‘Dylan is a walking dictionary of American music’

Discover the untold story behind Bob Dylan's iconic album, ‘Blood on the Tracks’, and the Minnesota musicians who contributed to its creation.

There is a tonne of drama surrounding Bob Dylan’s 15th studio album, Blood on the Tracks. The album, hailed as one of the greatest of all time, released on January 20, 1975, has been seen as a sonic exploration of Dylan’s crumbling marriage — in fact the singer-songwriter’s son, Jakob, has been quoted as saying the album is “his parents talking.” This is also the album, which post recording in New York in September 1974, saw Dylan abruptly returning home to Minneapolis to record again in December 1974. The final output had five songs with the New York recording and the remaining five with the Minneapolis recording, including the iconic ‘Tangled up in Blue’.

As the sleeves had already been done, the six Minnesota musicians who contributed to the album, Peter Ostroushko (mandolin), Bill Berg (drums), Billy Peterson (bass), Chris Weber and Kevin Odegard (guitar), and Gregg Inhofer (keyboards), were not in the credits. The musicians had to wait till 2018 and the release of More Blood, More Tracks, a compilation album of Blood on the Tracks to be credited for their work.

Paul Metsa and Rick Shefchik shine a light on this bubbling cauldron of an extraordinary album, a collapsing marriage, an artiste finding his voice again, a return home, and top-secret recording sessions, with Blood in the Tracks: The Minnesota Musicians behind Dylan’s Masterpiece.

In 2001, musician and songwriter, Metsa produced a 60th birthday tribute to Bob Dylan at First Avenue in Minneapolis, where incidentally, Prince recorded Purple Rain. “I called Kevin (Odegard), to see about the possibility of reuniting the Minnesota musicians who played on Blood on the Tracks,” says the musician and songwriter over a video call from Minneapolis. “We got everybody except Bill Berg.”

Metsa had a couple of hours of taping with the Minnesota musicians for a television show he was doing. “I had over 200 pages of transcribed interviews. A literary agent suggested I get a co-writer, I got hold of Rick and he can tell the rest of the story.”

“I was minding my business in Phoenix, Arizona, in the winter of 2021 when I got a call from Paul,” says Shefchik over a video call from his home office in Stillwater, Minnesota. “We have known each other over the years and actually even played a song together. Paul said he was looking for a co-author for a Dylan project.”

Having read Odegard’s book, A Simple Twist of Fate, which Shefchik, a journalist and author, felt was an accurate, in-depth description of the Minneapolis sessions, he chose to find out more about the musicians. “Paul and I decided there would be new material if we could flesh out who these guys were, what kind of lives they had led and what happened to them afterwards.”