Theme Time Radio Hour, the voice and folk-rock authenticity

Modern Times was produced by Dylan, under the pseudonym of Jack Frost. The album's sound was described in Rolling Stone as including songs ‘evenly divided between blues ready-mades, old-timey two-steps and stately marches full of prophecy’ (Levy Reference Levy2006, p. 99). ‘Thunder on the Mountain’, the album's opening song, is one of numerous examples in which older compositions were drawn upon by Dylan. However, the original authors or songwriters behind these compositions were not given credit on the album. Dylan borrowed from not only songwriters but also poets. Henry Timrod, a poet who was known for writing about the Civil War and who died in 1867, was one individual that some listeners found comparisons to in Dylan's lyrics.

One notable example of musical and lyrical traces heard on ‘Thunder on the Mountain’ comes from ‘Ma Rainey’ by the influential blues artist Memphis Minnie. We hear similar lyrics in the song's second verse to that of the original. Dylan changes key words, such as ‘Ma Rainey’ and ‘Georgia’ to ‘Alicia Keys’ and ‘Hell's Kitchen’. The lack of formal credits on the album was a subject of debate in reviews of the album (Rich Reference Rich2006) as well as in academic writing on Dylan's larger body of work (Scobie Reference Scobie and Banauch2015). Some attributed the practice to a folk tradition of building on influences and predecessors and not treating authorship as it is dealt with in the realm of more commercial popular music.

Folk has been routinely defined against authorship and commercialism, and songs and melodies can be shared and passed on over the years. ‘Folk’ and ‘folk music’ are words that have been used ‘to connote a rural, homogenous community that carried on a tradition of anonymously created music. No one person composed a piece; it evolved through generations of communal care’ (Hentoff Reference Hentoff2004[1964], p. 13). Following the release of Modern Times, a letter to the editor published in The New York Times cited T.S. Eliot's observation: ‘Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different’. The letter writer, Bill Quillian, an English professor, added, ‘Often castigated for his own borrowings, it is well to remember that in 1948 Eliot himself was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature’ (Quillian Reference Quillian2006, p. A26). Rolling Stone Music Editor Joe Levy said of Dylan's “Love and Theft” that this is the ‘tradition he comes from – blues and folk songs that have been endlessly handed down and adapted, stolen, mixed and remixed’ (Lewis Reference Lewis2003, p. E1). Dylan spoke to this practice in the Los Angeles Times in 2004, explaining that, ‘you can't just copy somebody. If you like someone's work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to’ (Hilburn Reference Hilburn2004, p. A1). Dylan's music is no stranger to the extra-legal domain. According to the Record Industry Association of America, Dylan ‘would become the most bootlegged artist in history, and by 1995 it was common to find his unlicensed music in independent record stores … and, increasingly, online’ (Loss Reference Loss2015). Regardless of the valourisation of the folk tradition that characterises these quotes, Dylan's failure to attribute credit to his sources certainly justifies criticism. He has a high level of star power and profits much more generously from music in comparison with the artists who have influenced him.

Rock and folk are shaped by a belief in authenticity. Folk has been distinguished by an ideology of anti-commercialism, a genre ‘considered as more authentic and real than the music produced by record labels’ (Marshall Reference Marshall2007, p. 76). While both genres are relatively fluid and defined and policed just as much by fan communities, music journalism and visual style as they are by their sound, the two collide and enter popular discourse in the mid-1960s with the advent of folk-rock, or electric folk. Dylan is regularly given credit for this hybrid genre owing to his famed ‘plugged in’ performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. The performance becomes a storied moment in popular music history by which Dylan is characterised as the sort of creative individual who can effectively transgress folk and bring elements of the folk genre, namely its political awareness, into the realm of rock. This hybrid genre would be an extension of the commercialism of an American folk revival beginning in the late 1950s that, for some, meant a lessening of the political content of the ‘earlier “folksong movement”’ but for others was marked be ‘a complex politics’ of a ‘distinctly modern, technological society, wherein the LP format and the new medium of television were inextricable components of the cultural fabric’ (Svec Reference Svec2018, p. 13). The folk revival ‘was built on a contradiction’, one that enabled Dylan to emerge as a folk music star, according to Marshall: ‘It was a mass-mediated revival of a form of music that was against the mass media’ (Reference Marshall2007, p. 78). Rock is also a genre defined by its anticommercial stance.

