Songs of Experience: A Bob Dylan Podcast

For the first time ever, Henry and Erin Callahan welcome you to a crossover episode with Infinity Goes Up On Trial! In this very special episode Henry and Erin are joined by a panel of experts to discuss the 25th anniversary of "Love & Theft" and September 11, 2001, which famously (in the Dylan world) occurred on the same day.
Our expert panel of Michael Glover Smith, Roberta Rakove, Adam Selzer share their thoughts, memories and feelings about both the album and that day.
What were your memories from that day? Did you buy "Love & Theft" when it came out? Tag @songsofbob on Instagram with your thoughts!

Follow us on Instagram @songsofbob,
If you would like to support hosting my podcasts, please check out my Patreon where for $5 I will give you a shout out on the podcast of your choice. Thank you to, Rob Kelly, Roberta Rakove, Matt Simonson, and Christopher Vanni. For $10, in addition to the shout-out I'll send you a surprise piece of Bob Dylan merch! Thank you to Kaitie Cerovec who is already enjoying her merch! I have a merch shop! Check out all sorts of fun Bob Dylan (and more) items! Thank you to Mark Godfrey, & Linda Maultsby over on Substack.
Email us at songsofbobdylan@gmail.com
Subscribe: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack.

Welcome to Songs of Experience: A Bob Dylan Podcast, where we explore the man and the music one song at a time. In this episode, Henry welcomes back his bestie Erin Callahan to talk about Goodbye Jimmy Reed and the finale of the Long Hot Summer 2026 in Nashville! 

Goodbye Jimmy Reed

Written by: Bob Dylan

I live on a street named after a Saint

Women in the churches wear powder and paint

Where the Jews and the Catholics and the Muslims all pray

I can tell a Proddy from a mile away

Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Jimmy Reed indeed

Give me that old time religion, it’s just what I need

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory

Go tell it on the Mountain, go tell the real story

Tell it in that straight forward puritanical tone

In the mystic hours when a person’s alone

Goodbye Jimmy Reed - Godspeed

Thump on the bible - proclaim the creed

You won’t amount to much the people all said

‘Cause I didn’t play guitar behind my head

Never pandered never acted proud

Never took off my shoes and threw them into the crowd

Goodbye Jimmy Reed - goodbye and goodnight

I’ll put a jewel in your crown - I’ll put out the light

They threw everything at me, everything in the book

Had nothing to fight with but a butcher’s hook

They have no pity - they don’t lend a hand

And I can’t sing a song that I don’t understand

Goodbye Jimmy Reed - goodbye and good luck

Can’t play the record ‘cause my needle got stuck

Transparent woman in a transparent dress

It suits you well - I must confess

I’ll break open your grapes I’ll suck out the juice

I need you like my head needs a noose

Goodbye Jimmy Reed, goodbye and so long

I thought I could resist her but I was so wrong

G-d be with you, brother dear

If you don’t mind me asking, what brings you here?

Oh, nothing much, I’m just looking for the man

I came to see where he’s lying in this lost land

Goodbye Jimmy Reed and with everything within ya

Can’t you hear me calling from down in Virginia

 

 

Check out Erin's new book! https://bookshop.org/p/books/bob-dylan-in-the-1980s-a-reconsideration-erin-c-callahan/1f54f866c253f95d 

And her fabulous podcast: https://infinitygoesupontrial.substack.com/

Follow us on Instagram @songsofbob,
If you would like to support hosting my podcasts, please check out my Patreon where for $5 I will give you a shout out on the podcast of your choice. Thank you to, Rob Kelly, Roberta Rakove, Matt Simonson, and Christopher Vanni. For $10, in addition to the shout-out I'll send you a surprise piece of Bob Dylan merch! Thank you to Kaitie Cerovec who is already enjoying her merch! I have a merch shop! Check out all sorts of fun Bob Dylan (and more) items! Thank you to Mark Godfrey, & Linda Maultsby over on Substack.
Email us at songsofbobdylan@gmail.com
Subscribe: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack.

Welcome to Songs of Experience: A Bob Dylan Podcast, where we explore the man and the music, one song at a time. In this episode, Henry welcomes renowned scholar and author of "About Man and God and Law: The Spiritual Wisdom of Bob Dylan," Dr. Stephen Daniel Arnoff to discuss a top 3 song, of Henry's from the legendary, Highway 61 Revisited, 1965's DESOLATION ROW. 

