Maria Muldaur
'Heart Of Mine' Reviews
'Heart Of Mine' Reviews
"...while other artists from Joan Baez to Judy Collins have cut entire albums of Dylan's tunes, none of them feels quite like this one. Muldaur, a fine blues and jazz singer, has taken the songs from Dylan's romantic canon and has fashioned them in her own image without losing their original bite, wonder, and humor...Recommended."
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ALL MUSIC GUIDE JULY 2006
Review by Thom Jurek
Maria Muldaur has been taken by Bob Dylan's music from the very start. They were on the coffeehouse circuit in New York in the early '60s, and she's had occasion to sing his praises from the stage and in Martin Scorsese's film No Direction Home. And while other artists from Joan Baez to Judy Collins have cut entire albums of Dylan's tunes, none of them feels quite like this one. Muldaur, a fine blues and jazz singer, has taken the songs from Dylan's romantic canon and has fashioned them in her own image without losing their original bite, wonder, and humor. Accompanied by her road band and a slew of guests that include Amos Garrett, Danny Caron, and Suzy Thompson, she has created a dreamy, languid, memorable song cycle. On first listen, it was a bit off-putting with all the license she took with the material, but on second and repeated listens, it settled in like an old friend on the couch telling stories. Beginning with a slippery, country-tinged bluesy "Buckets of Rain," and moving into a jazz groove on "Lay Lady Lay," (a weak tune by Dylan even if it was a hit) in which she changes the lyrics along gender lines and transforms the tune, perhaps offering a definitive version. The blues return on "To Be Alone with You," and she delivers a wrenching version of "Heart of Mine." The other stellar cuts here are the poignant "Wedding Song," the jaunty Caribbean-flavored "On a Night Like This," the sultry "Make You Feel My Love," and a funky jazz version of "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," which sounds like it could have been produced by Allen Toussaint as does "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight." Recommended.
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BLUES CRITIC.COM
JULY 2006
Maria Muldaur "Heart Of Mine: Love Songs Of Bob Dylan" (Telarc)
By Dylann DeAnna
*** 1/2 Bob Dylan is a great songwriter but let's face it...his voice is an acquired taste. He's a great singer but his voice lacks the beauty of some of his more tender songs. Maria Muldaur on the other hand is a great singer and has a beautiful voice- a disparate instrument with both childlike charm and enough whisky weathered weariness to keep it Bluesy. For "Heart Of Mine: Maria Muldaur Sings The Love Songs Of Bob Dylan" she's created some of the best Dylan covers to date.
The 12-song set pulls some popular titles ("Lay Lady Lay" re-titled "Lay Baby Lay", "On A Night Like This", "Make You Feel My Love") and some obscure album tracks ("Golden Loom", "Moonlight"), fitting them with Bluesy, Folksy and Jazzy backdrops that nearly turns them into new songs. Now some may call it blasphemy to take such liberties with a master's work but who really needs a Bob Dylan karaoke album? I do feel the Countrified twang she imbues on "Buckets Of Rain" was off-putting at first but methinks it was what Dylan was looking for when he wrote it. Next she sings a terrific version of a fairly lame song (Lay Baby Lay") and probably made it better than it was meant to be. The fairly straightforward Blues "To Be Alone With You" comes next and is not far removed from a Bonnie Raitt but this is followed by a pair of stunners.
Her take on "Heart Of Mine" is simply heart-wrenching with an absolutely flawless vocal full of vulnerability and ache. Props to Cranston Clements for his Spanish-flavored guitar solo. The somewhat sappy "Make You Feel My Love" always seemed out of place to me on Dylan's "Time Out Of Mind" LP like it was a song he's written for someone else but felt it was too good to not record. Billy Joel did a surprisingly strong version and both (alleged Country stars) Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood had big hits with the tune but Muldaur's
restrained reading here is the definitive version to date. It's pretty but just bittersweet enough to prevent a maudlin rating. That's why this CD works- it's a Muldaur record with her own band and a slew of guests (Amos Garrett, Chris Haugen, Suzy Thompson, etc...) that was labored over and performed as thoughtfully as any set of originals.
