Fifty years ago — on January 20, 1975, to be exact — Bob Dylan released his 15th studio album, Blood on the Tracks. Dylan began recording the album in New York City in September 1974, but by December of that year, not long before his label planned to release the album, Dylan decided to re-record many of the album tracks at Sound 80 studio in Minneapolis. One of the Minneapolis-recorded tracks is the well-known album opener, "Tangled Up in Blue,” and it features guitar work by Kevin Odegard.

Because the Minneapolis musicians were not credited in the album liner notes, the Minneapolis chapter of Tangled Up in Blue was seldom written about or even discussed. In 2005, however, Odegard, with Andy Gill, wrote a book, A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks (Da Capo Press), which gave the full story.

Now, on the 50th anniversary of the album’s release, Kevin Odegard joins Bill DeVille on United States of Americana to share some of his memories of that recording session. Use the audio player above to listen to the interview, and read a full transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Bill DeVille: Hey, I'm Bill DeVille. This is United States of Americana, and I'm here with Kevin Odegard. Kevin, how are you? 

Kevin Odegard: I'm terrific.

Bill DeVille: All right, so you are on the album, Blood on the Tracks, the Bob Dylan album, one of his most beloved albums of his illustrious career. And the album was released in 1975 on, was it January 20? So the album is about to turn 50 years of age. How in the world did you become involved? Were you a train guy, a train engineer at the time?

Kevin Odegard: Yeah, and I was dodging calls from what I was sure was the crew caller. The phone kept ringing, so I did pick it up, resigned to my fate, and lo and behold, it was David Zimmerman, Bob's younger brother. I'd been involved with him for years because he was my friend and producer of my very first album and Silver Lining, my second album. He was looking for a guitar in a band. Could I help? I knew right where to go, because he wanted a 1930s vintage [Martin] OO-42 gut string. And I came very close with my friend downstairs in [the now-closed Minneapolis guitar shop] the Podium. The owner, Chris Weber, came to the rescue, and he said, "Kevin, have you been in the shop lately?" I said, "No, no, I haven't been in there for weeks," because we used to go in there and jam, and it was guitars and tobacco. And he said, "Kevin, I think you're lying to me. I think you've been in the shop, because I have that guitar right behind my head on the wall, and it is the exact guitar, except it's got steel strings. It's known as the Joan Baez model." It's the one you see in the new movie.

Chris had to accompany the guitar because it was on consignment, and it was not his, and he has to look after it, he has to babysit it. And they hemmed and hawed for a little bit, and finally, Bob gave David the green light. So it was something that they addressed together, and David said, "Let me find you a pickup band. Let me find you some guys." And, "Do you know anybody else, Kevin?" So I told David, "Well, there's this great keyboard player who can do anything. His name is Gregg Inhofer," and so I recruited him right on the spot. I was back on the phone. Five minutes later, we had a whole band. We had a rhythm section, a keyboardist, and me. Things turned out a little differently once we got to the studio.

Bill DeVille: Yeah, and that was, was that the next day you were at Sound 80 then?

Kevin Odegard: Five o'clock the next day. This was Thursday night, the 26th and by 5 on the 27th, [bassist] Billy Peterson walked in, turned his head and was looking eye to eye with Bob Dylan. Wasn't told. Hadn't been told. He'd just been told by David to show up.

Bill DeVille: So he had no idea Bob was going to be there then, huh?

Kevin Odegard: No, no, he didn't, Neither did [drummer Bill] Berg, but there was serendipity there, because as uncomfortable as Bob had been in New York, he was with his homeboys now, back home, and he relaxed. The first night, it took a while to get the icicles out. And we did seven takes of "Idiot Wind," which was the first song. And it had opened with a very dissonant chord that that Chris Weber, who was chosen to be the bandleader by Bob, they hit it off like peas and carrots. So we're off and running, and it's a happy session, and Bob's relaxed, and I'm not on any instrument, so I didn't play that first night, but being witness to "Idiot Wind," "You're a Big Girl Now," was a magnificent treat for a kid from a small town halfway to Hibbing on Highway 169. I can't imagine how many times Bob rode by a bunch of kids with ukuleles and guitars sitting on the steps of the armory in Princeton, Minnesota, on his way to St. Paul, to Minneapolis, and eventually to the Big City of New York. So there was some familiarity in the room, because we were all Minnesotans, and especially with Bill Berg. He was very comfortable with Berg. So that was night one.