Rock has drawn on attributes of intimacy and immediacy in its expression of authenticity (Moore Reference Moore2002, p. 211). This involves working to convince listeners of a lack of studio ‘fabrication’ or of a strong connection to a notion of resistance or rebellion. In Grossberg's cultural analysis of rock, he explains, ‘Rock and roll removes signs, objects, sounds, styles, etc. from their apparently meaningful existence within the dominant culture and relocates them within an affective alliance of differentiation and resistance’ (Reference Grossberg1984, p. 232). However, this is a resistance marked by a contradiction: ‘Because its resistance remains, however, within the political and economic space of the dominant culture, its revolution is only a “simulacrum”’ (p. 232). Nevertheless, the allure of authenticity carries weight for folk, rock and folk-rock, helping to ideologically position these genres outside the sort of commercialism that is often mapped onto pop and its association with celebrity, triviality, and in many cases, femininity. This means that rock and folk are often understood to be more serious and tied to ideas of resistance, despite their location in a commercial mainstream. Dylan's perceived authenticity in the 2000s reflects his prominence within the popular histories of these genres. A prime example of this is his strategic use of words and sounds from the past as indicated by the ‘Thunder on the Mountain’ example above. Dylan and his radio voice advance this mythologised history and this becomes the means by which listeners are further convinced of the artist's authenticity and, in turn, the value of subscription satellite radio.

Dylan's star image embodies a notion of hybrid authenticity. He is perceived by many as being well versed in music history and tradition but also as having his ear open to future trends and trajectories. As Keir Keightley explains, conceptions of authenticity, autonomy and authorship emerge out of Romanticism and Modernism of the 18th and 19th centuries. Romantics placed value on tradition and rural communities, ‘where people's labour was an integral part of their identity’ (Keightley Reference Keightley, Frith, Straw and Street2001, p. 135). Modernism rejected ‘the current state of things in favour of the new, the different and the radical’ (p. 136). This notion of hybrid authenticity is echoed in a Modern Times-era profile of Dylan written by Jon Pareles, in which Dylan's star image is characterised as straddling the past and the present: ‘[In the 1960s] Dylan transfigured pop songwriting with the shocks and disjunctions of modernism: ideas he found equally in the avant-garde and in old, weird folk songs. But lately he has made himself an emissary from a reinvented yesteryear, where he finds clues to eternal truths in both the blues and the Bible’ (Pareles Reference Pareles2006, p. A21). Timothy Hampton adds that the album is a ‘suite of songs about the experience of the modern worker in a post-industrial, globalized economy. [Dylan] sings of a world in which the traditional virtues of hard work, craftsmanship, and devotion to community have been rendered economically irrelevant’ (Reference Hampton2019). Using TTRH as a platform, Dylan circulates, via satellite radio, his star image that is defined, in large part, by this notion of hybrid authenticity.

A star image is that public persona that connects with listeners, encapsulating the ways in which a particular star is understood publicly. It ‘depends on a relationship between media and audiences that is completely independent of the star's control’ (Marshall Reference Marshall2007, p. 4). Each star has the ability to shape and alter their public perception but those key characteristics that come to define a star image are largely constituted by processes of mediation and audience reception. Thus, in evaluating Dylan's star image, one should consider its connections to media and technologies, such as radio, recorded music and the recording studio.

A number of academics and journalists commented on the notion of hybrid authenticity with the release of Dylan's “Love and Theft” (2001), a record that has been publicly connected to Modern Times as being part of a trilogy of albums that share a similar aesthetic and theme, and which generated numerous positive reviews from critics (this trilogy also includes Time Out of Mind, 1997). Some writers, however, note that claims of this trilogy are ‘nonsensical’, citing Dylan's comments on the albums, in which he said, ‘Time Out of Mind was me getting back in and fighting my way out of the corner. But by the time I made “Love and Theft”, I was out of the corner. On [Modern Times], I ain't nowhere, you can't find me anywhere, because I'm way gone from the corner’ (Lethem cited in McColl Reference McColl and Banauch2015, p. 185). Nevertheless, there are aesthetic consistencies across these records and their related texts. One article by Ben Child notes that a photograph from around the time of the 2001 recording of “Love and Theft” has Dylan looking the part of a ‘weathered troubadour done up to go to town’. The photograph presents a jarring juxtaposition of the traditional and the modern (Reference Child2009, p. 199). Critic David Fricke described “Love and Theft” as ‘combining incisive reflection and complex narrative with sprawling, guitar-enriched Americana – jump blues, rockabilly, mountain balladry and saloon croon’ and as ‘one of the most jubilant and compelling records of his career’ (Fricke Reference Fricke2001, pp. 11–12).

