Tag Archives: Dylan

ESoED Cover: Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’

I’ve sung Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” (and/or Jimi Hendrix’s cover of it) a whole lot through the years, usually backup, with a lot of different bands and people hanging out with a guitar…around a campfire, in somebody’s basement…

But Kevin’s first time ever playing the song was last month (June 13th, if my TapeMachine app can be trusted). And he definitely brought his own style to it.

It was late, after the kids’ bedtime, and I was putting a new laptop desk together. The thing came in a thousand pieces (hyperbole!), so I was listening to one of my Pandora stations to pass the time.

Kevin started playing along with his acoustic, and after Dylan had finished, Kevin kept playing and told me to sing. I looked up the lyrics (singing along is one thing, but carrying the load is another 😉 and after we played around with it once or twice, I pulled up the TapeMachine on my phone, so we wouldn’t forget the feel of it.

Well, we haven’t changed a thing since then, but here it is:

What do you think?

UPDATE: One of my teacher-friends on Twitter just asked if he could download and add to this. The answer is YES! Here’s the file!

I Shall Be Released: Rough Take

Us way back in 2005 🙂

Back in August, I went through a Dylan-song obsession of sorts.

The whole story is over at my education/teaching website, but to put it briefly, Kevin came home one day with a song on his mind that led us to think of other versions of that song that led me to a way of teaching a unit on the writer’s voice.

The song was “I Shall Be Released” and has always been one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs. But I really had no idea how many different versions of the song have been played and recorded. Seriously.

Well, it wasn’t long after that school started, and I was sucked into my workaholic alter-ego, and neither Kevin nor I remembered that we had actually recorded the song ourselves sometime in the course of those two or three days.

And then yesterday I was looking through some folders and serendipity!

It’s loud, with a lot of background hiss, since I recorded it on my laptop with the system’s basic voice-recording program. And my voice is feeding back a LOT. So you may want to turn your speakers down a bit before you hit play. 😉

I Shall Be Released: