked. Don't think twice. It's all right, he doesn't do it the same way that Paul Simon does it. He doesn't do it the same way anyone else would. The finger picking pattern that anyone do, he just did it his know the way he know. It's both very interesting, but also sort of a standard scale that he goes up and down. So while I'm becoming a musician, it was about that. And then as an older and then as I've gotten older as an adult and getting into my late thirty s and now forty s, I'm interested in the person of who he is, what he's interested in, what he thinks about at this stage in life. Obviously I've got about 40 years to go to catch up to him. But he's exactly the same age as my dad. My dad's birthday is exactly one month, June 24, 1941. So I see other people in that age demographic often. And I think about how they compare to Bob Dylan and their life and what they've seen in the world and why it is that he has this ability to put down in words what he sees in the world. So I think the short answer is all of it, the lyrics, the music and the man.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Right? And I think too, so many of us. I came to Dylan through the lyrics, as you said. But I was much younger. I was 1213 years old.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: My stepdad gave me a book of his lyrics.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: But I've heard you talk about that.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Before where we're trying to figure out who we are, how we're going to navigate the world as an adult. But he's also thankfully given us these ideas of a roadmap of like, well, here's a guy in his forty s and here's a guy now in his fifty s and here's a man in his 40s struggling to figure out how to create and to renew his create in the. Renew his creative energy or becoming a dad. And they're identifiable life, I guess milestones that are like every person goes through. Like you're saying. And aging is ubiquitous. None of us are getting out of this alive.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: And so it's just like, I think that's a gift he gives us, is like, here's what I'm doing. And he has sort of this universal language that I don't know how he does it.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
Even when you said about being a father, I look at those pictures of him from Woodstock.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: The Elliot Lundy ones.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah. With the glasses and with his children. He seems like a great dad in those pictures. And he seems like he really loves his children. And I became a dad sort of later. I was about 36, 37, 38. And we're older parents.
And I look at him in those pictures, and he's so young even then, and he's already got, like, four kids. That period of time when he's up in the woods, it seems like it's a short period of time.
But he had all these kids.
Poor Sarah. She just kept popping them out. But I'm watching him and I think about, what did he think about as a know, it's the greatest job I've ever had as being a dad. And so to think about Bob Dylan in that stage of life is interesting to me.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Bob Dylan in potty training.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Like, Bob Dylan changing a diaper. Bob Dylan the mundane. Yeah. Bob Dylan not getting sleep.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Bob Dylan in negotiations with a.
You know, it's heartwarming. And I know that those pictures, the Elliot Lundy pictures, they are contrived and they are planned. But they make me happy because he looks so healthy.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: There aren't any dark circles.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: He just looks at peace in that. Just. And maybe he's supposed to. And I'm falling for the bit, but I am hook, line and sinker.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: All right. So what is your Bob Dylan origin story?
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Well, I'm a music fan. As a kid, I didn't really have a musical taste. My parents, although they lived through the 60s, they were already married and out of college and out of grad school and had jobs by 1968. So they got married August 7, 1968. So they just missed the baby boom. My dad was born 41, my mom 43. My aunt has a good taste in music, who's a little younger than my mom.
So I've never really shared their musical taste. I was a kid, we listened to show tunes. We listened to. My mom was aerobics teacher. So we listened to whatever 80s pop song she put into her set here and there. And so I kind of was on my own for music.
My brother, when he was in middle school, liked Billy Joel. So I listened to Billy Joel.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: I have strong feelings about Billy Joel.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Have you ever talked to Rob about that?
No. Rob Kelly? No.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Rob Grayley Heron. And I went round and around at the Dylan and the Beats conference. I was like, no, Billy Jolie, okay?
[00:08:54] Speaker B: I got no beef with Billy Jolly. I don't listen to him regularly, but I got no problem with him. And, yeah, I listened to the oldie station, so I was know aware of satisfaction by the Stones and hard days night by the Beatles. And probably, like, the most classic rock thing I listened to was Beatles. But then in high school, I had a friend who kind of gave me a tutorial in classic rock. He had a great CD collection. He would go to used music store, and every time he got money from his grandparents or a paycheck, he would go buy cds, and we'd drive around in his car, and we listened to exile on Main street, and he'd tell me all about the stones and doing heroin. I was, like, 14. I don't know what he was talking about. I don't know how he knew, but he had read rock books.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Are you still friends with him?
[00:09:41] Speaker B: We're friendly. His wife and I work together, and his kids go to the school. My kids go to where we work.
But he took me to two stones concerts. He took me to the bridges to Babylon tour and the no security tour. And those were, like, my first classic rock concerts, and we had amazing seats. I'll never forget them. I'm so grateful to him for that music education.
And Bob Dylan greatest hits, volume one, which is just Bob Dylan's greatest hits, was in the rotation. So I knew, like, earling Stone and blowing in the wind and stuff like that. But he's just one of those guys. In the same way I was aware of Neil Young, but not deep into the weeds like I am now Grateful Dead and things like that.