Dylan's career at this time has also been described as a period of ‘memory work’, one defined by Modern Times, Time Out of Mind and “Love and Theft”, but also the autobiographical book Chronicles (Reference Dylan2004) and two major film projects: Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home (2005) and Todd Haynes's I'm Not There (Reference Dylan2006) (Elliott Reference Elliott2009, p. 250). As an integral component of this period of memory work, Dylan's radio persona and radio voice work to link the past with the present, and in the process, can be said to add insight into the various influences heard in his recorded music. Dylan's ‘reinvention of himself’ as a DJ reinforces this sort of memory work because it enables listeners to access ‘the intersection of Dylan's musical memories with the collective memory stored in the recorded archive’ (Elliott Reference Elliott2009, p. 250). However, much of what listeners hear as Dylan's musical memories and as his own personal relationship to the songs he plays is complicated by the fact that the radio programme is also created by a number of uncredited, or lesser known, actors, whose cultural labour is largely masked by Dylan's star image (more on this later).

There are intriguing connections between the hybrid authenticity of Dylan's star image, that which evokes the rural and pastoral but also the modern and forward-thinking, and satellite radio. Today, SiriusXM reflects a notion of hybridity because it touts a ‘broadcast’ component alongside an expanding list of online-only channels and, thus, the satellite radio service is indicative of both radio's past and present. In XM Radio's early years it was promoted as ‘beyond’ radio, as not being limited by a transmitter or by geographic boundaries. XM Radio, and later SiriusXM, promised to connect listeners across a vast geographic space with unwavering sound quality. One XM Radio television commercial from 2002 informed viewers that, ‘Across the country people everywhere are tuning in to a revolutionary new kind of radio, that delivers more choice, better sound, and coast-to-coast coverage’. The commercial depicts a farmer driving a tractor across a field before it cuts to a satellite racing across outer space (and later, vinyl records rain down from the sky) (‘Introducing XM Radio commercial’ 2002).

So how does Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour reflect and amplify Dylan's perceived hybrid authenticity and how does it make effective use of radio, both old and new, to provide ancillary traces that complement Dylan's recorded music of this period, while simultaneously ascribing a notion of value and credibility to XM Radio? There are three integral aspects of the radio programme that collectively work to achieve a transmission of hybrid authenticity and a high level of synergy between the record and the radio: (a) Dylan's radio voice and its narration and curation of musical selections and their related historical contexts; (b) Dylan's privileging of lesser known yet highly influential artists through a supposed ‘freeform’ radio format; and (c) a celebration of older technology to help craft an intimate radio voice and a connection with listeners. These elements can also be said to reinforce ideas of authenticity in folk, rock and in Dylan's career more broadly speaking, especially against pop commercialism and commercial format radio.

Narration and curation of popular music history

An exceptional vehicle for communicating stories and histories is the radio voice. In Siobhan McHugh's discussion of oral history on radio documentaries, the sonic medium is defined by ‘aurality, orality, and affect’ and the act of listening ‘gives a sense not just of who is speaking but also of the subtle dynamics and narrative rhythms of the oral history interview’ (McHugh Reference McHugh2012, pp. 188–9). In the case of TTRH, Dylan does not communicate oral history interviews but his vocal delivery and its rhythmic patterns are arguably affective and add much to contextualise the music he plays. Radio listening establishes affective moments of closeness and intimacy and, in this case, fosters a feeling of having access to Dylan's individuality and personality. As Kate Lacey argues, ideas and debates about intimacy and the simulation of presence in the social media era can be traced back to the early years of radio broadcasting, ‘where liveness, immediacy, voice, perpetual connection and universal access already characterized the form’ (Lacey Reference Lacey2018, p. 121).

