John Waters is promising a great night of music when he and his band hit the Taree stage with Bob Dylan Revisited.
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The accomplished actor and musician is performing and interpreting some of the great songs from the Bob Dylan songbook, From Blowin' in the Wind to Like A Rolling Stone, Hurricane to Knocking on Heaven's Door and will appear at the Manning Entertainment Centre on Friday, October 25.
"There's six of us altogether and it's like John Waters and band. We've been rehearsing these songs to make them our own," he said.
"We're not Bob Dylan. He half talks and half sings and I love the way he sings but I never wanted to impersonate him."
John describes Dylan's work as powerful and individual.
"He was his own person and followed his own rules."
"I try to (follow my own rules) but I also give a nod and acknowledge my influences.
"When we were rehearsing the songs we listened to a few. A few we basically knew and we studied the exact plotting of the songs but then we put them away and started playing them as ourselves."
John has always been a fan of the singer, songwriter, musician, poet and literary genius.
"Dylan got to me (or I got him) straight away - no filter. I told my friends there was this guy in the states who picks an acoustic guitar and sings through his nose. I also heard him do a 'talking blues', and the hipness of that got me in," he said.
Bob Dylan Revisited is a different kind of show to John's internationally acclaimed show Through A Glass Onion.
"Glass Onion was highly theatrical, imagining John Lennon and stringing monologue together with some songs. This is John Waters singing with a band.
"What I love about it is it's me being able to be me and talk to the audience in my own way and we have a great night."
Abstract Entertainment, which presents this tour, said Dylan's impact on popular culture cannot be disputed. "His music and songwriting have held a mirror to the changing political, cultural and social world we live in - the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the anti-war movement, world political movements and events; and was at the forefront of popularising 'folk music' as a genre."
Bob Dylan Revisited is on at the Manning Entertainment Centre on Friday, October 25 from 7.30pm.
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