But then in college, the summer of 2001, I was working at a summer camp in Wisconsin with my brother, who's six years older than me, and my friend Josh. And they're both.
Shout out to my brother Rea, and my friend Josh fried. They're both great. They're both great music students of music. My brother Rea actually is, like, a big hip hop fan, and he actually even put out a hip hop album about ten years ago, which is very good. But anyway, my friend Josh was really into Bob Dylan, and he was kind of an old soul, old soul Josh. He was really into old films and old music and really into Bob Dylan. And so, as I was getting older, I kind of felt like I was ready to be part of an intellectual conversation about music and film. And with those people in particular, my brother, I've always looked up to in many, many ways, but especially intellectually. And so I was just sort of ready. I was, like, open to be taught. And so my brother gave me a CD of freewheeling bring it all back home and blonde on blonde. I think he didn't have highway 61 or something. So for whatever reason, those were the three cds he gave me. And I think visions of Johanna was really the one that opened up my eyes.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: I was just thinking that Bailey has this theory that Bob Dylan loves the number three. And so the fact that you were given three cds and that was, like, your starting off point is cool.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: I love that. Well, it's funny, because, yes, you can triplicate many of his albums.
You can wrongly triplicate time out of mine with love and theft in modern times, but that's for another story. But no, with the folk albums, and then, of course, with the greatest trilogy of all time, bringing it all back home, 61, blah, blah, blah. But for whatever reason, I listened to those three. And so the 60s stuff, there was never, like, I listened to the folk stuff, then I listened to the rock stuff, then learning about Newport, I was like, what the fuck's a big deal?
It wasn't a thing for me. It's all Bob Dylan to me. And at the same time, my friend Josh gave me time out of mind to listen to. And I think shortly thereafter, when I got back to school in the fall, I started listening to blood on the tracks. And so it all got mixed up, know. Mixed up the medicine, so to.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that's what privileges younger Dylan fans, because I think know, in particular, Paul Williams says that we have to see him as many times as possible. And now I feel a sense of urgency because we think, well, because of his age and we think the touring is going to end. But I'm always envious of them when they say, know, I was at this concert, I know, not two year olds, we couldn't go to concert. But we have the advantage that it isn't a shock to our system to look at, to think about him going electric, because our consciousness has been. Most of his career was electric.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Right?
[00:13:41] Speaker A: And so we have just this different way of interacting with his material that is almost more fun to me.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: It's way more fun, and it's more informative. Like, you're just learning about periods of time, even the Jesus period, the gospel period. Sorry, so obviously, to me, there are parts of that that are painful and hurtful. The idea that Bob Dylan, probably the world's most famous jew, besides Jesus, but definitely one of the most famous American Jews, right. Certainly from the midwest, did that.
That's her fault. But it doesn't bother me. Like, people get mad about it. Well, they say to me all the time, well, didn't he denounce Judaism? No, he had a period where he was a born again Christian and then left that. And there are many instances of his Judaism popping up since then, which we don't need to get into now.
Sure. Happy to. I know you have that coming up again, that trilogy, to me, it's all just interesting to listen to.
As a person who loves music and loves Bob Dylan. It doesn't offend me. Those songs don't offend me. The COVID of saved doesn't offend me in any way. I just think it's interesting. And there are amazing songs on that, like being able to be in a room last night and hear got to serve somebody and every grain of sand. My second Dylan concert ever was in 2004, and he played I believe in you. And I don't even think I knew that that was a Jesus song when he wrote it. Right. It sounded like a beautiful love song. I was like, this is great. That was how I learned that song. And I went back. I was so, you know, you kind of take Dylan in, however he's given to you.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: I think also he's struggling and trying to figure himself out, and he just kind know that was a thing that he thought might have the answers, and then he realized it didn't, and he moved on.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: But I do think it reminds me what you say, like, the world's most famous. Like, when Dave Chappelle inducted Jay Z into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, and he was like, he's ours. He's speaking for us. And I wonder if jewish folks feel that way about Bob Dylan.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: I do.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: You can't have him. He's ours.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: I do.
Yeah. I mean, I will know. And I've talked about this with Rob before. I am unapologetically and very proudly jewish. It is a major part of my life. I'm married to a rabbi. Both of my brothers are rabbis. I grew up in a ritually observant household. I work at a jewish day school.
Kids go to jewish day school.
I loved my know, I love learning the. All the stuff. I love practicing Judaism. And, yeah, it's like one of those ones where I'm like, yeah. And Bob Dylan's jewish, too.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Just so you know. My friend Debbie raps, who's uncle bar mitzvah Bob Dylan.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Really?
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Yes. She's one of my Dylan friends, and she gave me my jewish name, Ruth.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: That's sweet.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Yeah. But that's one of her claims to fame. She shares a birthday with Bruce.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: That's cool.