The combination of immense celebrity and the reach of radio have a powerful effect. In Christina Baade's writing on Vera Lynn's wartime radio performances, she explains that Lynn's ‘mastery of radio's tension between individual and mass address’ contributed to the BBC's wartime aim of maintaining the nation's morale (Reference Baade2006, p. 36). One can imagine, then, the ways in which Dylan's radio voice communicates not only a notion of authenticity but also the sort of prestige and expertise that XM Radio is vying for at this time, particularly as it competes with Sirius and American commercial broadcast radio for listeners (more importantly, subscribers) and profits. There are other notable examples of famous musicians on the airwaves in contemporary music radio. NPR's online programme All Songs Considered regularly features musicians as guest DJs in the United States and The Guess Who's Randy Bachman hosts Vinyl Tap on CBC Music in Canada (Svec Reference Svec2020). No doubt influenced by the legacy of the late John Peel, the BBC has increasingly used musicians as presenters across its music radio programming, notably on Radio 6 in the UK. TTRH's format would probably have been familiar to many radio listeners in various national music radio contexts, but Dylan's star image and his resonance as a major celebrity are certainly unique in considering XM Radio's position in the American radio market at this time. Dylan, along with other celebrities acquired by the satellite radio companies, including Tom Petty, Ozzy Osbourne and Eminem, has been a key component of the increasing significance of subscription listening, niche offerings and exclusive content in the music and radio industries.

Writing on typologies for radioness, Ariana Moscote Freire (Reference Moscote Freire2007) notes that some themes are crucial to that which constitutes the medium, including liveness, human communication and intentionality (p. 100). In the ‘new media’ and ‘revolutionary radio’ field that XM Radio established itself within, the acquisition of a celebrity voice helps convince subscribers of a service's value. It communicates radioness through a sense of liveness and human connection. The radio voice has been described as a crucial avenue for helping listeners navigate the seemingly endless choice in the digital era (Halperin Reference Halperin2013, p. 34) and, despite the increased channel selection and geographic coverage of satellite radio, the stature of the radio DJ and their significant role in bringing music to listeners over multiple decades are perpetuated by programmes like TTRH. A radio host, through conversation and the playing of music, constructs meaning for the listener and fosters a sense of connection, potentially a sense of an ‘authentic’ connection (Priestman Reference Priestman2004, pp. 80, 84). Across the episodes of TTRH, Dylan reaches into the past to select songs to play, many of which are not regularly heard on commercial rock radio. Further, he relies on the listener's assumptions about his musical expertise to convincingly comment on the wider cultural context surrounding his musical selections.

The film critic A.O. Scott writing on Todd Haynes's biopic, I'm Not There, says that it is only ‘a certain kind of artist [who] will comb through the old stuff that's lying around – the tall tales and questionable memories, the yellowing photographs and scratched records – looking for glimpses of a possible future’ (Child Reference Child2009, pp. 199–200). This is the approach that Dylan takes with Theme Time Radio Hour, playing obscure songs, often from the 1940s and 1950s. The music video for ‘Thunder on the Mountain’ mirrors this approach with its use of old footage of Dylan and his band performing. Sounding experienced and weathered, Dylan's radio voice often mumbles and stumbles over words while simultaneously demonstrating knowledge of American music history.

On the radio programme's very first episode, one with the theme of ‘Weather’, Dylan introduces the African American doo-wop, blues and gospel group, The Prisonaires, and their lead singer, Johnny Bragg. He discusses racism and social injustice in a historical context and references Sun Records, a studio and label founded in Memphis by Sam Phillips in 1952 (the Prisonaires were active in the early-to-mid 1950s). The label is described as having underdog status in comparison with the much larger and more profitable Columbia Records based in New York City (also Dylan's long-time label). On many TTRH episodes Dylan praises Sun Records, noting that the sound of the label's recordings influenced his recorded music of this period. Introducing ‘Just Walkin’ in the Rain’ by the Prisonaires, Dylan says:

With its focus on a history of racism and injustice in America, this particular song introduction reinforces elements of Dylan's star image and the social and political issues that have routinely been featured in his music. Richard Fariña writes about Dylan's breakout from earlier folk traditions with respect to him establishing material for his own compositions. He explains, ‘the stories he told in his songs had nothing to do with unrequited Appalachian love affairs … They told about the cane murder of Negro servant Hattie Carroll, the death of boxer Davey Moore, the unbroken chains of injustice waiting for the hammers of a crusading era … the plight of the individual must be considered, or we are forever lost’ (Fariña Reference Fariña2004[1964], p. 6).