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Maria Muldaur has been taken by Bob Dylan's music from the very start. They were on the coffeehouse circuit in New York in the early '60s, and she's had occasion to sing his praises from the stage and in Martin Scorsese's film No Direction Home. And while other artists from Joan Baez to Judy Collins have cut entire albums of Dylan's tunes, none of them feels quite like this one. Muldaur, a fine blues and jazz singer, has taken the songs from Dylan's romantic canon and has fashioned them in her own image without losing their original bite, wonder, and humor. Accompanied by her road band and a slew of guests that include Amos Garrett, Danny Caron, and Suzy Thompson, she has created a dreamy, languid, memorable song cycle. On first listen, it was a bit off-putting with all the license she took with the material, but on second and repeated listens, it settled in like an old friend on the couch telling stories. Beginning with a slippery, country-tinged bluesy "Buckets of Rain," and moving into a jazz groove on "Lay Lady Lay," (a weak tune by Dylan even if it was a hit) in which she changes the lyrics along gender lines and transforms the tune, perhaps offering a definitive version. The blues return on "To Be Alone with You," and she delivers a wrenching version of "Heart of Mine." The other stellar cuts here are the poignant "Wedding Song," the jaunty Caribbean-flavored "On a Night Like This," the sultry "Make You Feel My Love," and a funky jazz version of "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," which sounds like it could have been produced by Allen Toussaint as does "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight." Recommended.
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BLUES CRITIC.COM
JULY 2006
Maria Muldaur "Heart Of Mine: Love Songs Of Bob Dylan" (Telarc)
By Dylann DeAnna
*** 1/2 Bob Dylan is a great songwriter but let's face it...his voice is an acquired taste. He's a great singer but his voice lacks the beauty of some of his more tender songs. Maria Muldaur on the other hand is a great singer and has a beautiful voice- a disparate instrument with both childlike charm and enough whisky weathered weariness to keep it Bluesy. For "Heart Of Mine: Maria Muldaur Sings The Love Songs Of Bob Dylan" she's created some of the best Dylan covers to date.
The 12-song set pulls some popular titles ("Lay Lady Lay" re-titled "Lay Baby Lay", "On A Night Like This", "Make You Feel My Love") and some obscure album tracks ("Golden Loom", "Moonlight"), fitting them with Bluesy, Folksy and Jazzy backdrops that nearly turns them into new songs. Now some may call it blasphemy to take such liberties with a master's work but who really needs a Bob Dylan karaoke album? I do feel the Countrified twang she imbues on "Buckets Of Rain" was off-putting at first but methinks it was what Dylan was looking for when he wrote it. Next she sings a terrific version of a fairly lame song (Lay Baby Lay") and probably made it better than it was meant to be. The fairly straightforward Blues "To Be Alone With You" comes next and is not far removed from a Bonnie Raitt but this is followed by a pair of stunners.
Her take on "Heart Of Mine" is simply heart-wrenching with an absolutely flawless vocal full of vulnerability and ache. Props to Cranston Clements for his Spanish-flavored guitar solo. The somewhat sappy "Make You Feel My Love" always seemed out of place to me on Dylan's "Time Out Of Mind" LP like it was a song he's written for someone else but felt it was too good to not record. Billy Joel did a surprisingly strong version and both (alleged Country stars) Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood had big hits with the tune but Muldaur's
restrained reading here is the definitive version to date. It's pretty but just bittersweet enough to prevent a maudlin rating. That's why this CD works- it's a Muldaur record with her own band and a slew of guests (Amos Garrett, Chris Haugen, Suzy Thompson, etc...) that was labored over and performed as thoughtfully as any set of originals.