My friend Jeremy, who's a rabbi now in Deerfield, Illinois, here in the suburbs of Chicago. He used to be the rabbi at Temple of Aaron in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Beatty Zimmerman was a member for a while.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So I thought that was really cool. He's not a Dylan fan, but he likes sending me know.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Isn't it like being from New Jersey and not liking.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: Well, he's not from Minnesota, so it's okay.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: All right. So I do want to ask you the question about the auto pen, because that's how I. I mean, that's got to be the coolest thing ever. So look at a New York Times article, and your name is. The first two words are your name.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: So I will say, as a proud subscriber and reader of the New York Times who believes in the power of journalism and media, or Lois Lane is my greatest hero, as is Clark Kent. When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a journalist. I didn't know that. It's not as glamorous as it is on Superman, but as a reader of the New York Times, my wife and I, we submitted our love story when we got engaged to the New York Times wedding announcement section. And we thought it was a cool story. We're both from the south side of Chicago. I'm a fifth generation southsider, and we're from the same neighborhood, but never knew each other. We thought we had a great story. They could care less in New York, so we didn't get picked. Whatever.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: Go right to the.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: You know, to get a call from the York Times was, I mean, just amazing. And then that my name is the first word in a New York Times article. It's just like my. In my bio, it's like two of the greatest things that could have ever happened about Bob Dylan. Even though it totally makes me seem like I'm a sucker for a scam of something totally stupid, like an Autograph.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: It's interesting because I think the question, why did you want the autographed version? That's always the thing that gets to me.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: It led to great ends.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I know. The end story is like, well, I got my name in the New York Times.
I don't really have a great answer. As I said to Remy Tooman, shout out, she did a great job with the article.
I felt like it was some sort of connection. I was picturing him sitting, even if it was a stack of 900 of them.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: I was picturing him on his tour bus, signing them, signing out like he.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: Had touched your book.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Exactly. And I did already have three autographs by him. Something else that a friend of mine who had, a friend who was an autograph dealer, got me as gifts that I didn't spend money on.
So, first of all, I knew what his signature looked like. I could close my eyes and picture right now, I know that signature, but I don't know the idea of an autograph copy of his book. It just seemed cool to me. And because there was an option to buy now, pay later, as every american loves to do, it was like Klarna or one of those.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Free delivery. Because that's also a thing.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Free delivery.
Yeah. But it was like, you pay over time. It was going to take me a year to pay it off. Like $20 a month, whatever it was. It was like sort of like an investment of this cool piece of history to me.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: And I know autographs are stupid, and generally, if I do get an autograph, it's part of the experience of meeting the person. Like, I go to comic cons and I like meeting the person, taking a picture with them, having them sign the thing and then framing it and putting it up my room, because I like experiences and remembering the experience.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: The signature of something that of someone I will never meet and have never met is. There is a little dissonance, but I don't know, it was sort of an impulse buy, in a way, to be quite honest with you.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: No, that's interesting, because, let's put it.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: This way, I didn't tell Lizzie, my wife, about it until the article came out and they had already refunded my money.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: I think if it makes you happy, God bless, go know, David's dad asked me when I came. I was in New York this weekend last year, and I know someone who was reviewing it. And so I got to sit with it and read it before anyone else could see it. And he said, I bet you want an autographed copy. And I said, no, that, for me, was badass. No one else can read it before I got to read it, sit there and read it. And I had the words before anyone else did.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: By the way, a year later, I checked on you because I'm doing, like, a big purge right now of some collectibles on selling stuff on eBay. And I was, like, curious. I was like, oh, I wonder how much. And now it's going, as I predicted in that article on the second market, it's going for, like, $200 now because there's only 900 of them. It's kind of, like, became its own collectible. So now I'm kind of thinking of selling it. I don't know.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: Will it be worth more later?
[00:22:30] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't think so. I think it's probably topped out at its value. Probably.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: So to learn about you, I visited your website, and I was intimidated.
This guy, he does everything. You are a renaissance man.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Oh, my. You are a scholar, an educator, a painter, a sculptor, musician, podcaster, advocate. And it goes on and on and on. And so many questions just on that stuff alone, but I have to limit myself.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: And so tell me more about your work.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Well, what kind of work?
[00:23:01] Speaker A: Any of it.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I was a jewish educator for many, many years. I was a synagogue youth director. I worked with teens, taught middle school at a jewish day school for a long time. Now I work in administration. I'm an operations and logistics person.
Sort of getting burnt out from teaching right around the pandemic, like many teachers were. And also, at the same time, coming out of the having small babies stuff. So the lack of sleep and the teaching, it just didn't mix. It was, like, hard.
