by
Fish Griwkowsky
It’s been a long time since Ramblin’ Jack Elliot was riding Bob Dylan’s circus train, so long that to bring it up seems almost a discredit to Elliot’s good name. But Elliot is a storyteller, and like the collective memory of music itself, he tends to visit certain highlights, including his time in the Rolling Thunder Revue in ’75 with Dylan, Joan Baez, T. Bone Burnett and the late Mick Ronson. Elliot, of course, will be playing with none of these people on the weekend, but he’s more than happy to talk about them, and in fact anything, during a long conversation which didn’t so much ramble as connect some unusual dots.
FISH:
Do you think *On the Road with Bob Dylan* is an accurate account of the time?
RAMBLIN’:
I remember (the author) Ratso was always hanging around, trying to interview me,
and I wasn’t very helpful. Bob liked him a lot, and that’s why he was the
only on allowed on the inside. We were protected by an army of sorts, kind of
our own police force. It felt like I was part of a little family group.
Afterwards I was very lost. I didn’t know what to do next. I went to Colorado,
I went to California. The next Rolling Thunder tour they did, I wasn’t invited
along. There was a movie made that didn’t give anyone an inkling of what it
was like, we acted like amateur actors, hamming it up for the camera, and Bob
would tell us what to do.
FISH:
Tell me how you keep connected to the land. You have an ATV …
RAMBLIN’:
… which has since died. It’s in my daughter’s movie, a Sundance
award-winning effort that shows what it’s like to be the daughter of a man who
doesn’t visit his daughter enough. (Laughs.)
FISH:
Corb Lund, who’s playing with you, was telling me about the film …
RAMBLIN’:
I was very impressed by him. That’s one of the ways I saty connected, every
once in a while I meet a real cowboy like him. I feel very lucky to know some
people, and I partied long and hard with him after the Ian Tyson tribute. Tyson
put me on my first cutting horse, way back in Toronto. I was at the wedding with
him and Sylvia.
FISH:
Did you like *A Mighty Wind*? There was something a little Ian & Sylvia
about Mitch and Mickey …
RAMBLIN’:
Arlo (Guthrie) loved it and got me to go to it. I thought that it was very well
done. And they have somebody in there that’s a tackeoff on me, Ramblin’
Sandy Hiccup or something like that. I felt honoured and I was glad that it was
brief.
FISH:
Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara (Mitch and Mickey) really got their start in
Edmonton on a show called *SCTV* we’re very proud of.
RAMBLIN’:
Really? I met John Candy and stayed overnight at his apartment one time. I was
footloose and singing in Toronto and someone introduced me to him. He invited me
over and I ended up staying up all night talking to him. It turned out he was a
big fan, but it didn’t matter. That’s the best way to enjoy talking to
people, if they don’t know you’re famous and they don’t get totally weird.
I was with Dylan one night, walking in Greenwich, and Bob asked this guy (Dylan
voice), “You know any place that’s open around here we can still get a
drink?” This guy ended coming with us, we drank beer and shot pool and talked
and he never knew it was Bob Dylan.
FISH:
When’s the last time you saw Bob?
RAMBLIN’:
Last July. I’d driven all the way from Oklahoma in my new truck. “There’s
Ramblin’,” he says. He never calls me that. Then: “What’s in your
life?” I told him I got a new truck and drove for four days to see him with
little sleep, that I had to go back and feed the cats. “Gotta feed them
cats.” That’s all he said. But when he was playing he put on a big white
cowboy hat and announced, “Ramblin’ Jack’s here.” I thought that was
pretty nice.
FISH: It’s the least he could do!