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TUSCALOOSA NEWS July 30, 2006
MUSIC REVIEW: Maria Muldaur's 'Heart' focuses on Dylan's songs By Ben Windham Editorial Editor "Heart of Mine -- Love Songs of Bob Dylan" (Telarc) It's hard these days to say with certainty who is and who isn't a New Orleans musician. Like the floodwaters raised by Hurricane Katrina, last summer's storm has spread the city's musical community all over the map. I suppose it will have to suffice to say that at one time, both of the mainstays of Maria Muldaur's new album -- the sultry singer and keyboard man David Torkanowsky -- had homes in New Orleans. So did Bob Dylan, whose love songs are the focus of Muldaur's "Heart of Mine" collection, to be released next month on Telarc. So it's no surprise that a classic Crescent City vibe hangs over the album like Spanish moss over Audubon Park. The loose-limbed funkiness in the music, its pleasant seasoning of jazz (courtesy of Torkanowsky, who is remembered for his legendary stint with The Astral Project) and Muldaur's own relaxed but saucy, sometimes sassy, vocals all have a New Orleans underpinning. Back in the 1960s, Dylan's label, Columbia Records, mounted a campaign with a slogan "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan." That's still true, for better or worse. But he has had a fair share of extraordinary interpreters that include figures as diverse as Richie Havens and Shawn Colvin to Manfred Mann to Shirley Caesar. You can add Muldaur to that select group. It seems strange that she has never recorded a Dylan album before -- after all they go way back, to the days in Greenwich Village when they were learning their crafts, tapping into a rich vein of songs by the likes of Hank Williams, Memphis Minnie, Big Joe Williams and Skip James. It was Muldaur's reminiscences about those days in Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed Dylan documentary, "No Direction Home," that finally convinced her label, Telarc, to approach her about an album of Dylan covers. One of the pieces from Dylan's "Love and Theft" album, the romantic "Moonlight," has been playing in Muldaur's head for months. She countered the Telarc brass with a proposal for an album of Dylan love songs. They liked that idea even better. For the most part, it works. Muldaur keeps the program interesting by mixing familiar pieces like "Lay Lady Lay" (reworked as "Lay Baby Lay") with relative obscurities like "Golden Loom." And most of the tracks, like those on her recent tribute to Peggy Lee, sizzle with real emotional heat. Nothing is better than her absolutely beautiful cover of "Moonlight." One of Muldaur's best recordings, it could sit comfortably on one of her classic albums like "Waitress in a Donut Shop." Danny Caron throws in some tasty, understated licks on lead guitar and Torkanowsky ends the piece with a quote from Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'." "To Make You Feel My Love" got its recorded premiere from Billy Joel but Muldaur takes a different approach. Her minimalist performance perfectly complements the song, almost painful in its naked sentiment. The subtle, laid-back reggae groove on "Lay Baby Lay" is another highlight, as is Muldaur's unforced sensuality. Listen to Muldaur's bucking performance of "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," featuring Suzy Thompson's fine fiddling." It's a far cry from the New Orleans feel of much of the rest of the album. Even so, it's a kick to hear Muldaur sing, like a wild cowgirl on a night out: Ooo-wee! Ride me high! Tomorrow's the day that my man's comin' home! Oh Lord! We gonna slide Down in the easy chair! 'Cause baby, that's love, too.
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SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AUG. 13, 2006
Maria Muldaur and Bob Dylan were contemporaries on the Greenwich Village coffeehouse circuit in the early '60s. Now living in Marin County, Muldaur emerges as a sublimely original interpreter of a dozen Dylan tunes on "Heart of Mine." With fewer fissures in her raspy contralto than Dylan has in his weatherworn tenor, she finds melodic contours in such numbers as "Buckets of Rain" and "Make You Feel My Love" that were never before so apparent. Melismas flow from Muldaur's lips like smooth whiskey as she rhythmically reinvents some songs, swinging "Moonlight" and giving a reggae touch to "Lay Lady Lay" (rendered as "Lay Baby Lay") and Cajun spice to "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere." Others get a New Orleans twist, thanks to pianist David Torkanowsky, and guitarists Cranston Clements, Danny Caron and Amos Garrett all contribute superb solos. -- Lee Hildebrand
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"Maria Muldaur's new disc full of love songs, entitled Heart Of Mine is not your average interpretation. If anything, it serves as a wonderful new translation...in this collection of odes, she understands better than most how to 'get' his art…and get it right." Elmore