So that's what I do professionally, and I studied studio art in college. I've been drawing since I was three years old. I've been drawing pictures of Superman. My dream was to be a comic book illustrator. I wanted to work for DC Comics and draw Superman for a living. That was my dream as a little boy, and I studied art. And I actually went to art school, first at Columbia College in Chicago and then at Indiana University. And I majored in art, in studio art with a concentration, illustration. And I fell in love with painting, and I also did pottery and stuff like that. And it became very clear to me in college that the comic book art field is very hard to break into because it's not a growing field in that people's skills don't diminish over time unless they get an arthritis and can't draw.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: So if you started in 1965 as a comic book artist, in the 90s, you'd still be working and on and on and on. Now some of those older guys get replaced, and there has been some stuff about that. That's unfortunate. But anyway, my point is that my skills weren't what I would have, what they could have been or should have been in order to be a comic book illustrator. So I was very happy just having it be a hobby and not a profession. I didn't want to be a starving artist, so I went into jewish education, a very lucrative field. And teaching, it's like niche within a niche, but anyone in education, we're not.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: In it for the money.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I mean, one of my favorite things I ever painted was the COVID It's on my website. I don't know if you saw it. It was of blonde on blonde, and it did a mixed media thing where his hair is sort of this hard material.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Of course, that was the first thing I looked at. I was like, that's so cool.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So I was pretty happy with that.
I think I have a drawing of, like, the hard rain.
Damn, that's.
So I still try to draw a little bit every day, and even if it's just pictures of Superman.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: I started college as an art major because I wanted to do animation, but I wanted to draw in paint cells, and it was translating into computer animation. And I was like, I don't really want to do that.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: That's what happened to me. I couldn't get the graphic arts know. I know Rob talked a lot about that on his conversation on deletons about graphic, like, I just couldn't get illustrator and Photoshop and Quark and all those things. I took the classes. I learned how to do it. But to me, you give me a pencil and a piece of paper, and I can be entertained.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: I made flipbooks with post it pads.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: When I was a kid, I used.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: To do that, too, hitting home runs.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: Totally. Mine was Superman taking off. Yes. Or the shirt rip.
And then as an adult, my creative sort of outlet kind of went into playing guitar. And I started learning guitar in 2004, summer 2004, I taught myself, and then I took lessons for about 15 years with this one guy, and then he retired in January of 2020, December 30 or so, 19, and he told me, go take an ensemble class at the old town school of folk music. And I did. And there I discovered mandolin. And then the pandemic hit, and we continued to do our classes on Zoom, and I just fell in love with the mandolin. And my wife continued to lead services for her congregation on Zoom and needed some accompaniment with her guitar playing. And now I'm a mandolin player.
So I kind of went from studio art to music, and then podcasting.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: So in my fantasy world where Bob Dylan is listening to this, if he.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Needs a mandolin player, well, he's got Donnie Herod. But I fantasize about that, all the.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Falling out.
[00:27:34] Speaker B: The songs in which Donnie is playing mandolin, I am laser focused on him.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: So a lot of any of those descriptors can be used to describe Bob. So how does Bob, does he inspire you in what you do? Or do you see a parallel? And you kind of did when you're like, well, he's at this point in his life and so am.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Know, it's funny, I don't think that Bob Dylan as a person or even as a creator inspires me to be creative.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: You just are.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: I just like doing the things I like doing. So I love reading comic books. I love drawing. I love playing music, and I love playing mandolin specifically, and harmonica and guitar. And I love singing and I love learning how to.
So that's why I do those things.
I will say it often comes back to Bob Dylan. Like anytime there's a new song or new album, I have to go to dylancourds.com and learn it, even if it's all good and just g over and over again.
I once got in a fight with someone on the expecting rain forums about that. I was asking like, hey, has Eolf put up the chords yet for what album is that on? Together through life, maybe?
And someone was like, oh yeah, it's really hard, mate, to figure out the chords. It's all good. I'm like, I know, I know it's in one chord. I'm just asking a question.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: I just asked for an answer in editorial.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Yeah, someone attacked me for asking a rudimentary question about chords. But anyway, so there's always a connection there. But I don't think Bob Dylan inspires me creatively. I'm just fascinated by him and I love him. He is his own category of things I'm interested in. I would count my interest in Bob Dylan as part of my creative outlets. Like I was saying, when Rob asked me to be on pod, Dylan either, I think right before the pandemic, after the 2019 tour, when I saw him twice, that was the first time I got to talk about him publicly. And not just to my friends who don't care or my friends who do care, but we've had the same conversations over and over again. So that is like a creative outlet for me, too.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: Is talking about Bob your spouse is like, please stop.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: She is great.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: I'm saying that for most people who are obsessed with Bob their spouses are probably like, please stop.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: I limit what I tell her. So I called her after the show to tell her about born in Chicago and 40 days and 40 nights. I called her last night and right when your call went to voicemail, just kidding. And she's great. She tolerates, not only tolerates it, she seems to be interested when I express how interested I am.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: That's very cool. So the podcast, funny, they don't look jewish. Focuses on jewish content in comic books. And that's really cool. As I said, I have a book.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: Of that really thin one.
Chapter one. Sandy Kofax, chapter two. That's it. No, just kidding. That's. Every bar mitzvah boy has gotten that very thin.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Edelman, he doesn't identify as jewish.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: No, he does.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Now he's wearing starve David.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: He does.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: Because when I was reading about it, he, yeah, he does.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: My friend, who I mentioned, my friend, Rabbi Jeremy fine.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: That's why I'm called Ruth.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. There you go. My friend Jeremy Fine, who's a rabbi, he has a sports blog about similar things, but for sports athletes called the great Rabino.
