Into the Great Unknown

How do we begin to understand Bob Dylan, the inimitable folk artist, the musical visionary, the “complete unknown” turned unknowable force? It’s hard not to start with the past, but it might make more sense to look to the future.

Widely considered the most influential songwriter of all time, Dylan’s work set the tone for the American musical canon, offering a soundtrack that captured and created the cultural zeitgeist of entire eras. Rolling Stone certified his status as the Greatest Songwriter of all time, and the originator of Greatest Song ever written for “Like a Rolling Stone,” largely due to Dylan’s mastery of creating songs that feel current — necessary, even — in any era. For all its timelessness, there’s a futurism to his music; Dylan’s lyrics speak across time and space, capturing feelings and memories so universal that they feel like our own.

Although it would take years to comprehend the scope of his influence, The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa makes a formidable attempt.
The Bob Dylan Center houses The Bob Dylan Archive®, where curated exhibits portray the influence, struggles and inspirations of Dylan’s decades-deep career. The Archive was purchased by The George Kaiser Family Foundation in 2016 for a reported $15-$20 million (Kaiser is a lifelong fan), after bringing Woody Guthrie’s archives to Tulsa in 2011. The American Song Archives now manages both.

What started as a collection of 6,000 items saved by Dylan has grown to nearly 100,000 artifacts, including handwritten lyrics and letters, photographs, recordings, a recreation of the Columbia Records studio where Dylan logged many hits, mementos from famous friends and his coveted original Royal Caravan songwriting typewriter. Since opening, it’s become a pilgrimage destination for fans and Dylanologists from all over the world who want to study the singer’s creative process and feel his import up close.

“As with any museum or archival connection, there’s far more on vault shelves than we can display at any one time,” explains Bob Dylan Center Director Steven Jenkins. “So we start from a place of ‘What stories can we tell? What’s going to convey the most about this person?’”

This focus on storytelling helps distinguish the archive from mere memorabilia, creating a dialogue about creativity and making at large, with Dylan as primary exemplar. Much of the gallery is thanks to the vision of Senior Director of Archives and Exhibitions Mark Davidson, who spent two years archiving and curating the artifacts within their historic and sociopolitical context. It also includes some of Dylan’s visual art, a jukebox of Dylan-inspired music curated by Elvis Costello and work from artists inspired by Dylan’s legacy. Notable among these is the Center’s inaugural Artist in Residence, the poet, musician, activist and 23rd United States Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo (Mvskoke).

A cultural pioneer herself, Harjo describes Dylan’s work as calling back the original poetry of history and humankind, and him as “cultural messenger, prophet, storyteller, philosopher.”

“It’s not just his lyrics,” she insists. “It’s his art, music, but also the creativity of being a cultural figure, and being led to the right place at the right time. There’s no one else really like him.”

Importantly, the Center also spotlights musicians who made significant contributions to Dylan and rock ‘n’ roll. Currently on exhibit is Jesse Ed Davis: Natural Anthem, co-curated by Harjo and biographer Doug Miller. OKC-born Davis was a Native American Music Hall of Famer who performed on several of Dylan’s most famous songs. Despite being a collaborator of renegades like Jackson Browne, Taj Mahal, John Lennon, Leon Russell and Eric Clapton, his own influence has been relatively unsung to date.

Walking through the Center is visually, sonically and emotionally arresting. Iterative recordings of famous songs that showcase Dylan’s painstaking creative process, plus an album timeline and a projected film experience render what Jenkins calls a “multiplicity of Dylans.” Together, they offer fractals of a kaleidoscopic career, mere puzzle pieces within a sprawling portrait of the artist’s influence on American culture.
“I love it all, but his words are most appealing thing to me,” gushes former Bob Dylan Center member Bob Young. “They have this mesmerizing effect. ‘Chimes of freedom flashing’? Oh my gosh. Those words just blow me away.

“Dylan had this plan,” Young continues, “and it worked out in the long run. He could see into the future. He isn’t normal. He’s a genius.”

Genius, iconoclast, prophet. These reflections attempt to capture Dylan’s visionary essence, and gift for writing songs that predict the future. Or at minimum, make sense of it. His transcendent protest anthem, “The Times They Are a-Changin’” is as relevant and alive today as when written in 1964:

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

Plenty has changed since Dylan first sang a voice unto America’s unsung youth 50 years ago, but with our modern socio-political divide deepening in the face of Capitol raids, contentious election cycles and a world literally on fire, America needs the wail, grief and charged relief of a populist anthem like “The Times They Are a-Changin’” as much today as it ever has.

