"Oh, God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe said, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God said, "No" Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want, Abe, but
The next time you see me comin', you better run"
Well, Abe said, "Where d'you want this killin' done?"
God said, "Out on Highway 61"
--Bob Dylan
Highway 61 is a pretty long road... It runs from North Mudflap Minnesota all the way down to
New Orleans. I've driven it too. Not all of it, but a couple of good chunks of it. The BW photo below
was taken by me while touring down through Wisconsin along the Mississippi, this was somewhere
North of LaCrosse I believe... maybe 1983. Pretty wide, pretty fast, nicely maintained, easy to navigate,
I liked the road quite well. Davie and I used this picture for the cover of our second LP recording,
called "Home by the Morning." That was in '84. *grins
We didn't have any record contract with any major label, so the LP recordings with this picture were
published by a small label called "Eagle Records." We were thrilled to have a good quality pressing
and a little more legitimacy than we had with our first self published recording. But Eagle records
ended up going bust... they took money from us performers but didn't pay any of their bills.
We were lucky to find out where they got their pressings done, and we went and paid what Eagle
Records owed on our project, got our masters out of limbo.
Other performers weren't so persistent or something. Some of their masters and recordings disappeared.
Anyway we were able to get this recording on Red House Records later, which did us a lot
of good (compared to being absolutely nowhere, like it looks in this picture). Red House got us played
on public radio. Wisconsin public radio was state wide, as was Minnesota public radio. And the same
people who listened to the radio programs would come to the shows. From Milwaukee to Minneapolis...
The color photo below was taken in Mississippi a couple years ago, when Davie and I were touring down
that way. We drove down the Natchez Trace, and picked up Highway 61 driving south toward New Orleans.
It's like two lane blacktop in that area, but everybody steps right along. Two lane blacktop roads can be
dicey, even in nice weather. You take your life in your hands to pass a durn dump truck that's going 45 mph
and leaking gravel to bounce on the road and chip your windshield, and then up the road a mile is a doggone
retiree-mobile... a 30 foot motor home driven by an old dude who's so bent he can hardly see over the
steeringwheel. (wait, I resemble this remark...)
You finally pass the motorhome which was going 40, whip around it at major risk of injury or agonizing death
and beyond the next bend you slow down for a School bus... Might as well put a Zane Grey novel in the CD
player and relax and enjoy the ride. The joys of the road.
