My first exposure to Steven Jenkins, director of the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, came a couple years ago when we appeared on a panel together in Nashville. It was AmericanaFest, I had just written the liner notes for the 1974 Live Recordings box set, and we were debuting a handful of tracks before a crowded live audience at Third Man’s Blue Room. Dylan freaks are Dylan freaks, but even still, the extent of the interest in the new reissue I think was surprising even to the great people at Sony/Legacy who had entrusted me with the solemn undertaking of writing the notes. People were psyched to hear this stuff. There were some heavy hitters from the literary and music world in the crowd. I had not thought terribly much about what I would say—I had imagined a more modest affair—and I began to get a little nervous. Dylanologists can be slightly unreasonable about minutiae. If I got a name or date wrong, they would know, and more so, they would tell me.
It was lucky, then, to meet Steven for the first time, backstage before the panel, to be quickly swept into a fully immersive conversation about his life and work, about his passionate and contagious views on art and music, to be utterly disarmed by his humor. I sensed immediately that our chemistry would carry over to the audience and stopped feeling nervous. That’s the kind of guy he is: a brilliant observer with profound intellectual curiosity and the power to put everyone at ease. The panel went great, and more than that, I’d made a friend.
We reconnected in Oxford, Mississippi, this past spring at a traveling road show where Steven was showing off a new Dylan Center–produced film featuring nearly an hour of mostly-previously unseen live footage of Dylan, ranging from the old folky days to time out of mind. There was a live event where we played the movie, and I asked Steven questions. He said his favorite Dylan recording ever was the performance of “Cold Irons Bound” from the extremely strange Dylan-conceived, Larry Charles–directed 2003 cinematic curio Masked and Anonymous. He revealed a handful of other secrets. Some of those will remain the psychological property of me and Steven and those in attendance that night. (I won’t lie to you—it was revelatory, and no one recorded it for posterity.)
But—lucky again—New Pony had suggested Steven and I record a podcast together, an episode of Known Associates. So, earlier that morning, I wandered out of my downtown hotel at the appointed hour—a little discombobulated, the morning after a nineteen-hour drive. Could not find the podcast studio, which was allegedly across the street. Saw Steven wandering confusedly in a parking lot as well. “Jenkins,” said I, “Where is this place?” More wandering around, found it: an impenetrable Narnia of back alleys and unpromising doors that you must pass through to get to where you need to be.
But I was happy to have arrived, and once we sat, I looked him dead in the eye. Here’s me and Steven Jenkins.
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Host: Elizabeth Nelson
Producers: Greg Brownderville, Robert Rea, Hannah Smith
Mixed by Clay Jones