Bill DeVille: What happened the next day then?

Kevin Odegard: Actually, Billy Peterson had to leave early because he had a gig at the Longhorn jazz club, and unbeknownst to me, Gregg Inhofer had intervened on my behalf and called David and said, "Hey, don't you think you ought to give Kevin a chance on the guitar? He got me this gig, and I feel I owe him at least this phone call for your consideration." And it worked!

Bill DeVille: Wow.

Kevin Odegard: I didn't find out for 20 years that that had happened, that that had occurred, but Gregg told me 20 years later, "Yeah, I made a phone call for you," because musicians do that for each other.

Bill DeVille: Was this the day you recorded "Tangled Up in Blue," then?

Kevin Odegard: First thing. David said, "Get your guitar out, your mic's right there." [Audio engineer] Paul [Martinson] had already set up a direct box and a mic for me, and David was giving me my shot, which I almost blew at the end of the first take. The night before, I was relaxing at home listening to the Joy of Cooking, a Bay Area group. Terry Garthwaite and Toni Brown, two women had this band, and they were very tight and very good, and had a song called "Midnight Blues," and it had a lick in it, a figure that went did [vocalizes the music].

I just started playing that figure on the front end of "Tangled" as Chris ran it by us, because Chris was now the band leader. Bob was working on notepads, on telephone calling pads, polishing the lyrics, and Chris taught us a song, and we were ready. And then Bob came over and sang it. No headphones for Bob. Thank you. No capos. Bob just picked up his guitar, started strumming. Bill Berg counted to four, and five minutes and 45 seconds later, we were winding down through this magnificent harmonica solo. I had perfected this lick from "Midnight Blues," but by the end of the fourth verse, and it's at three minutes and 36 seconds into the song, you can hear what sounds like one guitar. That's Bob on the upswing, me on the downstroke, and it's perfectly in sync. It sounds like one person playing that guitar up and down and up and down. But it's both of us. Bob was staring daggers through me, like good musicians do when they're locked into what's called a pocket. And by the end of the fourth verse, we could have been one guitar player and then silence. "Did you get it?" Paul Martinson said, "Yeah, we got it, Bob. It's good. I don't think you need to do it again."

Bill DeVille: So you didn't do it again? One take.

Kevin Odegard: We didn't do it again.

Bill DeVille: Oh my god.

Kevin Odegard: One take and an A. And this is where I almost blew it. After the G version, Bob had asked me, "Well, what'd you think?" I mean, he looked around though, he's testing me, you know. And if I had said the wrong thing, it would be the end of my work. But I accidentally told him the truth. I said, "You know, it's good. It's really good. Nice song. Love the lyrics. And I think it'd be even more exciting if you moved it up a notch. Let's go up to A, let's try it in A." And some eyes rolled in the control room, and the other musicians looked at the wall, and I began to sweat. There was a long silence, and then Bob picked up the pink chord chart from Gregg Inofer's Hammond organ and started scribbling something on it. And when he put it down, I could see that it was the song transposed into A. It was the chords transposed. He said, "OK, let's try this." So he was giving me my shot. And the one in A was about 100 times better than the one in G.

Bill DeVille: Wow.

Kevin Odegard: So it's New Year's Day now. Paul Martinson and Bob Dylan and David Zimmerman are in the studio to mix, to process the sound, to separate the tracks. They play with the "Idiot Wind" first, and it takes a while. Takes about an hour, hour and a half. Bob starts getting restless and tapping his fingers. "Let's move on. Do 'Tangled Up in Blue.' Let's do that one." So Paul put it up on the 16 track and started attenuating the various tones. And Bob got restless and said, "You know what I want, Paul? Here's what I want." And he held up the acetate that Paul had given him to take home to listen to the previous night's work. And he said, "I want to sound just like this, just like the one you sent me." Paul said, "Well, that's a safety mix, that's a live mix. That's from this machine over here." "That's what I want it to sound like." So he put on the two track, played it there for Bob. Bob said, "Send it to the pressing plant that way." And that's what we heard for 44 years, was the two track, quarter-inch safety mix, live, no overdubs, in performance, Studio A, Sound 80, "Tangled Up in Blue." That's what you hear.

Bill DeVille: That's incredible.

Kevin Odegard: And that's what you heard on the original. It was an incredible, incredible project.

Bill DeVille: How do you feel about that years later? It's like, "Oh, we recorded a winner." I mean, it must be a powerful feeling you get from being part of a session like that, of a song so legendary.

