It’s been more than 60 years since a guitar-toting Bob Dylan arrived in Greenwich Village and changed the course of popular music. Joan Osborne is adding her “Dylanology” to the revival of interest in the 84-year-old cultural icon and Nobel Prize winner.
Osborne’s upcoming free concert in Haddon Heights will focus on her reinterpretations of Dylan’s canon. She released an album of his songs in 2017 and a live album, “Dylanology,” this year.
“I think my IQ probably went up five or 10 points in the process of making (the Dylan albums) and in the process of singing those songs night after night on tour,” Osborne said.
Osborne made the songs her own — not just substituting her sweet, soulful voice, but also changing tempos and their overall character.
“Sometimes you pick a song and maybe you look to other people’s cover versions to see what other people have done with it,” Osborne said. “And you try to find a place within that universe that works for you.”
The process brought her further appreciation for Dylan’s songwriting and lessons for her own.
“I think there’s a certain kind of artistic osmosis that happens when you are living with that material from this very brilliant artist day after day,” Osborne said. “He’s a serious artist, but there’s an incredible playfulness in what he does, and especially in what he’s doing in this third act of his career. That was a bit of a revelation to me. So I tried to use that kind of freedom and playfulness in my own writing process.”
In fact, Osborne’s next album is a new take on her own 1995 breakout album, “Relish,” with top jazz musicians, including Montclair’s Christian McBride.
“I just was on cloud nine the whole time,” Osborne said. “Hearing these incredible musical minds connect with these songs that I’ve lived with for 30 years and just totally explode them and turn them into something new.”
Like Dylan, Osborne came to downtown Manhattan and had her first successes as a musician there. Osborne grew up in Kentucky and wanted to make movies, so she entered the New York University film school in the late 1980s.
While taking a semester off to earn money for college, she got up to sing at an open-mic night in the East Village. Encouraged by other musicians, she returned weekly, which led to a new passion and career.
“There was something about singing that really galvanized me,” Osborne said. “Filmmaking is a very lengthy process, from the initial idea to the finished product…Singing is kind of the polar opposite of that. Of course, you prepare in whatever ways you prepare, and that can sometimes take years, but the actual singing itself comes out of your body, and it’s very immediate. And if you’re doing it in front of a live audience, you get an immediate response from that.”
After the success of “Relish,” she collaborated with musicians from Luciano Pavorotti to the blues-gospel trio The Holmes Brothers. For a time, she became part of the post-Jerry Garcia incarnation of the Grateful Dead.
“It’s been nice to be accepted into these different communities,” Osborne said. “I feel like music has a very important job to do right now in this country and in this world, because I think that the great danger that we’re seeing unfold right now — that is so frightening to me — is that we’re losing sight of each other, and we’re so divided…I think music is one of those things that allows people to connect with each other and recognize each other just as fellow human beings.”
Her big-break single, “One of Us,” contemplates the nature of God, and it was the beginning of Osborne’s exploration of spirituality through music.
“I think music is magic and sacred,” Osborne said. “It’s no accident that every religious tradition in the world has some kind of music that goes along with their rituals. And it’s got a power that is able to jump over the hurdles that we put up to truly being connected with ourselves and to the divine. This modern world that we live in, we have a lot of things that get in the way of being connected to that. Music is one of the methods of getting around that and going right to the heart of things.”
Joan Osborne will perform at the McLaughlin-Norcross Memorial Dell in Haddon Lake Park, Haddon Heights, on August 13 at 7:30 pm. Admission is free.
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