Flashback Friday: The Case for Celebrating Dylan's Home Town

Don't Look Back (Avail. as print or original)

TOMORROW IS DAY ONE OF DULUTH DYLAN FEST 2021. THIS BLOG POST WAS WRITTEN 10 YEARS AGO SHORTLY AFTER DDF 2011.

A few weeks ago I mentioned a gentleman from Manchester with whom I had visited during my Dylan-themed show at the Ochre Ghost Gallery, the week of Dylan Fest. Since that time we've begun a correspondence and it turns out he is no ordinary Dylan fan. He's a professional who has written extensively about the topic of music-based tourism. 

 

Last week I received a 17 page document co-authored by David Leaver and Ruth A. Schmidt of Manchester Metropolitan University titled, "Before they were famous: music-based tourism and a musician's hometown roots." The paper opens, "Music-based tourism is well developed and growing, especially in countries featuring both mature tourism and music industries, such as the USA and the UK." One sources estimates that destination travel related to music involves as many as 55 million annual visits worldwide. The destination points rely on evidence of cultural activities, incidents and tangible artifacts that can be photographed. 

 

The paper cites Liverpool as one community that increased its incoming tourism dollars by 40% when they deliberately embraced this concept, that people want to visit and see the places the Beatles actually once were. Graceland in Memphis attracts 600,000 visitors a year now. Buddy Holly's birthplace, Lubbock, Texas, is another lodestone for the rock 'n roll faithful. 

 

As the Beatles once sang,
"There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed..."

Hibbing, MN, in recent years began to capitalize on this notion of place with regard to Dylan, creating an annual celebration called Dylan Days. And it's about time, because a lot of people want a time and place for seeing the school auditorium where Dylan first played, and the surrounding neighborhood he grew up in. 

 

Last week I talked with someone who said the first day that he got his motorcycle license, the very first thing he did was ride to Hibbing to see where Dylan grew up. At the time, there was nothing to see. Today we have Zimmy's and more. There are things one can photograph and save for a scrapbook of memories, and touch and feel.
 

Some people think all this nostalgia quest is just a bunch of aging Baby Boomers trying to keep the flame alive. "Come gather round people wherever you roam...." But the Leaver/Schmidt study notes that 34 per cent of the people who visited Graceland in 2008 were under 30. Not only is the music being passed down to new generations, but the significance of the places and people is being noted. 

 

In David Leaver's recent email to me on this topic he wrote, "I learnt a long time ago that it’s not the message sent out but the message received that’s important so we will all have different takes on it."

Included in this email was the link to a 22 minute film he created based on the 1966 Dylan concert in Manchester's Free Trade Hall. The film is essentially three men reminiscing about that critical juncture in Dylan's career when he careened into a new path, going electric, which many fans thought was a betrayal of his own ethos.

"My interest in the Free Trade Hall 1966 stemmed from my interest in the notion of place and its link to music and emotion (my first degree was in Geography.) The film is dedicated to my friend Ruth Schmidt with whom I wrote three Dylan related papers on that topic. Ruth loved Dylan and her adopted city of Manchester. She passed away on May 17 2011 – the 45th anniversary of the concert and every time I go past the FTH I think of her." 

 

When you have time, check out this film about Dylan at Manchester's Free Trade Hall 1966.

Message to Duluth: Remember, these visitors are emotion-driven customers who spend without thinking. Duluth and Hibbing deserve the same recognition as Memphis and Nashville, don'tcha think? Have a great day!

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Related Links

David Leaver Shares His Views On Dylan and the Nobel Prize from Across the Pond

Music-Based Tourism and Placemaking in Dylan's Northland

Duluth Dylan Fest Links

www.bobdylanway.com

www.duluthdylanfest.com

www.facebook.com/duluthdylanfest/

Music-Based Tourism and Placemaking in Dylan's Northland

Beacon Theater, Nov. 2018. Photo credit: Nelson French

Yesterday's Duluth News Tribune featured an update on the state of tourism here by Visit Duluth president & CEO Anna Tanski. I found this particular passage in the article uplifting:

Bob Dylan and outdoor adventure remain the two top draws for international media and visitors. In recent months, Visit Duluth has hosted travel writers, influencers and media/TV from Australia, China, Germany, Sweden, and the UK. Stories have started running and will continue well into 2019, shining the international spotlight on our city, hopefully spurring travelers to experience Duluth for themselves.