Elmore | september/october 2006 To think that, with over 2,500 recorded covers of his songs from everybody from Ani DiFranco to Johnny Cash filling up record store bins, we need yet another album full of Bob Dylan interpretations is absurd. Heck, the master interprets and in most cases reinterprets his own material on a nightly basis. But Maria Muldaur's new disc full of love songs, entitled Heart Of Mine is not your average interpretation. If anything, it serves as a wonderful new translation. Every word of "Buckets of Rain," "To Be Alone With You," and "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" rings true, and unlike Dylan's originals, with a honey-sweet annunciation and pronunciation that only Muldaur's signature "Bluesiana" pipes could produce. The cool factor is that the swinging yet rootsy sessions behind "Make You Feel My Love" and "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" sound as if Dylan's current touring band laid down the tracks, while Muldaur's performance, though clear and concise, possesses all the swagger and demeanor of Dylan's present genius, yet often misunderstood, vocal phrasings. Upon hearing Muldaur's soothing renditions, the listener can picture Dylan's pencil-mustache covered sneer and baby blues peeking out from under his Stetson. As a teenager, Muldaur played alongside a novice Dylan at the Village's Gaslight and later witnessed his plugged-in transformation at Newport, which in the Scorsese documentary, No Direction Home, she stated that she thought it was "way cool." Early on, Muldaur truly "got" Dylan the artist, and in this collection of odes, she understands better than most how to "get" his art…and get it right. -Anthony Sica
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The incomparable Maria Muldaur has always traversed a wide expanse of American music--in 2003, she recorded A Woman Alone with the Blues, a tribute to jazz icon Peggy Lee--and so perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that she has now applied her interpretive gifts to the love songs of Bob Dylan. Choosing from among his classics ("I'll Be Your Baby Tonight") and lesser-known works ("Golden Loom"), Muldaur bravely recasts several songs in disparate grooves (reggae, Cajun, swing), and even allows keyboardist David Torkanowsky to sneak a few bars of the jazz standard "Ain't Misbehavin'" into the end of "Moonlight." As expected, Muldaur is most at home with lazy, country-blues treatments ("Buckets of Rain"). But she can also effectively pull off the intense drama of total sublimation, especially on "Wedding Song" and "Make You Feel My Love," which she renders so tenderly as to elicit a tear. The title track finds her trying to talk herself out of an unsuitable lover, yet one suspects she won't be able to outsmart her heart. On both "Lay Baby Lay" (the gender-switching version of "Lay Lady Lay") and "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," she eschews Dylan's urgent and poignant sexuality for sensuality, making both songs a study in how the sexes approach the chemistry of love. -
Alanna Nash
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"Maria Muldaur's new disc full of love songs, entitled Heart Of Mine is not your average interpretation. If anything, it serves as a wonderful new translation...in this collection of odes, she understands better than most how to 'get' his art…and get it right." Elmore
Elmore | september/october 2006 To think that, with over 2,500 recorded covers of his songs from everybody from Ani DiFranco to Johnny Cash filling up record store bins, we need yet another album full of Bob Dylan interpretations is absurd. Heck, the master interprets and in most cases reinterprets his own material on a nightly basis. But Maria Muldaur's new disc full of love songs, entitled Heart Of Mine is not your average interpretation. If anything, it serves as a wonderful new translation. Every word of "Buckets of Rain," "To Be Alone With You," and "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" rings true, and unlike Dylan's originals, with a honey-sweet annunciation and pronunciation that only Muldaur's signature "Bluesiana" pipes could produce. The cool factor is that the swinging yet rootsy sessions behind "Make You Feel My Love" and "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" sound as if Dylan's current touring band laid down the tracks, while Muldaur's performance, though clear and concise, possesses all the swagger and demeanor of Dylan's present genius, yet often misunderstood, vocal phrasings. Upon hearing Muldaur's soothing renditions, the listener can picture Dylan's pencil-mustache covered sneer and baby blues peeking out from under his Stetson. As a teenager, Muldaur played alongside a novice Dylan at the Village's Gaslight and later witnessed his plugged-in transformation at Newport, which in the Scorsese documentary, No Direction Home, she stated that she thought it was "way cool." Early on, Muldaur truly "got" Dylan the artist, and in this collection of odes, she understands better than most how to "get" his art…and get it right. -Anthony Sica
