Off the Grid: Doin’ It Dylan

Blue Hat

danielsFor anyone who’s lost touch with Charlie Daniels over the past few decades, now’s a good time to check him out again.

Inspired after providing music on period instruments for AMC’s transcontinental-railroad-era “Hell on Wheels,” the Charlie Daniels Band went full steam ahead with “Off the Grid,” an acoustic take on a set of Dylan covers.

Daniels has a long-ago connection with Dylan: In 1969-70, he played guitar and bass at sessions for Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline,” “Self-Portrait” and “New Morning” albums. As a last-minute replacement for a guitarist during the recording of “Skyline,” he played so well that Dylan insisted he be used as a guitarist for the rest of the sessions. Daniels has credited the experience as giving him the confidence to start writing songs, some of which were covered by Elvis Presley and Tammy Wynette, which in turn led him to start a solo career.

“I was not naive enough to think I could swim in the same stream as Dylan, try to emulate what he had done or cop his licks,” Daniels says in the album’s press release. “Nobody could do that, but my ambitions were to provoke some thought, to color the imagery of my songs, to think outside the box of conformity” — all of which he is still doing on “Off the Grid.”

As far as “acoustic” albums go, this is the real deal, with nary an electric bass or electronic keyboards. It’s just the Charlie Daniels Band, which since keyboardist Joel “Taz” DiGregorio’s death in 2011 has been Daniels — acoustic guitar, mandolin, fiddle; Pat McDonald — drums, congas, shaker, tambourine; Charlie Hayward — acoustic bass; Bruce Brown — acoustic guitar, mandolin, dobro, harmonica, banjo; Chris Wormer — acoustic guitar, 12-string guitar, slide guitar; and Shannon Wickline — piano. Engineer and co-producer (with Daniels) Casey Wood contributes harmonium.

The only song here on which Daniels played on the original with Dylan is “Country Pie” from “Nashville Skyline,” but this time he plays fiddle. Source LPs for the balance of “Grid” are “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” (1963); “The Times They Are a-Changin’ ” (1964); “Bringing It All Back Home” (1965); “Blonde on Blonde” (1966); “John Wesley Harding” (1967); “Self Portrait” (1970); “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. II” (1971); “Blood on the Tracks” (1975); and “Slow Train Coming” (1979).

For the most part, Daniels goes with traditional country arrangements with a strong mandolin and fiddle presence. Dobro and acoustic slide also figure prominently. While “Doin’ It Dylan” is excellent across the board, CDB does Dylan especially well on the fast-talking “Tangled Up in Blue,” the  tipsy “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” the nearly jazzy “Gotta Serve Somebody” and the not quite bluegrass “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn).”gnm_end_bug

Tracks
1. Tangled Up In Blue
2. The Times They Are A-Changin’
3. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
4. Gotta Serve Somebody
5. I Shall Be Released
6. Country Pie
7. Mr. Tambourine Man
8. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
9. Just Like A Woman
10. Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)

Total time: 40:36

External links
artist’s website
amazon.com
iTunes Store