Dylan once again alludes to themes of social justice on Episode 12, one with the title ‘Cars’. He introduces Memphis blues guitarist Memphis Minnie and does so by accentuating her place as an influential guitar player in the rock genre. As discussed earlier, Memphis Minnie's work lives on in Dylan's ‘Thunder on the Mountain’, although she is not credited on the album. On the radio programme, however, Dylan emphasises her significant contribution to rock and blues history, an important point to emphasise given the ongoing and unfortunate gender stereotypes that assume proficiency in the guitar to be a masculine domain:

Dylan interrupts the song to say, ‘Memphis Minnie. She moved to Chicago in the 1930s, and added bass and drums. She was before her time. Anticipating the sound of 1950s Chicago blues’. In this moment during the twelfth episode of the programme, Dylan expresses a fondness for the high quality of vintage cars and uses this as a metaphor for Memphis Minnie's career. Technology plays a critical role in shaping Dylan's public persona via the music radio programme, both literally and figuratively.

Performing freeform radio

In Chronicles, Dylan writes that he often felt isolated while recording Oh Mercy (1989) with producer Daniel Lanois in New Orleans but found comfort in the city's infamous community-supported jazz, blues and local radio station, WWOZ-FM. Dylan says that ‘WWOZ was the kind of station I used to listen to late at night growing up, and it brought me back to the trials of my youth and touched the spirit of it. Back then when something was wrong the radio could lay hands on you and you'd be all right’ (Reference Dylan2004, p. 188). According to the Library of Congress, WWOZ, a station that received its federal licence at the end of 1980, ‘is the premier jazz and heritage radio station of New Orleans, a city known as the birthplace of jazz and the prominent center of many musical styles’ (Library of Congress 2016). In its early days, the station's music was characterised in the local press as ‘playing old favorites like, “Little Richard, Fats Domino, Sidney Bechet, or, Jelly Roll Morton”’, as well as ‘boogie-woogie, swing, bebop, and the best of contemporary jazz’ (Griffith et al. Reference Griffith, Farmer, Sexeny and O'Dwyer2019). The ‘community’ aspect of WWOZ indicates that the station has a mandate to serve its locality through a focus on music of local cultural relevance.

WWOZ, importantly, is not commercial format radio and this is a model that informs Theme Time Radio Hour. WWOZ is a non-profit listener-supported radio station with a guiding musical aesthetic that works to mirror the musical activity of its home city of New Orleans, or at least certain aspects of that musical activity. In other words, it is not entirely freeform (some readers may be familiar with the character Davis on HBO's Treme, who is regularly scolded by his superiors for playing too much bounce music on his WWOZ radio programme). However, a station like WWOZ shares an affinity with commercial freeform stations of the 1960s and 1970s that were guided by a commitment to musical variety and diversity. This is a characteristic that Jennifer Waits says has influenced a number of American college radio stations over the years (Reference Waits2007, p. 86). WFMU in New Jersey, the longest running American freeform station that dates back to 1958, hosts a definition of freeform radio on its website: freeform radio is ‘An approach to radio programming in which a station's management gives the DJ complete control over programme content. Freeform shows are as different as the personalities of DJ's, but they share a feeling of spontaneity, a tendency to play music that is not usually heard’ (O'Malley Reference O'Malley2006).

This programming philosophy challenges the more dominant format logic of commercial radio that has come to occupy most of the airwaves in recent decades. While some writers have pointed to the ability for formats to foster multiple mainstreams (Weisbard Reference Weisbard2014) and a sense of unpredictability (Marcus Reference Marcus2005, p. 35), formats have defined the majority of commercial radio stations in the USA and around the world and work to categorise listeners into specific demographics or market categories that can then be sold to advertisers (Rodman Reference Rodman, Baade and Deaville2016, p. 235). Formats determine not only the type of music heard on a given station but also the other ‘ingredients’ in a given programme hour, such as advertisements, radio voices and so forth (Berland Reference Berland1990, p. 181). XM Radio, in its efforts to distinguish itself from its commercial format radio competitors, would welcome the illusion of community and freeform radio that TTRH provided.