As a member of the Duluth Dylan Fest committee it has been gratifying to welcome some of these journalists and media folk. The list of visitors goes further than the nations cited in Anna Tanski's column. Duluth warmly welcomed a pair of Pakistani journalists this fall, one who called Duluth the Best Place for Meditation. In 2017 we had a visit from a Rolling Stone journalist from France. who greatly enjoyed standing before the stage where a young Robert Zimmerman stood when Buddy Holly performed here.

January 1, 1972. Academy of Music. Photo credit: Joseph Sia
Photo courtesy William Pagel Archives

This past October it was a treat to meet a team from the BBC who flew to Minnesota to cover the upcoming election. They were torn between Rochester and Duluth, but descended upon our city because one of the men was a Dylan fan. In covering the Northland they visited the John Bushey Studio at KUMD to interview Miriam, host of the Highway 61 Revisited program. From there they caught a few of us at Carmody's Irish Pub where the Duluth Dylan Fest team was finishing up a planning meeting. You can catch the dialogue here, approximately 40 minutes in.

I mention all these things because reading yesterday's article seemed to be a much needed public acknowledgement that Dylan's ties to the Northland have real value for the community, something that has not always been recognized. When I first moved to Duluth in 1986, efforts to create a Bob Dylan Way had been continuously thwarted. For decades. It wasn't until May 2006 that the City of Duluth designated a cultural pathway in honor of Duluth’s native son, Bob Dylan, to commemorate his 65th birthday. It still required a group of citizens to raise private dollars to create and install 30 street signs that mark this pathway.

WHY PLACEMAKING MATTERS

There is much that has been written about music-based tourism. One of the foremost scholars on this subject is David Leaver of Manchester, England, who twice visited the Northland as part of his research endeavors. Here are links to abstracts for a few of his papers.

Before They Were Famous: Music-Based Tourism and a Musicians Hometown Roots

Together Through Life—an exploration of popular music heritage and the quest for re-enchantment
Premise: Set against the backdrop of the historical shift from modernity into postmodernity, this article explores the growing importance of music destination tourism for the baby boomer generation in their quest for personal and social meaning.

'Tangled up in Bob': An ethnographic case study of the impact of local Bob Dylan heritage on place branding in Hibbing, Minnesota.
Abstract: This case study explores avenues for symbiotic co-branding of local music heritage sites in Hibbing, Minnesota, an isolated mining town with a strong local culture, where Bob Dylan grew up and lived from 1947 to 1959. Music heritage based tourism focusing on sites of biographical significance is a growth sector in countries with mature tourism and music industries, such as the US and the UK. Based on two field visits and correspondence, this ethnographic study applies ethnographic aims to generate an understanding of the perspectives and orientations of key Hibbing stakeholders. Issues of access to the field and the negotiation of multiple roles of the researcher as fan, observer and participator are discussed. Findings provide a holistic image of events, drivers and barriers and 'tell the story' of the contribution of Hibbing's Bob Dylan heritage towards a local sense of place. Building on the conceptualization of 'place brand' as a relational network which emerges as an ongoing interactive process between 'place' and all its stakeholders, the paper suggests ways in which Dylan's Hibbing heritage can both further attract and inform his fan base while recognizing local sensitivities and resources.

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London, England, 2009. Courtesy William Pagel Archives.