Listen to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUvcWXTIjcU

Desolation Row

Written by: Bob Dylan

They’re selling postcards of the hanging

They’re painting the passports brown

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors

The circus is in town

Here comes the blind commissioner

They’ve got him in a trance

One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker

The other is in his pants

And the riot squad they’re restless

They need somewhere to go

As Lady and I look out tonight

From Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy

“It takes one to know one,” she smiles

And puts her hands in her back pockets

Bette Davis style

And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning

“You Belong to Me I Believe”

And someone says, “You’re in the wrong place my friend

You better leave”

And the only sound that’s left

After the ambulances go

Is Cinderella sweeping up

On Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden

The stars are beginning to hide

The fortune-telling lady

Has even taken all her things inside

All except for Cain and Abel

And the hunchback of Notre Dame

Everybody is making love

Or else expecting rain

And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing

He’s getting ready for the show

He’s going to the carnival tonight

On Desolation Row

Now Ophelia, she’s ’neath the window

For her I feel so afraid

On her twenty-second birthday

She already is an old maid

To her, death is quite romantic

She wears an iron vest

Her profession’s her religion

Her sin is her lifelessness

And though her eyes are fixed upon

Noah’s great rainbow

She spends her time peeking

Into Desolation Row

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood

With his memories in a trunk

Passed this way an hour ago

With his friend, a jealous monk

He looked so immaculately frightful

As he bummed a cigarette

Then he went off sniffing drainpipes

And reciting the alphabet

Now you would not think to look at him

But he was famous long ago

For playing the electric violin

On Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world

Inside of a leather cup

But all his sexless patients

They’re trying to blow it up

Now his nurse, some local loser

She’s in charge of the cyanide hole

And she also keeps the cards that read

“Have Mercy on His Soul”

They all play on pennywhistles

You can hear them blow

If you lean your head out far enough

From Desolation Row

Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains

They’re getting ready for the feast

The Phantom of the Opera

A perfect image of a priest

They’re spoonfeeding Casanova

To get him to feel more assured

Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence

After poisoning him with words

And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls

“Get Outa Here If You Don’t Know

Casanova is just being punished for going

To Desolation Row”

Now at midnight all the agents

And the superhuman crew

Come out and round up everyone

That knows more than they do

Then they bring them to the factory

Where the heart-attack machine

Is strapped across their shoulders

And then the kerosene

Is brought down from the castles

By insurance men who go

Check to see that nobody is escaping

To Desolation Row

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune

The Titanic sails at dawn

And everybody’s shouting

“Which Side Are You On?”

And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot

Fighting in the captain’s tower

While calypso singers laugh at them

And fishermen hold flowers

Between the windows of the sea

Where lovely mermaids flow

And nobody has to think too much

About Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday

(About the time the doorknob broke)

When you asked how I was doing

Was that some kind of joke?

All these people that you mention

Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame

I had to rearrange their faces

And give them all another name

Right now I can’t read too good

Don’t send me no more letters no

Not unless you mail them

From Desolation Row

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

Follow us on Instagram @songsofbob,
If you would like to support hosting my podcasts, please check out my Patreon where for $5 I will give you a shout out on the podcast of your choice. Thank you to, Rob Kelly, Roberta Rakove, Matt Simonson, and Christopher Vanni. For $10, in addition to the shout-out I'll send you a surprise piece of Bob Dylan merch! Thank you to Kaitie Cerovec who is already enjoying her merch! I have a merch shop! Check out all sorts of fun Bob Dylan (and more) items! Thank you to Mark Godfrey, & Linda Maultsby over on Substack.
Email us at songsofbobdylan@gmail.com
Subscribe: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack.

In this weird Episode, Henry veers off course to talk to Bob Dylan scholar, writer & expert, Ray Padgett, about Weird Al Yankovic's 2003 pastiche of a Bob Dylan song, "Bob." Come for Ray Padgett, stay for the best palindromes you'll hear today! I promise, next month, back to a Bob Dylan song! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIty7RqbF9o 

I, man, am Regal, a German am I

Never odd or even

If I had a Hi-Fi

Madam, I'm Adam

Too hot to hoot

No lemons, no melon

Too bad I hid a boot

Lisa Bonet ate no basil

Warsaw was raw

Was it a car or a cat I saw?

Rise to vote, sir

Do geese see God?

Do nine men interpret? Nine men I nod

Rats live on no evil star

Won't lovers revolt now?

