Beginning with Paul Metsa: Alphabet Jazz and Bob Dylan in Minnesota

"I live in Bob Dylan’s house. Many of you live there metaphorically (as do I), but while I was writing this, I actually lived on the first floor of the house on Central Hillside in Duluth, Minnesota, where Abe and Beatty Zimmerman rented a second-floor apartment and welcomed bouncing blue-eyed Bobby on May 24, 1941." 

So begins Paul Metsa in his Foreword to the latest release in the Troubadour Series, Bob Dylan In Minnesota: Troubadour Tales from Duluth, Hibbing and Dinkytown.

K.G. Miles, author of this series, leaned on four Minnesota writers to assist with bringing this book to life: Paul Metsa, Marc Percansky, Matt Steichen and myself. 

Metsa, a veteran Minnesota singer/songwriter from the Iron Range who has won 7 Minnesota Music Awards, may be possibly best known for his Wall of Power radio and TV shows. He's also authored several books where he demonstrates his flare for the written word. One of these, to be released this fall, is called Blood in the Tracks, a book about the Minnesota musicians who contributed to Dylan's masterpiece. His first book was an autobiography called Blue Guitar Highway (University of MN Press-2011). The book received a flurry of positive reviews including this one from Kirkus Review: "Metsa is as likeable a narrator as ever graced a barstool."

This post aims to give a nod to Metsa's Alphabet Jazz: Poetry, Prose, Stories and Songs. Released in the fall of 2022, Metsa read excerpts from the book at our 2022 Duluth Dylan Fest, including a swashbuckling, Positively-Fourth-Street-style tongue-lashing of a City Pages writer who dissed Bob Dylan as a performer. The letter to the editor was published in September 1992 and is still a lively read today.

The book is a catch-all of sorts, Metsa playing tango with his readers, shuffling tributes with poems, and giving a greater permanence to many of the songs he's crafted through the years. One of his more well-known songs is "Jack Ruby" but if you've never quite caught all the lyrics, you'll find them here. You can probably hear Metsa's gruff electric-viper vocals in the chorus as you read the lyrics. 
 

The poetry, prose, stories, letters and songs were penned, or typed, between 1984 and 2022. Metsa describes it as "a personal diary of sorts--midnight blasts of inspiration, love letters in poem, personal tributes to musicians and friends who have passed on, true stories, letters to the editor and friends, and songs I have written along the way that I still perform." 

It has been in my "book pile" next to my easy chair since last fall. It's easy to pick up and dip into when you're relaxing at the end of long day. There's no real narrative, so you can't lose the thread if you are reading other things in between chapters and favorite passages.

There were a few surprises for me as I got into it. First, Paul Metsa is more sentimental than I'd originally imagined. This especially comes out when he talks about his family or his dogs. Second, he's a very good writer. What I mean by this is that with the prevalence of print-on-demand and self-publishing today, everyone seems to be writing books. I think the uneven quality of all this new reading material causes some of us to tone down our expectations. With Metsa, he's got the goods.  

Metsa grew up on the Iron Range, contributing to a portion of the Hibbing section of Bob Dylan in Minnesota. He makes no bones about acknowledging Dylan's influence and importance in his career. He currently lives in Duluth, MN after decades in the Twin Cities.

One Amazon.com reviewer had this to say about the book:

In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield examines the abiding force called resistance that is the enemy of artist and art. Paul Metsa, in Alphabet Jazz, describes a life lived in opposition to that restraint. Talent, if we take Pressfield's definition, is the ability to see two things and make a third out of them. Metsa has it in spades.

This wonderful collection of poems, lyrics, anecdotes and reflections reveals that his eye is meticulous, his heart at turns lonesome and fulsome, his ear perfectly attuned, as he gathers the coincidences to extol those who would heed this command echoing out from his poem, "Memo From Rego Park":

Raise your hand in a moment of silence
But don't cease to dream
For they can't steal that
In our irregular moments of grace

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There are a lot of notable, quotable turns of phrase here. At the beginning of his tribute to Dave Morton he has this quote posted as a subhead: "When another student was ready, the teacher reappeared." There are quite a few of these.* 

You can find Alphabet Jazz here at Amazon, and Blue Guitar Highway here. (BGH will soon be re-released in paperback by U of MN Press.) You can find out more about Paul and order his music at www.paulmetsa.com

Purchase Bob Dylan in Minnesota here.

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Additional Related Links

Metsa performing "Jack Ruby" at Live Aid V.

Co-written with Rick Shefchik, Blood in the Tracks: The Minnesota Musicians behind Dylan's Masterpiece will be out in stores September 12, 2023. It is available for pre-order here on Amazon.

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In 2018, the Minnesota musicians who recorded five of the songs on Dylan's much-lauded Blood on the Tracks album got the long-overdue recognition they deserved for their contributions to that very special album. Paul Metsa featured their stories on his Wall of Power program, a very special event for everyone present. Their stories are referenced in Bob Dylan in Minnesota as well. Here are my three blog posts about that special day.

Part One  
https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2018/10/inside-studio-still-more-blood-and.html 

Part Two
https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2018/10/paul-metsas-wall-of-power-featuring.html

Part Three
https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2018/10/lives-touched-and-changed-dylan-blood.html

*The Morton subhead is a paraphrased description of Morton from Robert Shelton's Dylan bio No Direction Home.