by Jochen Markhorst
XIX Mail Train Kept A-Rollin’
Dylan ain’t no false prophet and he brings the Light. But note: I may be here forever / I may not be here at all.
Spring 2025 marks 60 years since the conception of “It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry” and the song is again, still, on the setlist. As well as one of the many pleasant surprises during Dylan’s gigs at the Outlaw Music Festival May 2025: Willie Dixon’s “Axe and The Wind”, a rather obscure deep-cut recorded by George “Wild Child” Butler in 1966 and not released until 1968, without too much success. A remarkable choice, but at first glance it does fit into the list of outsiders Dylan apparently wants to delight his audience with especially during that annual concert series.
In 2024, we heard rockabilly hits such as Sanford Clark’s “The Fool” and Dave Dudley’s “Six Days On The Road”, and the doo-wop classic “Mr. Blue” by The Fleetwoods, and in 2025 Jerry Lee Lewis’ country tearjerker “I’ll Make It All Up To You”, a wonderful version of Bobby Bland’s soul ballad “Share Your Love With Me” and The Pogues’ heartthrob “A Rainy Night in Soho” (the song Nick Cave sang at Shane MacGowan’s funeral in 2023)… The eclectic music taste we remember from Theme Time Radio Hour’s DJ Dylan permeates the setlists and the motivation seems identical: missionary zeal, a mild form of saviour complex perhaps, the urge to dust off gems in order to save them from oblivion.
Dylan – Axe and The Wind – live 15 May 2025
However, with all due respect to Willie Dixon and George “Wild Child” Butler, and to Dylan’s sympathetic – and successful – drive to bring them back into the limelight as well: “Axe and The Wind” is a rather generic blues. The choice seems mainly motivated by the song’s final words:
You can never tell Which way the axe gon' fall I may be here forever I may not be here at all
… which perhaps initially takes us back to the old, mysterious, wondrous 1967 Basement discovery “I’m Not There”, but more intriguingly still: they are words with the same immortality/transiency duality as Dylan’s message to Ralph Stanley, as the congratulatory telegram he sends 9 November 1996 to the jubilant Dr Ralph Stanley. In his autobiography, Dr Stanley reveals the contents and interprets Dylan’s deeper message:
“They had a big celebration for me in Nashville in honor of my fiftieth anniversary as a professional musician. There was a fancy reception at the Country Music Hall of Fame, with all kinds of friends from down through the years and former Clinch Mountain Boys there to greet me. Then I played a show with my band at the Grand Ole Opry. During the show, Opry host Del Reeves announced to the crowd he had a telegram “a special fan” had sent from New York City. The telegram said:
“DEAR DR. RALPH. THE FIELDS HAVE TURNED BROWN. NOT FOR YOU, THOUGH. YOU’LL LIVE FOREVER. BEST WISHES, BOB DYLAN.”
“That was something I didn’t expect, and it was a wonderful surprise. I know what Bob meant in his message, and it really touched my heart. I know he meant my music would be around long after I’m dead and gone.” (Man Of Constant Sorrow, written with Eddie Dean, 2007)
That same immortality/transiency duality as I may be here forever / I may not be here at all, and Ralph Stanley’s interpretation does make sense: “He meant my music would be around long after I’m dead and gone.” But then, of course, that requires relay runners, disciples who put “The Fields Have Turned Brown” on the setlist or keep it alive in some other way. Relay runners, torch bearers, or, expressed a little more respectfully, prophets.
And Dylan is, let’s not forget, such a prophet – the prophet who proclaims the gospel of Deep Truths and of the Light in the Darkness, as he confesses in his own “False Prophet” and on Rough And Rowdy Ways (2020) anyway. Meaning the Light in the Darkness and the Deep Truths we find in songs: Robert Johnson and Big Joe Turner, Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt, Furry Lewis and Leroy Carr, Bob Wills and Elvis, Howlin’ Wolf and Jimmie Rodgers, the Child Ballads and the Baptist Hymns, Tampa Red and Bobby Bland and Shane MacGowan and Jerry Lee Lewis and The Stanley Brothers… they show the Way, tell the Truth and promise the Life, and the Prophet spreads this Gospel.
In May 2025, the Prophet celebrates his 84th birthday, thus facing his own impermanence. It seems both to reinforce his missionary zeal and influence his choice of repertoire. Songs that invite melancholic reflections on the audience’s relationship and shared history with the artist, such as “Simple Twist Of Fate” and “Things Have Changed”, songs that we may now understand as announcing a farewell, such as “I’ll Make It All Up To You” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”, and songs that the Prophet, with appropriate immodesty, wants to save from oblivion, songs that should be around long after I’m dead and gone, songs like “Desolation Row” and “All Along The Watchtower” and “Blind Willie McTell” and “Mr. Tambourine Man”. The category to which he then apparently includes “It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry”.
Well, the old Prophet has a point there – it is a song for eternity, a song that will be around long after I’m dead and gone. The mail train keeps a-rollin’.
Dylan – It Takes a Lot to Laugh – live 15 May 2025:
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Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
- Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
- Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
- Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
- Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
- Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
- Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
- Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
- John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
- Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
- Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
- Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2nd Big Bang
- Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
- Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
- Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
- Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
- I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
- Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
- Bob Dylan’s 1971
- Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden: Bob Dylan kicks open the door