This week in Texas music history, Bob Dylan finds his Texas accent..
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By Jason Mellard from the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University.
On June 5, 1999, Austin guitarist Charlie Sexton joined Bob Dylan’s band. Their paths had been a long time crossing. The two first met in the early 1980s when Charlie was a teenager doing session work with the likes of Ron Wood and Keith Richards, and they shared stages in Austin during Dylan performances there in 1991 and 1996. In his twenties then, Charlie and his brother Will had been musical prodigies in a city that took such talent seriously, seasoned veterans at an early age. Charlie Sexton toured with Joe Ely at age thirteen, and sat in with British punks the Clash at fourteen. Sexton’s major label debut Pictures for Pleasure came out in 1985, but the label’s attempts to make him a pop heartthrob misunderstood the depth of his talent.
Dylan’s choice of a Texas bandmate in 1999 has a story to it, too. Dylan’s very first recording session in September 1961 was backing up a Texas artist, folk singer Carolyn Hester. Dylan’s debut album in spring 1962 closes with a cover from a legendary Texas guitarist, Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean.” That same month, Dylan was in the studio backing up yet another Texas icon, as Twenties era blues queen Victoria Spivey enlisted him on a session.
Sexton’s first stint with the Dylan band was a short but influential one, from 1999 to 2002, including the Grammy-winning album Love and Theft. While Sexton was away from Dylan’s band in the 2000s, Austin guitarist Denny Freeman served in the role for a while. Sexton returned to the band in 2009 after joining Dylan on stage at the Dell Diamond in Round Rock during a minor league stadium tour headlined by Dylan and Willie Nelson. Charlie Sexton and Bob Dylan, then, were two talents who shared much, “folk” artists of a sort, who have created rich American music always indebted to artists who have come before and imbued with community and communal memory. It’s no wonder that writer Peter Blackstock has called Charlie Sexton “Austin Music’s MVP,” an enduring pillar of the scene.
Sources:
Peter Blackstock, Peter Blackstock, “Fora All the Right Reasons, Charlie Sexton is Austin Music’s MVP,” Austin American-Statesman. September 25, 2018.
Jason Crouch, “Charlie Sexton: Too Many Ways to Fall” The Journal of Texas Music History. 2019.
Helen Thompson, “Little Boy Lost” Texas Monthly. February 1996.
