I was inspired by a Facebook friend’s inquiry (“What songs give you goosebumps every time?”) to bring Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 in the car yesterday and start it up at “Blind Willie McTell.” The goosebumps are still there.

Something I love about Dylan is that how, when he has a refrain, he will sing it differently every time. There it was on “Blind Willie McTell,” five verses and the two-line refrain sung five different ways. Next song, “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky,” same thing. I’ve been listening to “Jokerman” for 25 years, hearing new things in it all the time, and part of the reason is that no two refrains are sung the same way.

It doesn’t sound at all gimmicky the way Dylan does it, but like the result of a singer really listening to the words he sings. He’s there with every nuance of meaning, with what’s happened in the preceding verse, and it flows out in his voice. When a singer elicits so much from the music–when his voice is so present to his words, gives them such immediacy and power, reaches down through the depths and pulls so many layers of meaning from them–the listeners do the same. My dream of a perfect Sunday morning is for my preaching to be like that.

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