On Monday, August 27, Bob Dylan released ‘Dusquesne Whistle’, the opening song from his upcoming album Tempest. It was debuted on NPR’s music blog, ‘All Songs Considered’, and can be previewed here. For this song, Dylan collaborated with Robert Hunter, best known for contributing to some of the Grateful Dead’s most well known songs like ‘Friend of the Devil’, ‘Casey Jones’, ‘Scarlet Begonias’, and ‘Touch of Grey’. NPR described the song:
“The music starts faintly, as if in a vintage pleasure palace, with the band — the stalwarts who’ve played with Dylan for a while and join him on the Never-Ending Tour — playing rock and roll ragtime off in the corner. The electric guitars sound almost like clarinets. Everybody’s swinging! But what’s that in the distance? Dylan himself unleashes the rubbery guitar chord change that repeats for the rest of the song, sounding just like a locomotive blast. Is he hopping that thing? Is somebody he loves on it? Both are possible.”
Tempest will be released September 11, and has been noted for having an epic fourteen minute long title track based on the story of the Titanic, as well as ‘Roll on John’, a tribute to John Lennon. It is Dylan’s 35th studio album, and falls on the 50th anniversary of the release of his self titled debut album.