Bob Dylan – Rank Strangers to Me Review

Where covers are a staple of the Bob Dylan stage experience, Rank Strangers to Me may hit a little closer to home. Down in the Groove may have been a mess but it was an honest album. A piece filled with hope and enough artistic scope to warrant returning to now and then. The Stanley Brothers’ song is given a go-through on an album which precedes a brief return to form. Return to the mountains, and find hope in the nature-based isolation. It brings on the best of us when we can connect with the great outdoors and the strangers around the place. Plenty of artists have retreated from the public eye as a way of considering the spotlight, of figuring out their next moves. For Dylan, it comes clear on Rank Strangers to Me. An underappreciated cover which lends itself to stage appearances a decade later. 

Over a decade on from his Down in the Groove cover and Dylan still finds solace in it. Ripped from a Denver date in 1999, this live performance of Rank Strangers to Me is a little more upbeat. There is a positivity reigning through it, a sense of returning to the mountains with a positive spring rather than as an escape as it was on Down in the Groove. The band bring a simpler flourish to this cover, the Opry-like acoustics and the simpler style of it make for a charming cover. Dylan delivers a decent vocal delivery and the backing vocals repeating the title of The Stanley Brothers’ classic adds a new layer not available on the Down in the Groove rip. This is now a song of documenting the past, of finding where those long-lost friends wound up and how they became strangers in the first place.  

What remains is the personable flourish, the soft folk styling of it a callback to those early days of wandering through New York in search of new strangers. Rank Strangers to Me gets to grips with this feeling on stage more than it does in the studio. But such is the beauty and difference between the two meanings, both found within this cover. Dylan displays a love for the stage and a desire to return to his past not for reflection but to relive those quiet joys on the stage, while his studio version has an air of desperation to it. Bluegrass joys which influenced Dylan in those early years are brought up once more, in the air of modern flourishes. But those same changes to Rank Strangers to Me are as minimal as can be. They hold firm with a sense of the folk fundamentals, despite the changing times.  

Such is the strength of Dylan on stage with Rank Strangers to Me. A chance to connect with his past and understand where the people of his past ended up, and what happened to those close friends and strangers of the past. Catching up on the details of a life left behind is often a thrill, but more for the interest in others than the impact on ourselves. What we may find in those updates is confirmation or reality. Our interest is tertiary as we pair up our old selves with former friends and frequent sightings or experiences. Rank Strangers to Me serves as a keen look at what those old memories tell us, what they can reveal to us as we search for influence or certainty in times of doubt.

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