There Must Be Some Kind of Way Outta Here

This post is sponsored by Old Thompson Blended Whiskey. An excellent value.

It is sometimes hard for me to separate the legend that is Bob Dylan from a time in the mid-90s when I was often to be found hanging out with a friend of mine drinking Old Tennis Shoe, er, Old Thompson whiskey and listening to Dylan's back catalogue. My friend was a dedicated fan while I was a neophyte and it was a lot of fun moving beyond the songs I'd heard on the radio such as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Tangled Up in Blue". For someone so prolific and so influential, it's an indictment of classic rock radio that it managed to only keep 3 or 4 of his songs in rotation.

We would joyously put the work day behind us and laugh as "I Shall Be Free" blared on the stereo. At other times we'd mourn our failed relationships and drown the attendant loneliness as we plumbed the depths of 1975's Blood on the Tracks, as if we were commiserating with Dylan himself. I came to really enjoy his music and understand his outsized influence on the direction of pop music in that latter half of the 1960s.

While I too love the 3 albums he did after he went electric and recognize Blood on the Tracks as a masterpiece, I became quite partial to the albums that came after these two legendary periods in his career: 1976's Desire and John Wesley Harding from 1967.

John Wesley Harding came out with psychedelia in full swing and after Dylan had helped transform rock'n'roll into rock music over the course of his previous 3 albums. Gone was Al Kooper's organ and that wild, mercurial sound of 1965-66. Instead, John Wesley Harding is mainly Dylan's acoustic guitar, voice, and harmonica accompanied by bass and drums. A very stripped back affair.

I came to the album at a remove of nearly 30 years from its release and going in knew only that it featured "All Along the Watchtower", the song that Jimi Hendrix had made his own. I would soon learn that Hendrix had also covered another song from John Wesley Harding - "Drifter's Escape".

"Drifter's Escape" is less than 3 minutes long but it packs a lot into that time. It's got an insistent beat with Charlie McCoy's bass just careering along beside it. Meanwhile the lyrics relate the plight of the drifter who is caught in a weird, Kafka-esque snafu. He has been found guilty, but of what?

"And I still do not know/What it was that I’ve done wrong"

But Fate intervenes before punishment is applied as a bolt of lightning hits the courthouse: "And while everybody knelt to pray/The drifter did escape". The song has no chorus so Dylan can fit his bite-sized passion play into the time allotted.

The song barrels along at a good clip and I love how Dylan opens his story in media res. It's as catchy as it is enigmatic.