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The incomparable Maria Muldaur has always traversed a wide expanse of American music--in 2003, she recorded A Woman Alone with the Blues, a tribute to jazz icon Peggy Lee--and so perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that she has now applied her interpretive gifts to the love songs of Bob Dylan. Choosing from among his classics ("I'll Be Your Baby Tonight") and lesser-known works ("Golden Loom"), Muldaur bravely recasts several songs in disparate grooves (reggae, Cajun, swing), and even allows keyboardist David Torkanowsky to sneak a few bars of the jazz standard "Ain't Misbehavin'" into the end of "Moonlight." As expected, Muldaur is most at home with lazy, country-blues treatments ("Buckets of Rain"). But she can also effectively pull off the intense drama of total sublimation, especially on "Wedding Song" and "Make You Feel My Love," which she renders so tenderly as to elicit a tear. The title track finds her trying to talk herself out of an unsuitable lover, yet one suspects she won't be able to outsmart her heart. On both "Lay Baby Lay" (the gender-switching version of "Lay Lady Lay") and "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," she eschews Dylan's urgent and poignant sexuality for sensuality, making both songs a study in how the sexes approach the chemistry of love. -
Alanna Nash
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Marin Independent Journal
August 25, 2006
Paul Liberatore:
Marin's Muldaur sings heartfelt songs of Dylan
Maria Muldaur remembers one of her first encounters with a young, aspiring folksinger named Bob Dylan. "I kind of knew him and thought he was a cool guy to hang out with, funny and quick-witted," she recalls, speaking from her Mill Valley home. But that was about all she thought of him until he walked into a Greenwich Village coffee house where she and her partner in a Carter-family-style singing duo were rehearsing one afternoon in the early '60s, before anyone outside of the burgeoning East Coast folk music scene knew who Bob Dylan was. "Dylan came by, and he had cut his finger, and he was all nervous, asking us if we had a bandage," she recollects. "He said, 'I have a gig tonight,' and that he was afraid his finger was going to blow up on him. "We found him a Band Aid and calmed him down and when he was all settled he said, 'You wanna hear a song I just wrote?'" Muldaur continues, imitating Dylan's distinctive nasal voice. "And he sang 'Only a Pawn in Their Game,' and I can remember it like it was yesterday. We were in the back room in a little kitchen of this coffee house. He was sitting on a box, singing that, and I looked at him and I had a major epiphany right then and there." Since then, over the decades, Muldaur and Dylan have remained friends. He calls her from time to time and she goes to see him whenever he performs in the Bay Area, visiting with him backstage. She was featured prominently in the recent Martin Scorcese documentary on Dylan, "No Direction Home," which led to an offer to do an album of Dylan songs for the independent Telarc Records label. Muldaur, famed for her 1973 hit "Midnight at the Oasis," wanted to explore a soft side of Dylan's music that most people aren't familiar with: his love songs. And she does that on her fetching new CD, "Heart of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan." "A few years earlier I had gotten his 'Love and Theft' album and literally fell in a swoon over his song 'Moonlight,'" she says. "It was like a series of Monet paintings, a gorgeous romantic landscape. I was captivated by the song and even told him that I wanted to record it. He thought it was a great idea. He said, 'I can really hear you do that song.' In my humble opinion, he's written some of the most poignant and passionate love songs in the English language." "Moonlight" is one of a dozen Dylan love ballads Muldaur covers on "Heart of Mine." They range from the familiar - "Lay Lady Lay," which she has changed for gender reasons to "Lay Baby Lay," and "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" - to lesser known tunes like "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," "On a Night Like This," "Buckets of Rain" and the title track. The most obscure song on the album, "Golden Loom," is a mystical piece that Muldaur found on a Dylan bootleg album. She's a born-again Christian, and he went through a Christian conversion at one point in his career as well. This song seems to embody the religious sensibility they share. "I just love the imagery of that song: 'We wash our feet in the immortal shrine/And then our shadows meet and we drink the wine,'" she says, reciting a line of the lyric. "For whatever reason, I just pictured Jesus and Mary Magdalene having a mystical rendezvous. I have not seen, nor do I give a damn about, the friggin' 'Da Vinci Code.' So it had nothing to do with that. I find all of that hogwash. "But I read all that into that song. And that's the nature of his songs: They have a spaciousness that you can interpret and bring your own meaning to. That's the mark of a great song to me." Muldaur used to play the fiddle when she was a member of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band in the '60s. For years, Dylan has encouraged her to pick up the instrument again. "When Bob first laid eyes on me, I was probably sawing away on some old-timey tune at a hootenanny somewhere," she says. "So in the last dozen years or so he's chided me, starting with chiding and moving into nagging, to play that fiddle again. "Every year he'd ask, and one year he said, 'Come on, you're late with it. People need to hear that rustic way you play.' I thought rusty is more like it. But after that, I knew I couldn't face him another year without playing it." Muldaur puts an end to Dylan's nudging by playing a fiddle duet with Suzy Thompson on the intro to "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," the CD's final song. "It ain't Yascha Heifetz," she admits, "but it's pretty cool." Muldaur will sing songs from the album Sept. 1 at 142 Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley. She hasn't heard from Dylan yet about the new CD, but it would be hard to imagine him not being flattered by it, especially by her fiddle work. And there is no doubt that she puts her heart and soul into every one of his songs.
