On Saturday, May 14th, I appeared on the Pod Dylan podcast to discuss Bob Dylan’s “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” track from his most recent album, Rough & Rowdy Ways. The Pod Dylan podcast is an excellent show on The Fire and Water Podcast Network that celebrates Bob Dylan’s music one song at a time.

The host, Rob Kelly, asked me on the show after reading my The Flummoxed article “Bob Dylan: The Troubadour Plays Mobile – A Concert Review.” In this episode we talk about how I became a Dylan fan, my first Dylan concert, and, of course, the song “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” itself, to which we hope to bring more attention (although the track has had success, it is often overshadowed by the other Rough & Rowdy Ways tracks). I hope you enjoy the episode!

Pod Dylan episode “#208 – Goodbye Jimmy Reed”

“Bob Dylan: The Troubadour Plays Mobile – A Concert Review” by Ethan McGuire

Listen to “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” by Bob Dylan

Corrections, Additions, & Notes

  • I apologize for saying “kind of” and “you know” too much!
  • Early in the show, I mention hearing about Bob Dylan from my “hippy aunts and uncles,” but this is not an accurate statement. I did not interact, as a child, with my aunts and uncles who were actual hippies, if any of them really were, which I doubt, and I do not even remember hearing much about Bob Dylan from many in my close family. I apologize. I was trying to quickly convey that I heard about Dylan too reverently from time to time from some Boomer generation people with whom I interacted growing up, but I could not remember who they were, and, for some reason, that translated in my brain, in that moment, as “hippy aunts and uncles.”
  • Early on, when I referenced the Slow Train Coming “song,” I meant the album.
  • How did I say “hijink” instead of “hijack”?!
  • When Rob references Dylan’s “the valley of dry bone dreams” line in his song “Dignity” and calls it a reference to impotence, I meant to interject that this is probably a reference to the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones in the Holy Bible’s book of Ezekiel, chapter 37.
  • I wanted to compare Dylan’s embracing of a realistic unity through music to Michael Jackson’s song and music video “Black or White,” but we ran out of time.