Writing for World Archaeology, Timothy Darvill's  Rock and soul: humanizing heritage, memorializing music and producing places offers these additional insights about music and place.
Place production through the formal process of ‘place-making’ and the more informal evolutionary expediency of ‘place-marking’ has become a major theme of sustainable development, conservation and regeneration in recent decades. Popular music heritage has played a part in this, and has great potential to contribute more. This article explores the ways in which tangible and intangible heritage combine to underpin place-production linked to popular music. Examples of the achievements of popular musical heritage in relation to three discernible kinds of place-production are explored: linear places epitomized by roads and routes such as Highway 61 and Route 66; dispersed places represented by memorial plaques and statues on buildings and in open spaces; and concentrations of connected elements such as can be found in Liverpool (UK) and Memphis (USA). It is concluded that popular music culture continues to have an important role to play in the creation of powerful places and that social conventions and commercial interests now contribute to the perpetuation of interest in these places and the traditions they represent.

Of course the references to Route 66 and Highway 61 especially jump out, having travelled portions of both, each laced with nostalgia dripping with Americana. It was a privilege to welcome a caravan of Airstreamers to Duluth this past September who had come to begin their own trek from the Northland here to New Orleans. (See: Airstreamers Arrive in Dylan Country.)

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It is exciting to see the progress being made in Hibbing and here in Duluth.
There's more to be said, but this is enough for now. The links below will take you further.

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Related Links
Bob Dylan Way signs are all up in Duluth --DNT Story
Bob Dylan Duluth Tour Flyer
Additional Links related to this theme
Serendipity, the Duluth Armory and a Dylan Fan (Journalist) from Germany

BONUS TRACK
On January 27 the Armory Arts and Music Center Presents a Tribute to the Music of Buddy Holly and the Late 50s. This event is a 60th Anniversary Reunion remembrance, to be held at the Sports Garden in Canal Park. Details Here.

David Leaver Shares His Views On Dylan and the Nobel Prize from "Across the Pond"

Don't Look Back

This past two months have been more than a little interesting for Dylan fans, not only those here in the Northland but from all over the world. One of these is a Mr. David Leaver whom I met five years ago at the Ochre Ghost Gallery where there was an exhibition of Dylan-themed art. Appropriately, my painting "Don't Look Back" was one of the pieces, the title pilfered from D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 Dylan documentary featuring Dylan's 1965 tour of England. Mr. Leaver entered the small space where we were introduced to one another and I learned his was an Englishman who lived for most of his childhood in a small town near Blackburn Lancashire made famous by the Beatles’ "A Day in the Life." It's been a great delight getting to know him better since that first meeting. Here's David Leaver's story.

EN: Can you share a bit about yourself and how you came to be such a dyed-in-the-wool Dylan fan?

David Leaver: My mother died when I was one and my dad when I was 13. My Dad’s last job was as a gravedigger. I lived with foster parents for three years but then lived with my two older brothers after the age of 16. At 18, I went to Oxford University to study Geography. My college was Christ Church, which is Oxford’s grandest college with 13 British Prime Ministers (out of 27 in total from Oxford). ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was written there and its current claim to fame was that much of the early Harry Potter films was shot there. I played for the College soccer team and my teammates included the nephew of a Prime Minister; the son of the Lord Chancellor and a future Field Marshall. Michael Dobbs creator of ‘House of Cards’ was a contemporary. It was certainly a different world to the one I had grown up in.

One of my courses at university was ‘The Economic Geography of Eastern Canada’, which gave some insights into the Great Lakes.

After University, I travelled working on a kibbutz in the winter of 1971-2; a cartographer in Dubai 1972-3; soccer coach University of Liberia 1973-4. I married a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia and went to live in Chicago 1975–6. I worked as a store manager for Woolworth's, which meant I could watch the Cubs on my days off. One cold winter had me going back to England. In England I worked for P+G on brands such as Ivory Snow and had a further 15 years in marketing with various companies.

In 1992, I switched careers and became a University lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, one of the UK’s largest with 36,000 students. I teach Brand Management, and Sports Branding. Both involve thinking about how brands and organizations use emotion and social media to connect with consumers and fans. My children now live in the USA: one in Seattle and the other in Kansas City. I visit them regularly.

