May 202021
 

Under the Radar shines a light on lesser-known cover artists. If you’re not listening to these folks, you should. Catch up on past installments here.

Bob Dylan tribute band

As we’ve talked about before, tribute bands don’t deserve the bad rap they get. There are musicians who love an artist enough to want to play their songs and play them well for an audience, just as there is an audience that loves an artist so much they want to experience their music in a live setting. It’s also a way to separate wheat from chaff – seeing a tribute act can guarantee that you won’t hear Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll” on your night out. On the other hand, maybe you want to see a Seger tribute band that will guarantee you do get to hear it.

With over five hundred songs in his catalog and a fanatical following, Bob Dylan is a prime candidate for the tribute band treatment. As Dennis Bailey, founder of the Bob Band, wrote in his excellent essay about forming a tribute act (he prefers “cover band”), “To me, a Bob Dylan cover band is a genre band, like a blues band or a country band. Bob Dylan is a genre all its own.” So it follows that there are plenty of tribute bands out there ready to salute that genre, whether by playing the music or listening to it. Here’s a sampling of some of those who’ve made it their life’s work to bring Bob Dylan to the masses, whether they’re Bob Dylan or not.
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