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From The Desk Of Kevn Kinney: Bob Dylan In The Morning

Kevn Kinney‘s music has always been lurking in the cobwebbed corners of your mind, even if you weren’t aware of it. After making the big move from Milwaukee to Atlanta back in the ’80s, he happened to be close to Athens, Ga., the birthplace of R.E.M., when that band was really catching fire. He caught the always-open ear of Peter Buck, who produced some material by Kinney’s band, Drivin N Cryin, which would latch onto a support slot for an R.E.M. tour. Fast forward to the new millennium, and Kinney has moved to Brooklyn, where he’s cut a fine solo record, A Good Country Mile, with Anton Fier and the Golden Palominos. The new disc somehow manages to fit Bob Dylan, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Van Morrison under the same tiny leopard-skin pill-box hat. Kinney will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Kinney: Nothing sounds better than Bob Dylan in the morning. I used to get up at
4:30 a.m. Monday through Friday and drive to my job at the Roswell, Ga.,
sewage plant.
I started out as a laborer and worked my way up to apprentice from
carpenter.
I would pick up my friend and co-worker Willy, and we’d head off to
Hardees for a biscuit and coffee.
Willy took his with seven sugars. Willy was a concrete finisher, which
meant he would smooth out the seams of the concrete after we removed
the forms … I can still hear his beautiful Sam Cooke voice echoing off the
empty walls of a newly finished aeration basin …
for the first few months I worked there I just had my trusty tapedeck on the
front seat of my 1964 Belvedere …
I would listen to The Times Are A-Changin’ or Bringing It All Back Home.
Dylan was new to me back in 1982, probably because he was a folk singer
and growing up in the 70’s I hated folk singers. They all seemed have
mustaches and seemed like the kind of guy that
would hang around your sister as just friends, but I really knew what they
wanted …
either that or some dude sittin’ around a campfire … I guess I had Dylan
lumped in with that
at least until just months before I moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta,
my friend Richard took my to see the re-release of Don’t Look Back by
D.A. Pennebaker. I loved it
and immediately bought my first Dylan record
but since I was so far behind in knowing him, I vowed to listen to them
one at a time starting with the first
and by the time I hit Georgia it was one too many mornings and a
thousand miles behind…..
I heard a Bob Dylan song this morning while I was at the coffee shop here
in Greenpoint, USA
and made me think of Willy
and how much I love Bob Dylan
in the morning