As with freeform radio there is an emphasis on musical variety promoted by XM Radio. In 2004 the satellite service was detailed alongside its use of two satellites that ‘blanket every corner of the continental U.S. with 130 digital channels – everything from heavy metal to the BBC News to children's songs to seven different flavors of country music’. This choice would come with ‘no advertising to interrupt the music – none of the blaring and banal spots that fill almost 20 minutes of every hour on radio; freedom from homogenized formats or cookie-cutter playlists’ (Woolley Reference Woolley2004, p. 134). Despite these apparent advantages cited by Forbes, XM was engaged in intense competition with commercial format radio, which was said to dominate the radio market in ‘listeners, revenue and profits, nine years after the federal government first cleared satellite radio to compete’ (Woolley Reference Woolley2004). XM Radio counted 2 million subscribers at the time (vs. SiriusXM's total of 33.7 million in 2019) and both it and its then competitor Sirius were posting annual losses and shaky finances (Woolley Reference Woolley2004). In the mid-2000s a major celebrity like Dylan was an essential asset to justify the service's value and perceived superiority to format radio at a time when the company was especially hungry for subscribers and in competition with another satellite radio service.

On Episode 17, ‘Friends & Neighbors’, Dylan reads a listener email, potentially real but probably ficionalised. His response to the email highlights the unpredictability of his show; listeners will not hear songs routinely programmed by classic rock commercial radio. Dylan humourously prefaces this mandate by stating that the postman, a human being carrying and delivering physical media, is superior to its digital counterpart, email:

Dylan devotes his eighteenth episode to the theme of ‘Radio’, playing a selection of songs that includes Van Morrison's ‘Caravan’, Bonnie Owens’ ‘My Hi-Fi to Cry By’ and The Blasters’ ‘Border Radio’. During one of the episode's musical breaks, Dylan describes his relationship to the medium through a challenge he poses to the words of T.S. Eliot. Dylan's radio does not leave you lonely, it facilitates community and you never know what you are going to hear:

By emphasising community and conversation, and through borrowing from a freeform radio format, Theme Time Radio Hour neatly fits with XM Radio's promotion of musical variety across its channels. By performing a feeling of freeform radio, TTRH would help disguise the more commercial and business-oriented aspects of the satellite service. This is subscription radio with a high fee attached to it, one that was indicative of its ‘continuous nationwide radio programming with compact disc (CD) quality sound’ (FCC 1997). As with Dylan's star image and hybrid authenticity, sonic elements that seemingly refute standardisation, predictability and repetition propagate a perceived superiority over commercial format radio. This serves to accentuate XM Radio's value and at the same time promote Dylan's recorded musical output of the era.

The sound of Old Time Radio

Old Time Radio (OTR) is a fitting companion to the musical selections Dylan makes from decades past. The sound of OTR, those radio programmes from when the medium was the primary form of entertainment, facilitates a feeling of community and nostalgia through Dylan's voice and the associated collection of sounds and songs heard on the programme. A sonic teleportation to radio's past works to mask the more commercial aspects of Dylan's career and XM Radio. Further, the OTR aesthetic indicates a process of remediation (a concept that can also be applied to the previous sections on Dylan's radio voice and freeform radio). A number of scholars have curbed the rampant enthusiasm that frequently accompanies narratives of ‘new’ media, often advanced by those companies profiting off new products and services. Instead, we are urged to acknowledge the various ways that new media carry forward key organising principles and practices of older media. Shifts and changes in the digital era are in actuality less often about ‘newness’ and more often about implementing established industry practices like licensing and branding (Caldwell Reference Caldwell, Everett and Caldwell2003, p. 131). Bolter and Grusin define remediation as an instance whereby ‘new media are doing exactly what their predecessors have done: presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of other media’ (Reference Bolter and Grusin1999, pp. 14–15). This process involves a newer medium promoting a ‘claim of superiority’ over the older medium it is refashioning (Moscote Freire Reference Moscote Freire2007, p. 102). In XM Radio's emphasis on its ‘revolutionary’ qualities, a preoccupation with this discourse of superiority and excellence is evident. At the same time, its continuation of radio's essence as a medium that fosters feelings of community through private listening is reflected in a programme like TTRH. What characterises the satellite radio service is not simply its implied newness but also its ability to reach a large, fragmented and geographically dispersed audience of subscribers across a variety of sounds, formats and genres: OTR, live sports broadcasts, news, genre-specific music programming, and so forth.

