When you decide to cover a Dylan song, how do you select one? Which one can you choose? The repertoire is huge so do you go for a well-known song, an obscure one, or one just in the middle? The Brooklyn indie band, the Dirty Projectors, went for just this, one in the middle, ‘I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine’ from Dylan 1967 album ‘John Wesley Harding’. Although I am not that sure where this song stands in the Dylan catalogue since it was listed the #76 greatest Bob Dylan song of all time in a 2005 poll published by Mojo.
The Dirty Projectors, which have collaborated with such artists as David Byrne or Björk, have already a large discography with several albums and EPs, and among them ‘Rise Above’, a reinterpretation of the entire Black Flag album ‘Damaged’. They have recorded the Dylan song for the Levi’s Pioneer Sessions, which consists of bands covering influential artists.
When Bob Dylan wrote this song he was developing an interest in the Bible (a decade later, he converted to Christianity) and the lyrics have a dark religious tone. They seem to describe a dream about a saint and not any saint but the one who invented the concept of original sin! But as usual for Dylan, the complete meaning is subject to interpretation since the first lines ‘I dreamed I saw St. Augustine/Alive as you or me’ is a paraphrase of the beginning of another song ‘I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night’, a tribute to the union organizer Joe Hill which starts exactly the same way: ’I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night/Alive as you or me’.
There is a strong feeling of guilt and remorse all along the song and I don’t care if Dylan sings about a saint, he does not feel remorseful because of a guy who lived more than 1,700 years ago and who was not even a martyr. He is writing about one of his peers, a political songwriter, a protester and also a martyr (Joe Hill was executed after being convicted of a murder he very probably did not commit). The way Dylan uses the image of St Augustine, a saint without being martyred, to talk about Joe Hill, a martyr without being a saint, is almost blasphemous. The saint figure becomes then a symbolic figure who could be anyone who has been condemned by the crowd, and Dylan sees himself among those who ‘put him out to death’.
Or may be Dylan was also talking about himself? After all, he has been regarded as the Messiah by many, and Saint Augustine had a sudden and profound conversion to Christianity just like Dylan.
Dave Longstreth sings the song totally in the Dylan tradition, emulating his accent and being pretty close to his unusual, but nevertheless very familiar, nasal intonation. Yes the delivery is there, no doubt, and I wonder why he chose to do a semi-impersonation of Dylan rather than sing the song his own way, or reinvent it himself. May be it is an homage to Dylan.
The song is a ballad with a sparse use of instruments, just acoustic guitars, drums, but the voices are the main attraction here and Angel Deradoorian and Amber Coffman’s beautiful back up vocals are the main difference with Dylan’s version. And also, there is no harmonica!
I don’t know why the Dirty projectors chose to cover this particular song, Jimi Hendrix thought about covering it in 1968 but chose instead ‘All Along the Watchtower’ because he thought it was a song too personal to remake. But ‘I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine’ has since been covered by many artists including Joan Baez, Vic Chesnutt, John Doe, Thea Gilmore and Adam Selzer. It takes some guts to redo a Dylan song, and after so many strong predecessors, it is even more challenging, but their version is immediately likable and inviting.