And he's talked about Juliana Mill a lot. He loves it. Yeah.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: So tell me about that podcast.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: Sure.
It is.
As you said in the intro, quoting me, it focuses on explicitly jewish content. So what that means is not necessarily some random character saying Oyve or something like that. Or a showing the Lower east side in New York in 1920 and showing in the background, black hat Jew walking by in the background. That could be included, but specifically the character, the thing. Ben Grimm in 2002 canonically had a bar mitzvah and jewish wedding a few years ago.
The character Kitty Pride in 1980 wore a star of David and famously talked about celebrating Hanukkah when the rest of the X Men were celebrating Christmas. And batwoman Kate Cain is Bruce Wayne's first cousin, and she's jewish, and she studies Kabbalah, the jewish mysticism. There's stuff like that in comics.
We have found that it is very limited what's in there. And so we were like focusing on characters who identify as jewish. But also we've now got into some side characters. So who knew that in 1980s Captain America had a jewish girlfriend named Bernie Rosenthal, things like that. And so we've interviewed a couple comic book writers like Jerry Ordway, who's not jewish, but he created a character who was famously jewish, and Paul Kupperberg, who had a run of Supergirl where she lived on the north side of Chicago and whose landlady was Ida Berkowitz and fought a villain who was a holocaust.
First a survivor, but then sort of a Holocaust denier. So there's that kind of stuff in superhero comic books, and our whole goal.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: That was my next question. So thank you.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: What was our point? Right. The whole point is that inclusion in comics matters. And so while representation, every episode, we keep coming back to that. And so while it's really important for little girls to see Kamala Khan on the big screen as Ms. Marvel alongside blonde Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, I think it's equally important for kids to know that the thing from the Fantastic Four is jewish and has worn a kipa in a comic and worn a talit and has prayed and has lit Hanukkah candles.
And so we want all the inclusion, but we also want.
We explicitly want jewish.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: I think that it's an important forum because we don't talk about jewish representation as widely as we talk about representation in other ways. And especially with the.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: No, I agree with you. I'm championing your cause.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: From the rooftop.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: When people talk about comic books and Judaism, they always go to Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, who created Superman in 1938. Clearly a Moses story, a story of a refugee, a story of a survivor, a story of someone who championed the oppressed, who fought for social justice. But they talk about the creators. They don't talk about the actual.
So, you know, in my mind, Superman is sort of jewish, but Clark Kent grew up in Kansas, probably protestant, or in Smallville, Kansas. I don't know how big the smallville, Kansas jewish community was.
So we're trying to find those areas.
We keep thinking we're reaching the end. We're circling around a big character named Magneto, who is famously a Holocaust survivor, and we haven't gotten to him yet because we keep finding these other little characters. But there seems to be a finite list of jewish characters. So I don't know if we'll reach the end of it, but we're working on it.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: So once you talk about Magneto and if you reach the end, will you go on to musicians? Because that was my question. When do we talk about music?
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that I think has been done more, and maybe not to the extent, I mean, the Dylan jewish thing has been done. A lot of people ask me all the time, what about? And maybe you're going to ask me, Bob Dylan and Judaism. It's been done a lot. And there are better people like Seth Rogavoy and Harold Lapitas, who are more experts on it. I can't tell you how many people send me some vapid article from theforward.com about Bob Dylan's 20 most jewish songs. I'm like, I know I've read this 100 times, and it seems to come out every Passover or something. And I don't know that his songs are explicitly know, other than a Gila blues and forever young, which is clearly based on the priestly blessing. I don't know that his songs are explicitly jewish, but I think better people could do that the musician wise.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: I do love Seth's work, so that was one of my questions for you. But more than just train spotting, but people actually digging into the work and finding those intertextual references to show how they have meaning and that the jewish values that he grew up with or even the ideas that they are in his text.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it's there, and I think other people have done it, and I think that it's clear he had a jewish upbringing. He had a bar mitzvah. Everyone has seen, everyone of us have seen the bar mitzvah program with those cute little cheeks.
I know of many anecdotal stories. If you know someone from the Twin Cities, you know someone who's at least two or three degrees from Bob Dylan, who's related to Bob Dylan.
I've heard from at least two or three people at camp, where I went to camp, jewish summer camp, who was like, oh, yeah, Bob Dylan was at my Passover Seder. I was like, what? And they didn't really have any more information.
Or was that my aunt's Passover Seder?
There's a famous story from, I think it was 2003, maybe it was a little later, but where he had a concert, either the night that Yom Kippur was ending, and he was in Atlanta that night. And there's a famous story of him showing up at synagogue that morning and taking what's called an aliyah, which is you're called up by your hebrew name to bless the Torah before it's read. And he even said a blessing, what's called a Misha bera, which is sort of a catch all blessing for either someone who's ill or someone that you want to just honor for his children. And like at the local Chabad, which is the Lubavitch sect of Judaism that they have sort of centers all over. He famously, of course, was on the Chabad telethon twice, which I talked about with Rob Kelly.