I am not alone in this sentiment, evidenced by the 25 musicians and celebrities who journeyed to Cain’s Ballroom on Jan. 24 to lend their own voices and essence to a show hosted by The Center titled Shelter from the Storm: A Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Blood on the Tracks.

Harjo, one of several artists to perform, thought it would offer a catharsis. “It’s a way to come together,” she says, “and sing songs that carry social, political and spiritual import at a time when our culture and our society is in desperate need of voices like these.

“We just had an inauguration, there’s the fires, what’s been going on in Gaza and the Middle East. I’m just excited to hear everybody, and to be in that moment thinking about legacy … and this voice that probably helped bring a certain kind of consciousness to the surface.” 

Harjo’s predictions were right, as the evening delivered a cosmic, entrancing set of performances that had a sold-out Cain’s Ballroom transfixed. Elvis Costello, Diana Krall, Lucinda Williams, Amy Ray, Adam Granduciel, Kevin Morby, Sharon Van Etten, Lonnie Holley and Harjo, among several others, performed the iconic Blood on the Tracks album front-to-back, followed by two hours of favorites and deep cuts from the broader Dylan catalog. The bill even featured three musicians from the original album session: Greg Inhofer, Billy Peterson and Kevin Odegard, who played the same acoustic guitar used in the original recording sessions, now on display at BDC.

Actor Michael Shannon mesmerized the audience with a stunning harmonica-ripping performance of the almost nine-minute long “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” played entirely from memory. Amy Ray of Indigo Girls a sang a gut-wrenching rendition of “You’re a Big Girl Now,” reminding us that “Time is a jet plane that moves too fast,” and that shows like this come around once in a lifetime.

In a bit of synchronicity, Blood on the Tracks was released on Jan. 20, 1975, meaning its 50th anniversary fell on Inauguration Day, an apt day to revisit the singer’s catalog. And Dylan played his first show at historic Cafe Wha in New York — the one that forever changed the tide of his career — on Jan. 24, 1961, with a set of Woody Guthrie songs. Ironically, the Blood on the Tracks anniversary show happened 54 years later to the day in Guthrie’s home state, where Dylan’s archives now sit just two doors down from Guthrie’s own; that building is emblazoned with a portrait of Guthrie and his “fascist-killing” machine, at a moment when the specter of fascism creeps closer every day.

Is it fate? A prophecy fulfilled? Good planning?

One would imagine Greenwich Village or even Dylan’s home state of Minnesota might make for a more apt resting place for his archives. When asked why he chose Tulsa, Dylan told Vanity Fair that although the coasts boast vibrations, “I like the casual hum of the heartland.”

In the biopic A Complete Unknown, Timothee Chalamet’s Dylan shows us that Bob kept his dearest relationships close. It’s only natural that he’d choose to park his life’s work right next door to Guthrie’s in Tulsa, especially after being so taken with the Guthrie Center on a visit in 2013. In true Dylan fashion, he has famously not visited his own eponymous center.

But that’s not to suggest we shouldn’t. Especially for younger folks, who may be less familiar with his storied canon, the recent convergence of Dylanology in film, television and sound, coupled with his upcoming show at The Tulsa Theatre on March 25, offers a new doorway into his work. For those eager to peek through it, the Bob Dylan Center is a great place to start.

It’s impossible not to wonder about the next Dylan; who from this era may someday command the same significance. Harjo said that our closest examples are probably Beyonce and Taylor Swift, for all their poetry and artistry, despite perhaps not being taken seriously.

“He came of age during [the Vietnam war era] in a time of social change …” she says. “In a way, we’re in a similar moment in history, and I wonder who those younger voices are coming up.”

Thankfully, The Dylan Center doesn’t just catalog decades of Dylan. Rather, it pushes into how Dylan did and does his work; how others are inspired by it; and what it all means for those of us listening today, on the other side.

“Something as obvious as ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’” Jenkins says, “which I’ve heard thousands of times, as many people have: To me it still sounds like the future. And we will never catch up with that.

“The whole body of work strikes me that way. These are songs about real people and real tragedies. They’re pushing against any boundaries that might have been established previously about what a pop song could be, and there’s a timelessness to them. Decades from now, people will still be listening to them, and I think they’ll still sound like they’re beamed in from the future.”

The Bob Dylan Center is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday in The Tulsa Arts District. Admission is $15 for adults, $22 for a dual ticket to The Bob Dylan Center and The Woody Guthrie Center and free for Bob Dylan Center members.