"I only sang the ones that I could really inhabit and make my own," she says. "I've lived in every one of those songs, that's what it comes down to."
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Marin's Muldaur sings heartfelt songs of Dylan
Maria Muldaur remembers one of her first encounters with a young, aspiring folksinger named Bob Dylan. "I kind of knew him and thought he was a cool guy to hang out with, funny and quick-witted," she recalls, speaking from her Mill Valley home. But that was about all she thought of him until he walked into a Greenwich Village coffee house where she and her partner in a Carter-family-style singing duo were rehearsing one afternoon in the early '60s, before anyone outside of the burgeoning East Coast folk music scene knew who Bob Dylan was. "Dylan came by, and he had cut his finger, and he was all nervous, asking us if we had a bandage," she recollects. "He said, 'I have a gig tonight,' and that he was afraid his finger was going to blow up on him. "We found him a Band Aid and calmed him down and when he was all settled he said, 'You wanna hear a song I just wrote?'" Muldaur continues, imitating Dylan's distinctive nasal voice. "And he sang 'Only a Pawn in Their Game,' and I can remember it like it was yesterday. We were in the back room in a little kitchen of this coffee house. He was sitting on a box, singing that, and I looked at him and I had a major epiphany right then and there." Since then, over the decades, Muldaur and Dylan have remained friends. He calls her from time to time and she goes to see him whenever he performs in the Bay Area, visiting with him backstage. She was featured prominently in the recent Martin Scorcese documentary on Dylan, "No Direction Home," which led to an offer to do an album of Dylan songs for the independent Telarc Records label. Muldaur, famed for her 1973 hit "Midnight at the Oasis," wanted to explore a soft side of Dylan's music that most people aren't familiar with: his love songs. And she does that on her fetching new CD, "Heart of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan." "A few years earlier I had gotten his 'Love and Theft' album and literally fell in a swoon over his song 'Moonlight,'" she says. "It was like a series of Monet paintings, a gorgeous romantic landscape. I was captivated by the song and even told him that I wanted to record it. He thought it was a great idea. He said, 'I can really hear you do that song.' In my humble opinion, he's written some of the most poignant and passionate love songs in the English language." "Moonlight" is one of a dozen Dylan love ballads Muldaur covers on "Heart of Mine." They range from the familiar - "Lay Lady Lay," which she has changed for gender reasons to "Lay Baby Lay," and "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" - to lesser known tunes like "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," "On a Night Like This," "Buckets of Rain" and the title track. The most obscure song on the album, "Golden Loom," is a mystical piece that Muldaur found on a Dylan bootleg album. She's a born-again Christian, and he went through a Christian conversion at one point in his career as well. This song seems to embody the religious sensibility they share. "I just love the imagery of that song: 'We wash our feet in the immortal shrine/And then our shadows meet and we drink the wine,'" she says, reciting a line of the lyric. "For whatever reason, I just pictured Jesus and Mary Magdalene having a mystical rendezvous. I have not seen, nor do I give a damn about, the friggin' 'Da Vinci Code.' So it had nothing to do with that. I find all of that hogwash. "But I read all that into that song. And that's the nature of his songs: They have a spaciousness that you can interpret and bring your own meaning to. That's the mark of a great song to me." Muldaur used to play the fiddle when she was a member of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band in the '60s. For years, Dylan has encouraged her to pick up the instrument again. "When Bob first laid eyes on me, I was probably sawing away on some old-timey tune at a hootenanny somewhere," she says. "So in the last dozen years or so he's chided me, starting with chiding and moving into nagging, to play that fiddle again. "Every year he'd ask, and one year he said, 'Come on, you're late with it. People need to hear that rustic way you play.' I thought rusty is more like it. But after that, I knew I couldn't face him another year without playing it." Muldaur puts an end to Dylan's nudging by playing a fiddle duet with Suzy Thompson on the intro to "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," the CD's final song. "It ain't Yascha Heifetz," she admits, "but it's pretty cool." Muldaur will sing songs from the album Sept. 1 at 142 Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley. She hasn't heard from Dylan yet about the new CD, but it would be hard to imagine him not being flattered by it, especially by her fiddle work. And there is no doubt that she puts her heart and soul into every one of his songs.