In Chronicles, Dylan reflects back to a time when he first moved to New York: ‘I was always fishing for something on the radio. Just like trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life’ (Reference Douglas2004, p. 32). Throughout Theme Time Radio Hour's episodes, one hears sonic fragments from radio's past, such as radio jingles and vintage radio air checks. Over its long history, radio has facilitated feelings of community and connection through the act of listening. Susan Douglas explains that ‘the old radio days’ invited listeners ‘to participate actively in the production of the show at hand … Even though you might be lying on the floor, or lounging in a chair, you were anything but passive’ (Reference Douglas2004, pp. 3–4). According to a Rolling Stone review, almost every song on Modern Times ‘retraces the American journey from the country to the city, when folkways were giving way to modern times. The mood is America on the brink – of mechanization, of war, of domestic tranquility, of fulfilling its promise and of selling its dreams one by one for cash on the barrelhead’ (Levy Reference Levy2006, p. 99). Dylan often uses themes of domesticity and stories about making connections through the airwaves in order to introduce and contextualise the songs he plays on TTRH. On episode 4, ‘Baseball’, Dylan reflects on the act of listening to a baseball broadcast in his bedroom when he was a young boy. He reads a listener email that asks, ‘Dear Theme Time, I enjoy listening to the ball games late at night. My boyfriend says the radio keeps him up. What should I do?’ In response, Dylan addresses his listeners to say:

Dylan's memory work of the era is sonically constructed via his on-air stories and the sounds of OTR that are mixed throughout the episodes. Dylan's oft-stated preference for old media, communicated via a ‘newer’ medium, indicates a notion of hybrid authenticity, one that shapes his radio voice and the intimate relationship he establishes with listeners through TTRH.

Dylan's sonic aesthetic

The three themes discussed above come together to highlight the essential role of technology with respect to our understanding of Dylan. Machines and technologies have been integral to Dylan's star image. According to Svec, ‘even “unplugged” Dylan was, in fact, reliant on a massive arsenal of machines as a creative worker’ (Reference Svec2018, p. 78). Theme Time Radio Hour provides a sense of how radio, over its numerous iterations, is intimately linked to Dylan's public persona and star image. Through narration and a carefully selected array of sounds and sonic styles, Dylan communicates his words and his persona as a songwriter with an aura of exceptionalism and authenticity. The radio programme works to circumvent and disregard commercial format radio and this connects neatly to Dylan's music production style at the time. While he produced under the pseudonym Jack Frost, Dylan publicly dismissed studio flash and flare and overproduction in contemporary recordings. He said, ‘You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like – static’ (Lethem Reference Lethem2006). With Time Out of Mind, ‘Dylan expressed his dissatisfaction with the quality of contemporary recordings, and records made during the 1950s informed his production’ (Negus Reference Negus2010, p. 220). The studio space becomes a fixture of mythmaking, one defining a period of memory work that encapsulates the radio programme as well as records.

On Episode 55, with the title of ‘Classic Rock’, Dylan privileges a live, collective studio practice over a heavily mediated one. After playing Hardrock Gunter's ‘Gonna Dance All Night’, Dylan describes the track with praise for its sparse production:

Dylan's reflections on technology and the recording studio are integral components of the radio programme, simultaneously shaping our understanding of Dylan's musical output of the mid-2000s. They are synergistic aspects of Dylan's career that transmit a sense of expertise and authenticity both for listeners of Dylan's music and for listeners of XM Radio and TTRH. Negus writes that we often neglect Dylan's ‘sonic imaginings in the studio’ in favour of critically praising his song lyrics, which are often analysed through approaches and assumptions drawn from literary criticism (Reference Negus2010, p. 213). However, Dylan has adopted, in Negus's words, ‘a very clear phonographic aesthetic, one which he has touched upon directly or obliquely during interviews, particularly when praising the sound on old Chess and Sun records’. This was a time when ‘producers and engineers at Sun and Chess began to challenge recording conventions by allowing the dials to move “into the red” (technically indicating “distortion”)’ (Negus Reference Negus2010, p. 219). Dylan praises the sound of Sun records alongside critiques of the sound of contemporary records in the years prior to recording both Modern Times and TTRH. This turn to the studio evokes Gracyk's concept of record consciousness, where the accumulation of tools, devices and spaces constitutes a recording, which is what the listener engages with and comes to understand as the original. However, in Gracyk's words, “We almost never hear ‘original’ sounds; when the electricity fails, the music stops. Even the nonelectric inputs, such as human voices and any acoustic instruments, are modified by the choice of microphones” (Reference Gracyk1996, p. 74). Dylan's voice, whether on the radio or record, is mediated and shaped by time, technology and the help of others.