Reorchestrating Girl from the North Country

Thirty years on and I’m still obsessing over Bob Dylan. The lore. The legacy. The lyrics.

In 1997, I was ten years old – my life’s goal: be Billy Joel. I had been playing piano since the age of six and knew every word of Joel’s catalog. In August of that year, he released a new single with his Greatest Hits Vol. 3 album called “To Make You Feel My Love” – an unreleased song written by Bob Dylan (a name I had never encountered.) The evocative lyrics, coupled with the gravel tinged vocal (Joel’s nod to Dylan’s voice) and a soaring harmonica solo in the middle of the song had me hooked. I had to know everything about this Bob Dylan.

I’ve spent the last six months grappling with how adapting and expanding the orchestrations for a group of actor-musicians could work for this production of Girl from the North Country. Daydreaming of new colors that could be incorporated into the musical’s sonic palette, any resonance or connections that can be made between character and instrument and attempting to solve the puzzle of writing music that meet the actor’s specific technical skill set on their respective instruments, while creating the most thrilling listening experience for audiences. Like Dylan himself, the answers are never boldly stated or easy to come by but the experience of opening yourself to hearing what may be beneath the surface in the songs has been exhilarating.

This production utilizes instruments that would have been available in 1934 when the play is set – accordion, piano, violin, upright bass, mandolin, banjo, drums, acoustic guitars, resonator guitars and of course – harmonica. The arrangement of the songs, their structure and form, remain untouched from the musical’s original production, but largely what you’ll hear the actor’s playing is new and unique to them and this production.

Thirty years on and I’m still obsessing over Bob Dylan. The lore. The legacy. The lyrics. The mysticism behind the man and the music. All of it holds the same vibrancy for me personally as it did when I was ten. I find as many resonances in the songs in our world now as I did then. The songs remain “Forever Young” and I’m excited to share his music anew with Arden audiences.