All About Tracy Chapman, since 2001.

Benefit birthday tribute to Bob Dylan

Tracy Chapman singing at the benefit birthday tribute to Bob Dylan in New York on May 19, 2001
Tracy Chapman singing at the benefit birthday tribute to Bob Dylan in New York on May 19, 2001

Tracy Chapman sang 2 Bob Dylan songs at the event “The Work of Bob Dylan”, a benefit birthday tribute to Bob Dylan in New York on May 19, 2001: ““I Threw It All Away” and “Gotta Serve Somebody”.

The proceeds from benefit went  to the PEN American Center, a group of 2,600 poets, playwrites, editors, essayists, translators and novelists whose mission is to advance the cause of literature and reading.

Visit PEN American Center website

 

PRESS REVIEWS OF THE EVENT

Tracy Chapman, Patti Smith To Salute Bob Dylan

Event sponsored by The New Yorker will explore singer’s cultural significance over past four decades.

By: Rob Kemp, Sonicnet.com Mon., April 2, 5:46 PM EDT

NEW YORK — Last weekend he received an Academy Award, his first, for the song “Things Have Changed,”and now another longtime bastion of high culture, The New Yorker magazine, is set to honor Bob Dylan at Town Hall on May 19.

At the event, titled “The Work of Bob Dylan,” a passel of singer/songwriters and writers will explore Dylan’s cultural significance over the past 40 years, a spokesperson for the
organizers said.

The lineup will include folk-rocker Tracy Chapman, onetime Dylan sideman and Counting Crows producer T-Bone Burnett, new-wave rocker Graham Parker, and the Esquires, a trio that comprises neo-dustbowl songstress Gillian Welch, guitarist David Rawlings and drummer David Steele.

Of particular note is the appearance of punk-rock priestess Patti Smith and her onetime paramour playwright Sam Shepard. All of the above will perform as-yet-undetermined Dylan songs; Shepherd will be collaborating with Burnett for the performance of one tune.

Poet Ann Waldman, who appeared in “Renaldo & Clara,” the bizarre 1978 film depicting Dylan’s 1976 Rolling Thunder Revue, will appear as well. Additionally, novelists Rick Moody, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Boston University professor and author Christopher Ricks will likely read Dylan’s lyrics as spoken verse. New Yorker editor David Remnick will moderate the event.

Dylan, who will turn 60 on May 24, has been notified of the event, but organizers have not heard back from his representatives as to whether he will attend. Calls to Dylan’s spokespeople were not returned by press time. He did show up for 1992’s massive concert at Madison Square Garden celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of his first album, 1962’s Bob Dylan.

“The Work of Bob Dylan” will benefit PEN, an international fellowship of writers, poets, editors and playwrights, and is part of the second annual The New Yorker Festival. Other events include a party hosted by “High Fidelity” scribe Nick Hornby on the same evening, followed the next day by a pair of talks with Chuck D., at the Director’s Guild Theatre, and Rickie Lee Jones, at the midtown Manhattan club Float.

Tracy Chapman singing at the benefit birthday tribute to Bob Dylan in New York on May 19, 2001
Tracy Chapman singing at the benefit birthday tribute to Bob Dylan in New York on May 19, 2001

New Yorker Fete Celebrates Dylan, ©internetwire.com

Musician, Poet Honored On His 60th Birthday At Gala Tribute During 3-Day Festival For The New Yorker

NEW YORK, NY — (INTERNET WIRE) — 05/21/2001 — Few have had as much influence over the course of contemporary music as Bob Dylan. As part of The New Yorker festival, Bob Dylan will be honored at a gathering of musicians, artists, poets and writers on Saturday night, May 19 – three days before Dylan’s 60th birthday.

Singer-songwriters Tracy Chapman, Rickie Lee Jones, Graham Parker and Patti Smith will be in attendance, as will authors Bobbie Ann Mason, Rick Moody, Martin Amis and Dylanologist Christopher Ricks, among others. Hosting the event at Manhattan’s famed Town Hall will be New Yorker editor David Remnick.

The New Yorker festival has featured more than 50 readings, interviews, performances, panel discussions, and brunches –each one designed to introduce New Yorker readers to the writers, editors, cartoonists, poets and artists they have already met reading the magazine.

Saturday evening’s tribute to Dylan is being held to benefit PEN, the international writer’s group. PEN offers programs, services and human-rights campaigns on behalf of writers who have been censored or imprisoned because of their work. The gala caps two separate weekends of events in celebration of the magazine’s 75th anniversary.

Tracy Chapman sings “Gotta Serve Somebody” (Bob Dylan) at a benefit birthday tribute to Bob Dylan in New York on May 19, 2001. The proceeds from benefit will go to the PEN American Center, a group of 2,600 poets, playwrites, editors, essayists, translators and novelists whose mission is to advance the cause of literature and reading.

 

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK; Rock Tributes to a Poet and a Populist

By JON PARELES, The New York Times, May 21, 2001

(…)
The Dylan event was decorous, a homage like those PEN has presented for Nabokov, Woolf and Baldwin. Musicians championed well-known songs: Rickie Lee Jones turning ”It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” into a bluesy seduction; the Esquires (the Nashville band with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings) treating ”Idiot Wind” like a Neil Young stomp; Tracy Chapman singing ”Gotta Serve Somebody” with fatalistic calm. They also picked lesser-known ones. Patti Smith sang ”Dark Eyes” unaccompanied, as if it were an abstract Appalachian ballad, and Greg Brown smoothly growled the apocalyptic imagery of ”Farewell Angelina.” Graham Parker declared ”I Threw It All Away” as ”about as perfect a song as you can get.”
(…)

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