Chrissie Hynde with James Walbourne - Dylan Lockdown (2020)

UPDATE: The link for this album has been removed, because all the songs here, plus one more, has been officially released as the album "Standing in the Doorway: Chrissie Hynde Sings Bob Dylan."

 

So what has Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders been up to since the coronavirus lockdown began? She's made a couple of recorded appearances, but they've been short and unremarkable. But she's taken a different approach: together with Jame Walbourne, who has been lead guitarist for the Pretenders since 2008, she's done a series of Bob Dylan covers. Instead of the common acoustic approach during the lockdown, she's worked up full band versions of each song, then released then on the Internet once a week.

Her Dylan versions are excellent. What I particularly like is that she's generally selected less covered songs, including a couple of downright obscure ones. She also picked some of my all-time Dylan favorites, especially "Blind Willie McTell." There are only eight songs, but it totals up to 46 minutes, which is an ideal album length.

I've been collecting her Dylan songs each week. I was going to wait longer before posting, because I didn't know how many covers she'd do. But with this week's song, she mentioned it was the last song of the Dylan series.

If you're at all a Chrissie Hynde/Pretenders fan, or a Bob Dylan fan, you should give this a listen. Lots of artists have officially released albums consisting entirely of Dylan covers. For whatever reason, Hynde decided to release this de facto new studio album on the Internet for free.

01 In the Summertime (Chrissie Hynde with James Walbourne)
02 You're a Big Girl Now (Chrissie Hynde with James Walbourne)
03 Standing in the Doorway (Chrissie Hynde with James Walbourne)
04 Sweetheart like You (Chrissie Hynde with James Walbourne)
05 Blind Willie McTell (Chrissie Hynde with James Walbourne)
06 Love Minus Zero-No Limit (Chrissie Hynde with James Walbourne)
07 Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight (Chrissie Hynde with James Walbourne)
08 Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Chrissie Hynde with James Walbourne)

I was planning on making my own cover art for this album, as usual. But when Googling for a picture of Chrissie Hynde and James Walbourne together, I stumbled across some album art a person named spunky2018 made for the Dylan lockdown series. So even though I found some pictures of them together, I've used this one instead. I like how spunky2018 made it in the style of an old Dylan album.