by Jürg Lehmann
A list of previous articles in the “Covers we Missed” series is given at the end. The blue links in the article will also take you to recordings and further information.
Long a staple of the Bay Area music scene, Tim Hockenberry was exposed to wider audiences when he recorded and toured with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, known particularly for singing their cover of the Savatage power ballad Believe. At the beginning of his career, Hockenberry also played the trombone, his first album is a straight jazz record. His second album was Mostly Dylan (2005), which he did with producer Tom Corwin and Bonnie Raitt’s band. The album’s subtitle New perspectives on the songs of Bob Dylan is actually appropriate, Hockenberry and Corwin have created some excellent and unique covers including a slowed-down version of Spanish Boots. ‘
Boots Of Spanish Leather’ conjures up images of slow dancing under a starlit sky, with echoing guitars and drawn-out vocal lines, a critic wrote. It’s at times like this where Hockenberry’s in his element, working every drop of emotion out of Dylan’s lyrics and exploring a wide and diverse vocal range.
Later in his career, Hockenberry, who was a recognised musician at the time, made some surprising decisions. In 2012, he made a splash on the America’s Got Talent television talent show. I never thought about going on there, to be honest, he explained in a 2020 interview. I always felt I was too old for something like that. I was offered a VIP slot to audition for the show.
Hockenberry made it to the semi-finals, that was when he first read the contract that he had signed. The contract states that if you win, they own you for seven years. You are signed to work for them in Las Vegas, six nights a week, for $1000 a week. They own 75% of all of your publishing retroactively for ten years. I talked to my lawyer about it and he told me that I need to get off the show. At this point I certainly had the competitive spirit and wanted to win, but not at that cost. So for the next song, I chose John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. The first line is ‘Imagine there is no heaven’, which right there should kill most of the Midwest vote. Hockenberry was proved right.
While the first decades in the after-life of Spanish Boots were rather scant in terms of quantity of covers, interest increased considerably from around 2005 onwards. Renowned Australian (jazz-) singer Rebecca Barnard took on Dylan’s song on her 2006 album Fortified. Californian singer and actor Tyler Hilton released a haunting duet version with Alexa Dirks on his YouTube channel in 2008.
Dirk Darmstaedter (2010), a singer, songwriter, and producer born in Germany, raised in New Jersey, now living in Hamburg, released Spanish Boots on his tribute album in 2010 (Dirk Sings Dylan). Scottish folk musician and singer-songwriter Ewan McLennen recorded his first album Rags & Robes in 2010, which cemented his reputation on the UK folk circuit, and led to him winning the 2011 BBC Horizon Award. It was the same year that McLennen contributed a cover of Spanish Boots to the album Younger Than That Now. One of the most exciting new voices I’ve heard in years. He sings beautifully, with great sincerity, great empathy, praised Mike Harding on BBC Radio 2.
Born in Puerto Rico, Gabriel Ríos came to Belgium at the age of 17 to study painting in Ghent. Instead of painting and canvas, he chose the path of music. He found his way within the Belgian music scene and with friends he created a series of colourful albums: from the sultry Latin crooner-pop on Ghostboy to the reflective tones of This Marauder’s Midnight. With his sixth album, Playa Negra (2024), Ríos returns further to his roots and now sings exclusively in Spanish. In May 2011, Flemish public broadcaster ‘Radio 1’ invited artists to their studio to celebrate Dylan’s 70th birthday. Gabriel Ríos performed a superb Boots of Spanish Leather.
Boots of Spanish Leather has been translated into several languages, including Frisian (Reina Rodina, 2010)…
and Swiss German (Polo Hofer, 2011, on Spotify).
Two outstanding non-original language versions come from Mikael Wiehe & Ebba Forsberg on their 2007 album Dylan på svenska, that is the subject of other articles on this website, and the Dutchman Ernst Jansz.
Ernst Jansz is one of the founding members and frontmen of Doe Maar. Doe Maar is a Dutch 1980s ska/reggae band, and is considered one of the most successful bands in Dutch pop history. He is a well-known celebrity in the Netherlands, besides his music, he has also written three semi-autobiographical books based on his Dutch-Indonesian identity.
Jansz recorded a Dylan album in 2010 (Dromen van Johanna) with 12 songs, that he translated into Dutch, including Boots of Spanish Leather.
In 2001, he released the live album Dromen van Johanna. More than ten years later, in 2023, Jansz has once again dealt intensively with Dylan; he toured the country with a theatre lecture Dylan according to Dylan. Jansz says his intention was to lift the mystical veil around the legend by showing images, playing the translated songs and talking about the connection between the songs and their creator. Jansz shows how he implements this using the example of Spanish Boots as follows: The night before her departure Dylan wrote ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’. A wonderful congratulations to his great love. She was gone and he was miserable. Because he missed her so much, he refused to stay in their apartment in New York because everything there reminded him of her. He slept with friends, wandered through Manhattan and wrote one incredible love song after another. After six months a letter arrived from Italy. The gist: ‘Pop, I’m staying here a little longer.’ Nowhere is it said that she hooked up with a nice Italian, but she dedicated her book ‘A Freewheelin’ Time’ to her husband, an Italian.
It’s a touching story, and probably well suited to a theatrical reading. It’s also essentially true, but unfortunately Jansz doesn’t disclose his sources, so we’ll never know for sure if Dylan really wrote the song the night before Suze’s departure.
This version from The Airborne Toxic Event wins my prize for the biggest surprise that I got in working through some of the many versions of ‘Spanish Boots’. The harmonies between the male and female voices are utterly unexpected as is the changing accompaniment and the glorious instrumental break. The simplicity with which the two voices deliver the last sung verse, followed by the instrumental coda is perfection for my ears. Like Tony Attwood, many critics are impressed by the cover which actually adds something never heard before to the song: The Airborne Toxic Event’s cover is a masterful interpretation of Dylan’s original, capturing the essence of the song’s themes and emotions, the universal human experience of yearning for a loved one who is far away. ‘The Airborne Toxic Event’ is a rock band from Los Angeles, formed in 2006. Named after a section in Don DeLillo‘s novel White Noise, the band is known for its blend of rock music and orchestral arrangements, having performed frequently with the ‘Calder Quartet’, a string quartet based in Los Angeles. The group has also played concerts with the ‘Louisville Orchestra’ and the ‘Colorado Symphony Orchestra’. Boots of Spanish Leather is their contribution to Amnesty’s Chimes of Freedom album from 2012. There is also a music video of the recording session.
Elsewhere in the “Covers we missed” series…
- Abandoned Love
- Ain’t Talkin (Le feu Au Coeur)
- All along the Watchtower
- All I really want to do.
- All the Tired Horses
- As I Went Out One Morning
- Baby, Stop Crying
- Ballad of a Thin Man
- Ballad of Hollis Brown
- Beyond the Horizon
- Beyond Here Lies Nothin’
- Billy and To Fall in Love With You
- Black Crow Blues (and a version you won’t believe)
- Blind Willie McTell – Part One
- Blind Willie McTell part 2
- Blind Willie McTell – Part 3
- Blowing in the Wind Part one
- Blowing in the Wind Part two: from the 70s onwards
- Blowing in the Wind Part three: The interpretations