Race fast safe car

Pa's a sap

Ma is as selfless as I am

May a moody baby doom a yam

Ah Satan sees Natasha

No devil lived on

Lonely Tylenol

Not a banana baton

No X in Nixon

O stone, be not so

O Geronimo, no minor ego

"Naomi" I moan

A Toyota's a Toyota

A dog, a panic, in a pagoda

Oh no, Don Ho

Nurse, I spy gypsies, run!

Senile felines

Now I see bees, I won

UFO tofu

We panic in a pew

Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo

God, a red nugget, a fat egg under a dog

Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog

 

Follow us on Instagram @songsofbob,
If you would like to support hosting my podcasts, please check out my Patreon where for $5 I will give you a shout out on the podcast of your choice. Thank you to, Rob Kelly, Roberta Rakove, Matt Simonson, and Christopher Vanni. For $10, in addition to the shout-out I'll send you a surprise piece of Bob Dylan merch! Thank you to Kaitie Cerovec who is already enjoying her merch! I have a merch shop! Check out all sorts of fun Bob Dylan (and more) items! Thank you to Mark Godfrey, & Linda Maultsby over on Substack.
Email us at songsofbobdylan@gmail.com
Subscribe: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack.

Welcome to Songs of Experience: A Bob Dylan Podcast, where we explore the man and the music one song at a time. Henry brings in Professor Jon Lasser to teach us all about the early 60's Bob Dylan song that didn't see the light of day till the mid 90s, "John Brown."

Learn more from Jon at @teachingbobdylan!

Listen and follow along with the song here:

John Brown

Written by: Bob Dylan

John Brown went off to war to fight on a foreign shore

His mama sure was proud of him!

He stood straight and tall in his uniform and all

His mama’s face broke out all in a grin

“Oh son, you look so fine, I’m glad you’re a son of mine

You make me proud to know you hold a gun

Do what the captain says, lots of medals you will get

And we’ll put them on the wall when you come home”

As that old train pulled out, John’s ma began to shout

Tellin’ ev’ryone in the neighborhood:

“That’s my son that’s about to go, he’s a soldier now, you know”

She made well sure her neighbors understood

She got a letter once in a while and her face broke into a smile

As she showed them to the people from next door

And she bragged about her son with his uniform and gun

And these things you called a good old-fashioned war

Oh! Good old-fashioned war!

Then the letters ceased to come, for a long time they did not come

They ceased to come for about ten months or more

Then a letter finally came saying, “Go down and meet the train

Your son’s a-coming home from the war”

She smiled and went right down, she looked everywhere around

But she could not see her soldier son in sight

But as all the people passed, she saw her son at last

When she did she could hardly believe her eyes

Oh his face was all shot up and his hand was all blown off

And he wore a metal brace around his waist

He whispered kind of slow, in a voice she did not know

While she couldn’t even recognize his face!

Oh! Lord! Not even recognize his face

“Oh tell me, my darling son, pray tell me what they done

How is it you come to be this way?”

He tried his best to talk but his mouth could hardly move

And the mother had to turn her face away

“Don’t you remember, Ma, when I went off to war

You thought it was the best thing I could do?

I was on the battleground, you were home . . . acting proud

You wasn’t there standing in my shoes”

“Oh, and I thought when I was there, God, what am I doing here?

I’m a-tryin’ to kill somebody or die tryin’

But the thing that scared me most was when my enemy came close

And I saw that his face looked just like mine”

Oh! Lord! Just like mine!

“And I couldn’t help but think, through the thunder rolling and stink

That I was just a puppet in a play

And through the roar and smoke, this string is finally broke

And a cannonball blew my eyes away”

As he turned away to walk, his Ma was still in shock

At seein’ the metal brace that helped him stand

But as he turned to go, he called his mother close

And he dropped his medals down into her hand

Copyright © 1963, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1996 by Special Rider Music

Follow us on Instagram @songsofbob,
If you would like to support hosting my podcasts, please check out my Patreon where for $5 I will give you a shout out on the podcast of your choice. Thank you to, Rob Kelly, Roberta Rakove, Matt Simonson, and Christopher Vanni. For $10, in addition to the shout-out I'll send you a surprise piece of Bob Dylan merch! Thank you to Kaitie Cerovec who is already enjoying her merch! I have a merch shop! Check out all sorts of fun Bob Dylan (and more) items! Thank you to Mark Godfrey, & Linda Maultsby over on Substack.
Email us at songsofbobdylan@gmail.com
Subscribe: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack.