Joan Osborne brings ‘Dylanology’ to Cabot

There comes a moment when most every budding songwriter becomes a Bob Dylan fan. For Joan Osborne, it happened before she’d even picked up a guitar.

“I probably heard his music first when I was a kid in Kentucky, going to a guitar mass at church,” she said this week, from a Thanksgiving break with family in Connecticut. “But once I got into digging into more American roots music, I started taking a more scholarly look at what he was doing. The best thing about covering Dylan is that there are hundreds of great songs you can do. The worst thing is that, well, there are hundreds of great songs — so you have to figure out which to pick.”

Osborne has been doing her “Dylanology” show for a couple of years now, and she brings it to the Cabot Theater in Beverly on Friday. The band has changed since she played Boston last year; now she’s got two guitar heroes in ex-Black Crowes member Jackie Greene and New Orleans blues-rocker Anders Osborne, so expect more of a jam-band format.

“That just means I’m going to be playing more acoustic guitar and percussion, so I can be part of the ensemble and allow them to do their thing.”

The only Dylan she can’t relate to is the angry relationship songs, so there won’t be any “Idiot Wind” or “Like a Rolling Stone” in the set. “There’s something about the cruelty and nastiness in those songs that puts me off — like, you’re the great intellectual genius and yet you’re so mad at this girl for breaking up with you? The takedowns of his girlfriend there is like bringing a nuclear weapon to a knife fight. But on the other hand, we are doing (the Vietnam-era protest song) ‘Masters of War,’ which to me uses all of Dylan’s venom against someone who truly deserves it.”

The latter song is an influence on the new songs Osborne is writing, for her first original album in five years. “If you’re raising a kid, there is a lot to process nowadays, so some of these songs are probably the most political I’ve ever written. In the tradition of a song like ‘Masters of War,’ you need to call out people who are abusing the public trust.”

But as with the Dylan songs, pure anger isn’t really her style. “We seem to be living in a moment where it’s difficult to hold onto optimism. So music allows people to share in the sense of being alive. Going to a show isn’t like Twitter or Facebook, you’re not there to insult people who don’t agree with you politically.”

The one hit of her own that she’s playing this time around is “One of Us,” her 1995 breakthrough hit (written by Eric Bazilian of the Hooters). “To me the power of that song always came from the innocence of the perspective. That question, ‘What if God was one of us?’ sounds like a kid tugging at your sleeve. It reminds of when my daughter starts asking questions like ‘When did time start?’ — It’s a really innocent question that you can’t answer.”

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Joan Osborne’s “Dylanology” with Jackie Greene and Anders Osborne, at the Cabot Theater, Beverly, Friday. Tickets $34.50; thecabot.org.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2DnNnJc