There are anecdotal stories about his Judaism now, which I sort of push back when people are like, well, did he convert to Christianity?
He seems to have reclaimed his Judaism. I don't know how much it is a part of his life, but it seems like it has been present there in the last 20 years. And I know people like to throw back at me that quote where he said recently, I read all scripture, the apostles and the Bible, and I'm sure that's true. There's a lot of good material in there for songs. I don't think that means that he believes Jesus Christ is his Lord and savior. I don't know that he believes in God as a man up in the sky. He might believe as music, as God, or as the universe, as God, as nature, as something else, as the spirit. Whatever moves him to write a song might be God. It doesn't matter to me. Right.
I just appreciate that he's jewish. I like it. I'll take him to answer your question. Someone else could do that one. Thank you. Someone else could bring me on to their podcast to talk about it. There you go.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: I love that, though. When someone asks me a question, I'm like, I think better people could do that.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I'll stick to comic books. That's my thing.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: Exactly. All right. So as an educator, you've answered all these questions that were in between.
So as an educator, have you ever used anything Dylan related in your classroom?
[00:40:32] Speaker B: Yeah, and when I was a synagogue youth director and I taught Hebrew school for the high schoolers, I did a whole mini unit on Bob Dylan and we did the jewish stuff, the christian stuff.
I sort of went through broadly his whole, by this point, no direction home had already come out, so there was a lot of material to pull from. Thank you.
But yeah, I've used him and I've used Dylan lyrics in things we've studied hard. Rains are going to fall.
Yeah, definitely.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: I used to use the v lil'so. Was it successful when you used it?
[00:41:16] Speaker B: I think my students tolerated it and humored me because they know, they see how excited their favorite Mora Henry, which means teacher Henry in Hebrew, was excited to share with them something.
And I just hope that when they're in college, they'll get into Bob Dylan. My nephews, who are now in college, and they're musicians, they're into Bob Dylan now. Right around the same time I got.
I think you're an outlier that as a twelve year old. I think you're lucky that you got into it. Thank you.
[00:41:52] Speaker A: Through my boomer stuff.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Oh, now you're going to get attacked for saying the word boomer.
Yeah, I know.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: But I used to use the Beatles for point of view because it was very conscious that they wrote. Was it? They don't want to hold your hand. She loves you. They wrote love me do because they want to write from the second person perspective. And so I used to use that, but then I'll use Dylan in different ways. And right now my poor litten film class is being subject to Dylan quite a.
They're. They are very willing participants.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: They're tolerant.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: They are. They are tolerant. All right, so what are you currently working on?
[00:42:32] Speaker B: I am currently working. You mean like creatively?
[00:42:35] Speaker A: Anything? Yeah, creatively.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: I just. This folk music class that I take, it's called celebrating tradition, the Monday night Special. And it's basically like our two teachers bring us an awesome folk song that we've done Dylan songs before, and folk songs could really mean anything. They're into anything that. And the idea is that the group learns the song together first without a lyric or chord sheet, just learning the chords together. And the idea is that everyone can play it. Everyone can learn a simple solo, simple melody, and everyone can sing a verse. And so I'm really focused on that and then singing with my wife's synagogue singing group called the Davening Team. Davening is Yiddish for praying.
And we just had a very joyous Yom kippur where I got to play mandolin and sing. And that's sort of what I'm working on creatively now. And my podcasts.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's wonderful. It sounds very communal, very in the spirit of folk music that everybody learns together at the same pace.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: That's the idea.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: It's so cool. So what other music do you listen to and how does it relate to.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: Know my co host on my other podcast, Professor Sam Brody. He says, I like boomer rock again. There we go with the turret. Yeah. Grateful Dead, Stones, Neil Young, Leonard Cohn.
But there are some other modern things. My other great love is amazing artist named Grace Potter from Vermont. I've seen her 25 times. She was actually in Chicago the same night as Dillard. I had tickets for it, but had to go to Dillard instead.
It's my nightmare that I've always feared, but it came true.
Like I said, the Beastie boys early. But I honestly, I haven't listened to them as much since MCA died because it just makes me sad when I listen to them. Same thing with Leonard Cohen. I haven't listened to much fish. I'm a big fish fan. I had a jam band, period but I would say, like, the top ones are like, dylan, dead, beatles, stones, that kind of stuff.
[00:44:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:44:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Great spotter. Yeah. I mean, if I'm listening to music and it's not my children's music or their podcasts in the car.
Yeah, whatever.
[00:45:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:04] Speaker B: I'm listening to Dylan, and when I listen to Bob Dylan, I want to make this very clear. I'm listening to a live show that found their way into my hands.
Exactly.
Or I'm listening to telltale signs, fragments. Like, I am usually listening to Dylan post 1997. That's like what I'm mostly focused on and interested in.
That's my favorite bootleg series. Even including fragments, it's my favorite bootleg series.