Kevin Odegard: I have two feelings about that. Feeling number one is I never talked about it for the next 30 years. Here's this album, Blood on the Tracks, and it hasn't got my name on it. So when you're in that part of the business, and you've got your membership is all household names, you don't go spouting off about stuff that you did, especially if there's no evidence. And there was none. I mean, [Minnesota Star Tribune’s] Jon Bream wrote about it, and Monica Bay. Creem magazine picked up a piece. There were some periodicals that mentioned it, but for 30 years, I really didn't bring it up.

And the only reason I eventually wrote a book about it was because Steve Berkowitz and Dylan's manager put together a quadraphonic mix for Super Audio CD or SACD, now a dinosaur format, but it was four track. So I went out and bought the machine that could play it. And I played it, and there was my guitar on the left rear channel, all alone by itself, isolated. And I got my hands on a mix of just Bob's guitar and my guitar, which I posted, I think, yesterday, on my Facebook page. But I didn't realize that we had done a good job with the song until I heard what I had done. Clearly, it was the best six minutes of guitar playing I had ever performed in my entire life, before or since; I didn't get better after that, and I wasn't that good before the session. The company I got to play with: the rhythm section, Gregg, Chris, everybody was at the top of their farm, and most of all, Bob broadcast a perfect signal for everybody to follow. Obviously, we all felt like this is really personal stuff...

Bill DeVille: Yeah, "the divorce album" is what many have called it.

Kevin Odegard: Yeah, the great breakup album.

Bill DeVille: Yeah.

Kevin Odegard: But if anything, and I hate to say this, but the pain put him on top of his hours. So I guess, in part, what hurts you feeds your art. It was a rich and wonderful experience for me. When I got back to it in 2004 to write the book, I was proud of the work that I had done for the first time in my life.

Bill DeVille: Excellent.

Kevin Odegard: And that's not — I'm not bragging. I'm just saying. Couldn't talk about it. Didn't want to talk about it. It was something that nobody cared about. I would just sound like another, you know, another Hollywood character if I were to bring it up.

Bill DeVille: I should throw out the title of that book. It's A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks. Congratulations on that book. I read it. It was an excellent read. You'll be in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for Shelter from the Storm, that big event coming up at Cain's Ballroom. You must be excited about that, huh?

Kevin Odegard: Tulsa is a lovely place to be nowadays.

Bill DeVille: With the Dylan museum there for one, yeah.

Kevin Odegard: The Dylan Museum is the Bob Dylan Center. The Woody Guthrie center right next door. The Philbrook Museum [of Art]. Right there on the same street is Greenwood. Now, Greenwood was the site of some unfortunate activity back in the '20s.

Bill DeVille: Yeah.

Kevin Odegard: It's a one-block walk away from the Bob Dylan Center, and they do tours, which are quite wonderful. It's also a neighborhood in renaissance. The whole town is alive with music. There's a club scene. It's like Minneapolis was when Prince was around and stuff. It's like that. It has that feeling.

Bill DeVille: Your thoughts on the on the film, A Complete Unknown?

Kevin Odegard: Well, we loved every minute. It was a non-judgemental experience for me, because I love all of those people, and I like the actors just as much. Scoot McNary, he played Woody Guthrie without a word dialog and did a wonderful job. He won't be nominated for anything, but he was my favorite character. His role was a series of grunts and pounding with his fist on the side of a dresser drawer.

Bill DeVille: Do you think Timothée Chalamet is going to win an Oscar or get some major acclaim?

Kevin Odegard: I do. Yeah, yeah. I do. I think that film is going to continue to get attention, certainly, at the award shows. Yeah. It's a lovely movie. It's a happy movie. There's no hero worship going on in this film. So if you're looking for Bob to be on the top of the mountain by the end of the film, don't worry. He's not. He's a human being, and he has faults like everybody else. Lovely story. I think what James Mangold did was wonderful, because he tells a story that non-Dylan fans will understand.

Bill DeVille: So nice chatting with you, Kevin.

Kevin Odegard: Thanks for having me.

Bill DeVille: Yeah, my pleasure. The book is called A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks, and it must be just a nice thing to have in your life, in your back pocket, that you played on one of the great songs in music history. It's ingrained forever in my head, I know that much!

Kevin Odegard: I'm just getting used to it.

Credits

Guest – Kevin Odegard
Host – Bill DeVille
Producer – Derrick Stevens
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Link

Kevin Odegard – official site