"I only sang the ones that I could really inhabit and make my own," she says. "I've lived in every one of those songs, that's what it comes down to."
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Portfolio Weekly
September 12, 2006
September 12, 2006
Getting to the Heart of the Matter
by Jim Newsom
Maria Muldaur Heart of Mine Telarc Thirty two years ago, Maria Muldaur put her camel to bed and lit up the charts with one of the great pop singles of the pre-disco '70s, "Midnight at the Oasis." But a dozen years earlier, she'd been a teenager growing up in Greenwich Village, digging the sounds of the folk revival that was hoppin' and poppin' all around her. Among the people she befriended during her youthful days as a self-described "beatnik babe" was a young guy just in from Minnesota who called himself Bob Dylan. "He was a likable enough fellow," she writes in the liner notes to her new album, and she quickly realized that his songs were a notch above the "tuneless haranguing polarizing diatribes that characterized the protest music of the day." When her record company president called last fall after she was featured in a PBS Dylan documentary to suggest that she record a disc devoted to his compositions, she jumped at the opportunity to fulfill a longtime desire to do an album of his love songs. The result, Heart of Mine, may well be her best recording since her days at the Oasis. Remarkably, she has found a way to put a different stamp on a Dylan dozen, and it works very well. Her voice is huskier than it was back in the day, but she still has that light, sexy playfulness that was always so endearing. Most of the song choices are lesser known, many from the latter half of the catalog, making this a journey of discovery for the casual Bobliophile. She kicks off the set with a lazy reading of "Buckets of Rain," the first of two greats from Blood on the Tracks, the other being a bluesy stroll through "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." "Lay Lady Lay" is transformed into "Lay Baby Lay" in an arrangement that would have fit nicely on Waitress in a Donut Shop; it's one of many songs that Maria and her sidemen recast into something distinctively her own. "To Be Alone with You" is infused with slinky blues guitar, while "Heart of Mine" and "On a Night Like This" sound vaguely South of the Borderish. "Moonlight" is outfitted in a slinky cocktail jazz dress and "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" steps out of the grooves of a J. J. Cale record. The CD closes strong with the atmospheric ambience of "Wedding Song" and a rollicking ride through "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," complete with Cajun fiddles and the singer's appropriately weary hoarseness. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________
SING OUT
JANUARY 2007
JANUARY 2007
Maria Muldaur: Heart of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine, Wntr, 2007 by Michael Tearson
What a great concept! Nobody has previously assembled an entire album of Bob Dylan love songs. And who better to sing the idea than Maria Muldaur, surely one of the sexiest singers ever! Maria has known Bob since the salad days in Greenwich Village in the '60s, and she has frequently recorded Dylan songs before, but Heart of Mine is very special indeed. Some selections are what I call "usual suspects:" "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" which Maria first recorded on the late '60s Pottery Pie, "Lay Lady Lay" gender-switched to "Lay Baby Lay," from Blood on the Tracks "Buckets Of Rain" and "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" and, from Time Out Of Mind, "Make You Feel My Love." Less obvious ones are "To Be Alone With You," "On A Night Like This" and "Wedding Song" from Planet Waves, "Heart Of Mine from Shot Of Love, "Moonlight" from Love and Theft and the obscure "Golden Loom." "You Ain't--Goin' Nowhere" as the finale feels like the joker in the deck, an odd choice for a love song. Clearly Maria did a lot of homework making the song choices. She sings these wearing her love of the songs in plain sight. Her singing is warm and sweet, utterly convincing and utterly engaging, a delight through and through. The project's musicians play gorgeously at all times. The technical aspects are excellent, truly up to Telarc's regular standards. Maria's terrific liner notes shed extra light on the project, her intentions and the songs themselves. I highly recommend Heart of Mine to anyone who enjoys Maria Muldaur's singing and Bob Dylan's love songs. The album is truly a marriage of singer and songs made in heaven, a perfect fit.
