Bob Dylan previews first ‘Theme Time Radio Hour’ episode in 11 years: “Some folks might be listening on a smart toaster”

Bob Dylan has previewed his first Theme Time Radio Hour episode in 11 years in three new clips.

The musician began hosting the show on SiriusXM in 2006, with it running for 100 shows until April 2009.

“Hello friends and welcome back to Theme Time Radio Hour,” Dylan re-introduced the show in one clip. “I’m your host, Bob Dylan. To paraphrase Alexandre Dumas in The Count of Monte Cristo, I’m so delighted to see you again, it makes me forget for the moment that all happiness is fleeting.”

Advertisement

In the previews, he revealed the theme for the new episode – whiskey. “Now I’m not gonna pull your coat too much about it, ’cause me telling you how good it is is like tickling yourself,” he said. “It just doesn’t work. You just have to taste it, and it speaks for itself.

“But we all thought it’d be a good idea to do an episode all about whiskey. There’s no shortage of songs and it’s been fun to get the gang back together.”

Dylan also joked that it had been so long since he had been on the airwaves, he might have to change the show’s name because listeners might not own radios anymore. “Some folks might even be listening on a smart toaster,” he said. “I don’t know, Theme Time Device Hour doesn’t sound right.”

In two other clips, he shared some history about Charlie Poole’s 1920s song ‘If The River Was Whiskey’ and spoke about the Great Molasses Flood that occurred in Boston in 1919.

Advertisement

The star’s return to radio will be broadcast on SiriusXM on Monday (September 21) at 12pm EST (5pm BST).

In a rare interview published in June, Dylan spoke about the coronavirus pandemic. Asked whether he thought it was “biblical”, he replied: “I think it’s a forerunner of something else to come. It’s an invasion for sure, and it’s widespread, but biblical?






“You mean like some kind of warning sign for people to repent of their wrongdoings? That would imply that the world is in line for some sort of divine punishment.”

Meanwhile, he released his latest album ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’ in the same month. In a five-star review, NME said: “Dylan is famed for his poetic allegories and allusive lyricism, but the sheer breadth of cultural and historical scope he pulls off on ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’ must surely make this his Ulysses, not least because you’d break Wikipedia trying to unpack it all.”

Advertisement