My immediate comfort Dylan Song is the opening riffs of that Mississippi.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: Because it just grew.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: That one too. That one too. Yeah. I love when he goes, all right, let's try it in a flat. The band just does it. Also. Good as I've been to you is my other.
I could just fall asleep to that. When I'm on an airplane and I'm about to have a panic attack, I listen to good as I bit to you.
[00:46:12] Speaker A: This is crazy because we're having this conversation and we literally just met days ago.
And from the time that we messaged each other, I don't know, a year or so ago, you have been just the kindest person. And I just feel like you're a kindred spirit because you're like, I love this. And I'm like, me too.
Maybe it's just because we agree on things, but we have the same aesthetics. But I feel it. Like you're a kindred spirit. I love that.
[00:46:35] Speaker B: Thanks.
[00:46:36] Speaker A: All right, so what is your favorite Bob Dylan memory?
[00:46:40] Speaker B: The first show is up there, but in 2009 or 2010, I've seen a lot of Halloween shows because he seems to always be in Chicago this time of year. This is actually early for him. Usually he's like, it's a Halloween.
[00:46:52] Speaker A: It's usually seen that weird thing on the stage. It looks like a jacko lantern.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: No, I didn't catch that. Okay, I'll look for it tonight. My favorite Bob Dylan memory was either October 30, 31st, 2009 or 2010. I can't remember which one because I went to both. They're in Chicago.
It was the only time until last night where he did something unexpected and weird. He said, all of a sudden, middle of the show, ladies and gentlemen, Tom waits. And the crowd went insane. And then Stu Kimball just walked up to the mic and played two verses of Jesus. Going to be here and then walked back to his spot, and then they continued the.
Like, it was almost better that it wasn't Tom Wade's coming on because it was such a funny, weird. It's sort of like fish does a Halloween thing. They do a costume. They'll play either a whole album or a new album or something. And it was sort of like that. Like Bob Dylan put on a costume for a minute on.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: You read so much about Bob Dylan, you know, things. But then, having worked on the book, one of the contributors, our set list book, one of the contributors wrote about his Halloween show in 63, where he says, I have my Bob Dylan mask on.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that kind of stuff. I mean, a one time. He's funny, right? He's funny. In 2005, actually, he had not been playing, like Rolling Stone for a couple of years, and he did, like, a four night run in Chicago, maybe five nights at the auditorium theater. And for whatever reason, on night two, it was April 2, he played like Rolling Stone. And to borrow a fish term, it was a bust out because no one had heard it in a long time, and the crowd went nuts. And that was fun. It was like, for whatever reason, in that moment, he wanted to play, like, earling Stone, a song that he's played thousands of times. And the crowd loved it. And that was a happy memory. That was like a great memory, too. Bob Dylan.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: What's your weirdest Bob Dylan concert that you've been to?
[00:48:58] Speaker B: The weirdest one, I'll tell you mine.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: While you think he played at the Houston livestock and rodeo show, and there are people who are trying to dance, they were dressed like they're going to a club because you just go to the rodeo and then stay for the concert. We just went to the concert, so we knew what we were in for. But he opened with I am the man Thomas. It was a great late 90s, early.
[00:49:22] Speaker B: Two thousand s.
[00:49:27] Speaker A: And that's always a concert. I forget because it was so short, but watching the people try to respond to Dylan was just really fascinating.
[00:49:35] Speaker B: Weirdest. Oh, I'll tell you exactly what, it's weird in a bad way. Also. There's a lot of weird Dylan shows in a good way.
The weirdness of him is one of the things we love.
My first show since having our first child is now six.
We're still in the throes of it. It was like November of 2017, still not sleeping through the night. But Bob Dylan came to town. It was when he was doing those small arenas which aren't as good as the theater shows.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: Okay, not when he was doing the.
[00:50:11] Speaker B: Hockey arenas in 2006. This is, like, 2017.
[00:50:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:16] Speaker B: The wind trust arena in Chicago, downtown Chicago just opened up. The crowd sucked. It was a bunch of people in their 60s who were talking throughout the whole thing, mad. He was trying some weird things. Oh, it was the Mavis Staple tour, so Mavis open. She was amazing.
He did a weird arrangement of tangled up in blue that didn't quite work, but I appreciated it because it's my favorite song, and now I got to hear a new arrangement, right?
And these guys were talking the whole time, like, oh, I don't know. What song's this? Like, the whole thing that they're going to hear, he's playing, like, early roman kings, like, things that were in his current catalog, and they were mad about it. And I was just like, fuck you guys. The other weird one was that run in 2015 at the Cadillac Palace Theater. My wife, on our third date, we went to see him the third night, but on this first night, she encouraged me just to go down, or the second night, just to go down there. I didn't have tickets. She's like, maybe you'll get a ticket.
There's no one selling any tickets outside the theater. I stood outside, listened to the first set. He was taking a set break on that tour. During the second set or at the set break, a bunch of people came out to smoke, and then this. Some young person came out. I mean, I was younger, too, at the time, but he was, like, a 20 something year old with his girlfriend.
