Present (XXV) Start of the European Tour (Spring 2019)

Gon’ walk on down that dirt road ’til I’m right beside the sun ...

 

I’ll see you around

I’m a-leavin’ tomorrow, but I could leave today

Somewhere down the road someday

The very last thing that I’d want to do
Is to say I’ve been hittin’ some hard travelin’ too.

Present (XXIV) New Year's Early Presents

Things will have changed around Germany

Next time in Prague

And then the fringes of the night by Paris

Before painting your masterpiece in Vienna

From north to south to east across Spain

People can't wait

Pendulums swinging on chains

The music starts and the people sway

Scarlet Town in the month of May

The evening shadows and the stars appear

Circling around in the southern zone

Once upon a time

Handkerchief in the air

A-thinkin’ and a-wond’rin’ all the way down the road

Norway, Finland, Sweden

Sweet end of June

German rivers and mountains

Fires on the moon

Shinin' through the trees

Soon after midnight
When two riders will be approaching London

And finally

The midsummer night's wind

Blowin' in an Irish park

(See you there & in the sky above)

Happy 2019, Dylan!

Present (XXIII) MUSIC FROM BIG PINK 50TH ANNIVERSARY

    That  time,

               that  space ...
                            .
                           .
                          .
                         .
Thank you, my dear sweet friends . 

Present (XXII) Big Pink 50th Anniversary : Back Pages - Brown Notebook – Memories of the Future

 Memories of the Future

Juli 1, 1967

The day will come

when our house will shine

around the music of its name

Spring Tour 2018 : An Outline in Twenty Frames

Spring Tour 2018 : An Outline in Twenty Frames

(No Rhyme Required)

 

A worried man with a worried mind

Never weak but always strong

 

A thousand telephones that don’t ring

With a neon burnin' bright

                     I know a place where there’s still somethin’ going on

 

As a man who has always had the wand'ring ways

I’m not sorry for nothin’ I’ve done

I been all around the world, boys

The world was sweeter than we knew

My conscience is clear, what about you

Lord knows I’ve paid some dues gettin’ through

                          It’s now or never, more than ever

                          I ain’t dead yet, my bell still rings

                          Between the windows of the sea

I can't go to paradise no more

Look into my heart and you will sort of understand

Tonight I'll use the magic moon to wish upon

Sometimes the silence can be like the thunder

How many ears must one man have ?

Who is that man ?

Present (XXI) On Tour - Spring 2018

      From Lisbon

     to Verona

                 . . .


   I’ll come followin’ you

   

Caravan (18) August in Christmas

     First, it comes in through the window, sort of a breath of wind. You barely notice it until it tousles your hair. That is when you lift your head from the keyboard and see your reflection in the glass, and you stare at yourself and try to draw what looks like a smile. You grab a pencil and gaze at the way your fingers encircle it, and you start turning it around, trying to understand how that wind takes a hold of your inner self. You write scattered words, keys with aerial chords—or that is what you think, perhaps it’s only what you’ll imagine later... Notes from Rick’s bass float from the basement, intertwined with Garth’s newly-created harmonies and Dylan’s laugh. You try to capture everything: that air, the open window, your reflection, and the casual feel of those purposeless sounds, of that joy—you try to bind them to that melody you have been chasing the whole summer... And then, the wind slams the window shut, and it startles you, and the pencil falls down to your feet. When you lift your head up again, you know that all those things will play a part in a song that mentions tears... And you realize that it is already gone.

      Richard tells me so while sitting at the wheel of my caravan, looking out the windshield as if driving through the snow. When I’m about to inquire after that absence, he finishes his story with three sad and short words, an unseasonal farewell he mutters as he lights a cigarette:

       “Merry Christmas, Nar.”

      We are in the middle of August, and he smiles at me, as if he knew that we won’t be living at Big Pink when the year is over, because, by then, the miracle of the basement will be over too.