When I began compiling my list of top 25 albums a year ago, I already knew who it would end with: Bob Dylan, the master, one of the 20th century’s leading songwriters, Nobel Prize-winning poet, still going strong after turning 80 this past Monday.
But what album would I choose? Something from his early acoustic folkie years? Well, no. I prefer Dylan the rocker. His middle period, just after he’d gone electric but before the motorcycle crash that would end the white-hot-genius phase of his career? His mid-’1970s comeback? What about his entirely unexpected return to relevance, when he released three albums from the late 1990s through the mid-2000s that were just a half-notch below his greatest work?
Musical icon and prominent cultural figure Bob Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, turned 80 on Monday. As accolades for the Nobel Prize winner and master songwriter poured in from across the globe, the local Lethbridge music scene was also paying its own quiet tribute to an artist who helped redefine American culture and music in the 20th century. “He is definitely an iconic figure when it comes to things like Folk Music and Roots Music,” states Lethbridge Folk Club president Tom Moffatt. “His early career he was very involved with the Folk scene, and did a lot of work with people like Pete Seeger and the Newport Festival. A lot of that music is very relevant to our members. And then, of course, he went through an historic change where he electrified and got more into the Rock N’ Roll side of things.
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Luke LeBlanc started his success story young. Born and raised in Minneapolis, at 13 he was the youngest talent to win the Zimmy, a national singer-songwriter competition held in Hibbing, Minnesota, named for another Minnesotan, Robert Zimmerman (later known as Bob Dylan). A little over a decade later, he’s releasing his third full-length album.
Only Human‘s warm, loose, and comfortable vibe perfectly showcases Luke LeBlanc as a gem of a singer-songwriter. LeBlanc’s melodic, charming mixture of heart-on-the-sleeve folk, jangly pop, and roots music dives into into joy, loss, and love everything it means to be human, including the need, sometimes, to drive away from it all.