Girl from the North Country … Duluth on Broadway!
The Broadway premiere of Girl from the North Country, set in Duluth and featuring the songs of Duluth native Bob Dylan, was held at the Belasco Theatre on March 5.
The Broadway premiere of Girl from the North Country, set in Duluth and featuring the songs of Duluth native Bob Dylan, was held at the Belasco Theatre on March 5.
Duluth mentioned at 2:32, Hibbing mentioned at 3:18 with a derisive laugh.
Grammy-nominated singer Joan Osborne will perform a special Bob Dylan tribute concert on the eve of his 78th birthday at Sacred Heart Music Center, just blocks from where the legendary songwriter was born in Duluth.
Consider this the third post in the “Ruth Trilogy.”
Part One: Shuggy Ray Smith – “Ruth from Duluth”
Part Two: Ruth Hart: “Baby Ruth from Duluth”
A profile on Roger McGuinn in No Depression, a quarterly roots music journal, opens with an interesting Duluth-related tidbit.
McGuinn says he and Dylan went skiing in Minnesota — near Duluth or Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing — during a Christmas break in Dylan’s historic 1975-76 Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
“He’s fast,” McGuinn recalls. “I was a beginning skier on the intermediate slope going down cautiously. I look to my right, and Bob goes vroom right past me.”
So, was it Spirit Mountain? Chester Bowl? Mont du Lac? Giants Ridge? Lutsen Mountains? Let the speculation begin.
Ed Newman is a prolific artist, writer and supporter of the arts in our area. His frequent blog posts at “Ennyman’s Territory” cover the work of other artists, events and issues around town. You can almost always count on seeing him at openings, and he’s also very involved with this week’s Duluth Dylan Fest. He talks about how all these passions and interests come together for him.
EN: I work in a variety of media. About four decades ago I re-defined myself as a “creative person” which opened up all kinds of channels for creative expression beyond painting and drawing. I became serious about my writing at that time, and have always been drawing and making art in the background of what has primarily been a career in advertising.
Duluth musicians perform Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” at R.T. Quinlan’s Saloon on May 14, 1993.
“Girl From the North Country,” the musical play that features the song catalog of Duluth/Hibbing native Bob Dylan, will close its second run at the Old Vic Theatre in London’s West End on March 24. Superior native Cassandra Csencsitz has published a review in the latest “Critic’s Notebook” on the American Theatre website: ‘Girl From the North Country’: How Does It Feel?
The 62-year-old New York-based news and culture paper Village Voice published its final printed edition on Sept. 20. It features Duluth-born Bob Dylan on the cover — a photo taken on Jan. 22, 1965 in Christopher Park near the old Voice offices.
The Voice announced in August it would cease publication of its print edition and convert to a fully digital format.
Absurd animated tales of encounters with Bob Dylan from filmmaker Caveh Zahedi.
The Stage, a weekly British newspaper and website covering the entertainment industry, has compiled reviews of the new Bob Dylan-inspired play set in 1930’s Duluth. Girl from the North Country, written and directed by Conor McPherson, opened earlier this month at the Vic Theater in London.
Critic Fergus Morgan notes the show “boasts a large, diverse cast, and 20 Dylan songs from across his career, pared down and rearranged for the stage by Simon Hale and performed by a live, onstage band.” The setting is described as “a run-down Minnesota guesthouse during the Great Depression. We’re in Duluth, Dylan’s place of birth, seven years before the singer-songwriter entered the world.”
Perfect Duluth Day reported in early May that a new musical play written and directed by Conor McPherson with music and lyrics by Bob Dylan was scheduled to open at the Vic Theater in London in July. What wasn’t known at the time is the play is set in Duluth.
Audio clips of two tracks recorded as part of a workshop for Girl from the North Country can be heard in the PDD post from May. Three reports verifying the setting of the play are listed below.
From the BBC New story “Bob Dylan: Conor McPherson on writing the musical“:
Conor McPherson has set the play in a guesthouse in Dylan’s birthplace of Duluth in Minnesota. It is called Girl from the North Country, after a track Dylan wrote in 1963.
The two tracks in sound embeds above — “Sweetheart Like You / True Love” and “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” — were recorded as part of a workshop for a new musical play written and directed by Conor McPherson with music and lyrics by Bob Dylan. Girl From The North Country will open at the Vic Theater in London in July.
The voices featured on both tracks are Bronagh Gallagher, Claudia Jolly, Debbie Kurup and Jack Shalloo.
