By Jesse Graham
AFTER the recent announcement that he was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, it’s fair to say that it’s been a big year for Bob Dylan.
But marking one year since its first show in the Yarra Valley, presenting the life and music of Dylan in a show that’s part cover and part history, it’s also been a big year for DYLANesque.
The band’s frontman, Healesville’s Jeff Jenkins, said that he first heard the news of Dylan’s Nobel Prize when visiting his partner’s parents in England for their 50th wedding anniversary.
“There’d been murmurings that Bob was in consideration, maybe not last year but the year before, and it’d been sort-of on my radar,” Mr Jenkins said.
“From my point of view, I just thought ‘about time, how fantastic’.”
Though he said that he didn’t become a fan of Dylan’s music until he was in his 50s, Mr Jenkins said he quickly saw the “cleverness” in the singer’s lyrics
“In Shakespearian work, they have the iambic pentameter … and Bob, his phrasing to me is almost like iambic pentameter,” he said.
“For instance, we’ve got, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question,’ – that is the flow.
“In Bob’s music, it’s the same – ‘Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people, they’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made.”
Considering the musician’s colossal back-catalogue of music, asking what Dylan song is his favourite is an impossible question for Mr Jenkins – though he said Tangled Up and Like a Rolling Stone were good examples of his lyrical prowess.
“It’s such a hard question to answer because in my show we do about 35 of Bob’s songs, and they are probably what we consider the really popular part of his catalogue, and there’s another 400 songs we don’t even get close to doing,” he said.
“Like a Rolling Stone, he called this a long, sort-of expression of vomit – he’s just so angry at this person he’s writing a song about, but the lyrics have just got such power in them.
“’When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose’, – that is now part of normal English-speaking vernacular, and I think that’s one of the things that we need to really reflect on.
“There’s only a few people, a few writers in the world that have written lines that have become part of English usage.”
One year on from the band’s first concert at a Yarra Valley winery, Mr Jenkins said DYLANesque had played 10 shows around the Valley and closer to the city, including at Richmond’s Corner Hotel.
“Every time we do a show, we finesse it a little more,” he said.
“We’re just trying to really turn the screws and make the show as great as it can be, and it’s just knocking people out at the moment.”
The show itself tells the story of Dylan’s career, including the places he was living and people he was with during his big moments – and talking about the hits he wrote that became classics for other musicians, like Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.
Mr Jenkins said DYLANesque would return to Healesville’s Memo Hall on Saturday 3 December for the band’s third show at the venue, with the first two selling out quickly.
“People just keep coming up and saying ‘when are you coming back?’, it’s been an awesome response.”
The show begins at 8pm and entry is $25, or $22.50 for concession holders.
For more information or to buy tickets, visit ach.yarraranges.vic.gov.au, call 1300 368 333 or email boxoffice@yarraranges.vic.gov.au.
