TANGLED UP IN BLUE. Quilt by Lucy D. Part 2

Melbourne and Port Fairy, 2022. Coragulac 2027

In part 1 of this story  We had to lean over Lucy’s quilt closely to read the name of the album amidst the embroidery.

Black lettering against a red background, it made no attempt to copy the orange and yellow CBS label from 1974.

Blood On The Tracks.

Did my quilt-making cousin know the album’s opening song was, all so briefly, part of our little concerts?

No, it was serendipity. Precious serendipity.

In 2019 my brother Peter, the unofficial musical director of the Stereo Stories band, suggested we have a crack at ‘Tangled Up In Blue’. As our show’s overall director/curator, I was puzzled and delighted. Puzzled because we didn’t have a Stereo Story to accompany it, delighted because it is a truly great song, unfolding line after line, verse after verse. It’s a novel, a movie, a poem, a play, a dream, a series of paintings. It’s whatever you make of it.

What did we make of it?

In deciding to share the seven long verses amongst our four singers, Peter said the first verse would be my responsibility. Mine. Now, while our concerts’ interweaving fusion of song and storytelling was my idea back in 2014, I don’t have a musical bone in my skinny body. Hardly know a key change from a chord change. Can’t sing, can’t play.

“Doesn’t matter,” said my younger brother. “You know how to narrate, so just do it like you’re telling a story.”

“What if I miss my cue?”

“It’s the first verse, bro. There’s no cue to miss.”

“What if I stuff up the rhythm?”

“It’s not as if you’re playing an instrument. You’ll be fine.”

Photo by Eric Algra. 2016.

What Peter didn’t say and I suppose didn’t need to say was “I’ll be right with you. I’ll look after it all.” Which is what he did all those 10 years with the band.  He trusted me to decide the cues within the writers’ stories, I trusted him to decide the arrangements of the songs with the musicians.

“I’ll come in on guitar on the fifth line of your verse, and then away we go.”

But then came COVID.  The first time we had a chance to do the song, the Memo in Melbourne in early 2022, our dear friend and colleague (and serious Bob-head) Brian Nankervis was on the bill, so it made sense for him to narrate the first verse.

Come early September 2022, my tiny moment arrived. A fledgling literary festival in lovely Port Fairy. A theatre that had a had a few lives (including as an indoor cricket centre). Second bracket. Third item. We’d just done a story about State Trooper by Springsteen, so needed to give the audience a bit of room to relax.

I looked across to Peter. He gave me an almost imperceptible nod.

‘Early one morning/the sun was shining’ I said, ‘I was laying in bed…’

Peter sang the second verse (‘She was married when we first met’), as bass and cello came in.

David took the third verse (‘I had a job in the great north woods’), with everyone now singing harmonies on the final line each time.

Chris didn’t mind singing about ‘working in a topless place’ as drums and accordion entered the fray.

Martina ‘lit a burner on the stove’, David came back, ‘living with them on Montague Street’ and Peter wrapped it all up, ‘Now I’m going back again/I got to get to her somehow…’

Did it work? It’s not for me to say.

There are many versions of ‘Tangled Up In Blue’, from Joan Osborne to the Indigo Girls, from The Jerry Garcia Band 12 minutes versions to Australian band The Whitlams. There are even instrumental versions. And Dylan’s own variations. You’ll find them on YouTube or Spotify or Bandcamp and the like. Ours? Ours you won’t find anywhere, except in the collective memory of those of us (well, of just me, really!) at the Memo and Port Fairy in 2022.

Peter took an extended break from the band at the end of 2023. Another band was getting more gigs, and had less travel and less rehearsals. Plus there was the day job, and family. And life.

But if he should pass this way again, to borrow from another song on Blood On the Tracks, he can rest assured, I’ll see if we can get a gig in Lucy’s home town. On that I give my word.

We’ve got just the right backdrop for the stage. And just the right song to kick off the show.

Stereo Story 900.  Part 2

Thank you to Karl Dubravs for research.

‘Now I’m going back again…’  Final verse of Tangled Up On Blue via Peter Maskell. Photo by Eric Algra, 2023.