He was like, oh, that sucked. I couldn't understand a word he was saying. Whatever. And he's like, do you want my ticket? I was like, yeah.
It was in the third row in the center.
Asshole just left in the middle of the show. So I got to see the second half of the show. That was another weird one, but that was a weird good one.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: That is weird good.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:58] Speaker A: All right, so I have two questions that I usually close with, and then I say anything else you want to say. One is, if you could ask him anything, what would it be?
[00:52:06] Speaker B: I think about this all the time, and on the one hand, I think about, like, I try to list weird songs that I know about. I want to ask him about, because now I know so many folk songs, from 19 one and 1890s to all the way to the modern stuff, and I want to ask him about. I have, like, a list of folk songs that I want to ask him about, see if he knows them and what he thinks about them.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: So that's sort of been good about my folk class to have that in my back pocket. Have you ever heard of Caleb Claudter or something random? Because I know the answer will be yes, and then he'll have an opinion on it.
And I also like, I would love to ask him about Judaism, like, what his current relationship is with Judaism, and maybe he's probably tired of that question. So that's kind of one of those ones that maybe not, but maybe if it's in a scenario where that's, like, an appropriate thing to ask him, I would love to ask him about that.
[00:53:06] Speaker A: What about so the other one? And it's kind of macabre.
So what's the last song you want to hear in your life, that last Dylan song, as you're going off into.
[00:53:18] Speaker B: Tangled up in blue? It's my favorite song of all time. And if I was stuck on a deserted island, it's the one song I never get tired of it. And we're talking original version from blood on the tracks.
[00:53:32] Speaker A: What is it about the song? I love it also.
[00:53:36] Speaker B: I mean, it is clearly one of his greatest songs of all time. I think we could say objectively that it's one of his greatest hits. It's one of his best songs.
[00:53:45] Speaker A: I'm sure someone will argue with us, but that's fine.
[00:53:48] Speaker B: I can't imagine a Dylan fan not having it in their top 20 or even their top ten.
[00:53:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:53:52] Speaker B: But anyway, it's easy to play on guitar, but it's interesting enough. Like, there's enough chord changes that it's not just GCD over and over again. It has harmonica in it, it has lyrical variations that are endless. So if you are playing it by yourself, you can have fun with it, right? And if you're listening to it, you could remember, oh, wait, on real live, he does it that way or that year, he did it that way.
And who the fuck knows what it's about? Is it the way that weaves in and out of first and third person?
Is it a movie that we're watching or is it a biographical thing?
And the lyrics are so interesting, and it's just beautiful. And it moves along, it moves. You can keep going, and by the time it ends, you're not like, oh, I wish it wasn't over. But it's like a perfect length. It's not too long, not too short, and it's got a great harmonica solo.
[00:54:58] Speaker A: I remember I think we said Dylan at the beats. Grayley asked me, who's the person?
What's he doing with the slaves?
[00:55:05] Speaker B: What's he. What?
[00:55:06] Speaker A: What's he doing with the.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: But again, who is that person? Is that Bob Dylan? Is that the person he's talking about? Is that this woman? Is it?
[00:55:18] Speaker A: Trying to puzzle it out?
[00:55:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that one, I don't think too much.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: So I do love that. It's such a good song.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: Okay. Anything else you want to say about Bob Dylan or say, for the good of the order?
[00:55:32] Speaker B: I think I've said it all, as Howard Stern likes to say. You've said it all.
Yeah. I love him so much. I'm so grateful to you for giving me a chance to have a place to talk about him. I'm grateful to rob for giving me a place to talk to him. Anyone who is willing, who cares about what I have to say. Some kid from Chicago who just likes.
Just. I love him so much. And I can't tell you, the most special thing about this weekend has been these gatherings. Meeting you, meeting, know. I've been in touch with Roberta now for three. Like, all these people on know, I've seen their head, and just to meet them and hug them, and I can't believe it. And it's like I've met a family.
I don't want to sound trite, but saying goodbye last night to Matt and Jenny Steichen, I was sad about that. And saying goodbye to Annie Burkhardt on the first night, that was sad. But to be able to share that with them and these people there. Oh, there are other people like me for so long. It's like me and my friend Josh, who lives in New York, and we don't talk that often, except for when, like, a Dylan album comes out. And that's, you know. Now I have this whole group of people.
[00:56:49] Speaker A: Who would have thought, do you know the video? This is where we'll close, because this is how I say it. The video for no rain, where the little girl finally finds her bumblebee people. These are your bumblebee people.
[00:57:01] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:57:02] Speaker A: That's what I say. I'm like, these are my bumblebee people.
[00:57:04] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:57:04] Speaker A: We also call it Bob Dylan sleepaway.
[00:57:06] Speaker B: Camp because everybody is happy to be here. It really is.
[00:57:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I've had a blast talking with you, and we're face to face. This is so great.
[00:57:17] Speaker B: So cool.
[00:57:18] Speaker A: All right, I'm going to stop recording now. David loves that I put that on every single one.
[00:57:22] Speaker B: Bye.
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