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What a great concept! Nobody has previously assembled an entire album of Bob Dylan love songs. And who better to sing the idea than Maria Muldaur, surely one of the sexiest singers ever! Maria has known Bob since the salad days in Greenwich Village in the '60s, and she has frequently recorded Dylan songs before, but Heart of Mine is very special indeed. Some selections are what I call "usual suspects:" "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" which Maria first recorded on the late '60s Pottery Pie, "Lay Lady Lay" gender-switched to "Lay Baby Lay," from Blood on the Tracks "Buckets Of Rain" and "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" and, from Time Out Of Mind, "Make You Feel My Love." Less obvious ones are "To Be Alone With You," "On A Night Like This" and "Wedding Song" from Planet Waves, "Heart Of Mine from Shot Of Love, "Moonlight" from Love and Theft and the obscure "Golden Loom." "You Ain't--Goin' Nowhere" as the finale feels like the joker in the deck, an odd choice for a love song. Clearly Maria did a lot of homework making the song choices. She sings these wearing her love of the songs in plain sight. Her singing is warm and sweet, utterly convincing and utterly engaging, a delight through and through. The project's musicians play gorgeously at all times. The technical aspects are excellent, truly up to Telarc's regular standards. Maria's terrific liner notes shed extra light on the project, her intentions and the songs themselves. I highly recommend Heart of Mine to anyone who enjoys Maria Muldaur's singing and Bob Dylan's love songs. The album is truly a marriage of singer and songs made in heaven, a perfect fit.
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MSN.COM
January 4, 2007
January 4, 2007
Maria Muldaur
"Heart of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan" (Telarc)
Grade: A
A pop connoisseur even as a kid in a jug band, Muldaur always brings savoir-faire to "folk" materials. But she's never sung with so much attention, delicacy and lyrical intelligence. She extracts meaning from songs a younger Dylan played as look-ma-June-spoon throwaways, lifts the title tune from well-earned obscurity, lays "Lay Lady Lay" across her big brass soul and rescues "Make You Feel My Love" from Billy Joel. And also from Bob Dylan. Even when the songwriter does this kind of material straight, he's not sexy -- not like Rod Stewart or Al Green. But Muldaur, who's been known to slather the libido on too thick, is serious about getting into bed with him.
"Heart of Mine: Love Songs of Bob Dylan" (Telarc)
Grade: A
A pop connoisseur even as a kid in a jug band, Muldaur always brings savoir-faire to "folk" materials. But she's never sung with so much attention, delicacy and lyrical intelligence. She extracts meaning from songs a younger Dylan played as look-ma-June-spoon throwaways, lifts the title tune from well-earned obscurity, lays "Lay Lady Lay" across her big brass soul and rescues "Make You Feel My Love" from Billy Joel. And also from Bob Dylan. Even when the songwriter does this kind of material straight, he's not sexy -- not like Rod Stewart or Al Green. But Muldaur, who's been known to slather the libido on too thick, is serious about getting into bed with him.