Dylan cover a day: Sign on the window

By Tony Attwood

It appears that Dylan has never performed “Sign on the window” in any concert – at least according to the official site. (My guess that could in part be because of the key change in the middle – and I approached this little review wondering how each artist was going to cope).

And yet despite Dylan’s non-performance, and its notorious modulation, it has not escaped the attention of the cover artists.

Melanie starts with an emphasis on the plaintive with a simple accompaniment, but her voice gets forced, and then suddenly, well, everything changes, except then it changes back again. And I am left thinking, “why?” I suspect the answer was that they couldn’t think of much else to do, except tell each musician to do his/her thing. And they do, but not to much effect in my view. Except strangely in the last repeated line, which made me think – that could have been the starting point for something quite enjoyable. So not for me…

On the other hand, many of the cover versions of this song just perform it straight, adding little of their own input, which always makes me wonder what the point is. I might not always like the way other artists treat Dylan’s song, but at least by reinterpreting the song they do give us a chance of new insight, even if as with Melanie there’s nothing there for me.

But, fear not and read on, for things are about to start happening…

Al Tuck and No Action (great name!) really do take the song somewhere else – and particularly makes sense of the key change into the middle eight.

That change of key which runs D, C#minor, B (just about the most incomprehensible chord sequence ever in terms of a song which is actually in F#) has never made any sense at all – until here, where it works. (Interestingly, so weird is this song that the unbeatable, definitive Dylan Chords website actually refuses to write out the song in F sharp and instead transposes it to E even though Eyolf Østrem knows everything about everything in terms of chords and Dylan, and so normally reproduces the music as is.)

But back to this cover – the rhythmic change is superb, as are the harmonies (which is what in part makes the “looks like nothing but rain” line work here, in a way that no one else seems able to do. (And that includes Bob).

Sarah Jarosz has a voice just made for this song, and very sensibly lets her voice drive the song, accompanying the vocals with herself on guitar plus a softly played double bass. She again also manages that key change with a very effective slide up through the chords. Really after the previous version and this one, I am warming to this song for the first time ever. This lady not only knows how to play, she also knows to keep it simple – and believe me keeping it simple while making it interesting and beautiful, is much harder than throwing the kitchen sink into the mix and hoping something comes out. Superb – well may she smile at the end.

So having found myself a couple of covers that I really like I was about to stop when I happened upon a version in Sicilian. Just the one guitar and a language of which I don’t know a word (although I do remember being told that each town has its own variant of the language, so perhaps I should say I don’t know a word of any of them). But I can still appreciate this. Which is interesting, because before I started this article, I would have said this was a song of Dylan’s I really had no feelings for at all.

Which I suppose just goes to show us the value of covers.

The Dylan Cover a Day series

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