Becoming a Dylan Fan

My earliest musical interest was Buddy Holly and then The Beatles, Stones and Kinks. Dylan was slightly peripheral and it was cover versions from Peter Paul and Mary, The Byrds and even Sonny and Cher that got me interested in him. The trilogy Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde was the real start. I particularly liked ‘Sad eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ and on vinyl you could play it on repeat as it was side 4 of Blonde. I liked how he described things and his unusual phrasing.

EN: How many times have you seen Dylan live?

DL: Dylan played the Isle of Wight in the summer of 1969. Unfortunately, the week before I had gone travelling in Europe for the summer so missed my first real opportunity to see him. I have seen him 7 times. My most memorable were 1984 in the open air at Newcastle. Santana was on the bill and Mick Taylor (ex-Rolling Stones) on lead. Beautiful balmy summer evening and some of it is on Real Live. My other favourite was in Kansas City. When he sang "He made it to Kansas City, Twelfth Street and Vine" from "High Water (For Charley Patton)" the crowd went nuts.

Visiting the Northlands

EN: You visited us here in Duluth and went to Hibbing's Dylan Days a few years ago. What did you enjoy most about that trip?

DL: I have been to Hibbing four times and Duluth once. As a Geographer, I was always fascinated by ‘place’, which can be characterised as a ‘meaningful location’. I was just curious about how place might have influenced Dylan as he does reference place in many of his songs. I am also interested in the notion of Dérive. For me this means ‘wandering about’ trying to get a sense of what makes a particular place. In Hibbing it is easy to do this as it is relatively contained and has such contrasts as the High School, the mines, and is the birthplace of Greyhound. For a small town it has a lot going on; but the locals seem so matter of fact about it, all which adds to the charm. Meeting Mr Rolfzen, Bob’s English teacher was fantastic; having afternoon tea in Bob’s boyhood home (thanks Greg French) were a couple of standouts. And of course the Dylan Days stalwarts: Linda Stroback-Hocking and Bob Hocking, and Aaron Brown. In Duluth it was nice to see his first home (and what a great job Bill Pagel has done with the restoration) has done there; and being taken to the Armory to stand on the stage Buddy Holly stood on (thanks to Zane Bail).

The Nobel Prize

Avignon, France, 1981

EN: Were you surprised by Dylan's being honored with the Nobel Prize for Literature?

DL: I was surprised but I think it is deserved. The book setting out his lyrics shows his range and Chronicles is a delight. I am sure a lot of dynamite has been used in Hibbing’s mines, too.

EN: Do you have a favorite period in Dylan's career or favorite album? I realize this is difficult as he has produced so much great material.

DL: At present I really enjoy the Bootleg Series. Slightly rough and ragged. But the real treasures are on YouTube looking at his stuff from the 1990s and early 2000s. Of all of them, a version of Hard Rain backed by a full orchestra is my favourite. Passion and a mature reflectiveness. (Embedded below.)

A Word for American fans of Dylan

EN: Is there anything you would like to say to American Dylan fans from England?

I met briefly LeRoy Hoikkala who played drums with Golden Chords with Bob in the 1950s. At 14 he told LeRoy, "Believe in yourself and never give up." A good way to go about things.

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Tomorrow Patti Smith is slated to read Mr. Dylan's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. As part of the ceremony she will also sing A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, one of the great songs from a Dylan's abundant catalog. Here's one of the most powerful performances of that powerful song that will continue to echo down the corridors of time in ways we cannot yet fathom.

TOMORROW there is a gathering in Hibbing to celebrate tomorrow's event. The Hibbing Dylan Project is inviting friends and fans to the Nobel Prize Reception Celebration at the Historic Androy Hotel in Hibbing. The party begins at 5:00 p.m. Details here on Facebook. Will I see you there?

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Get into it.