"...Safier's voice oft drips with an aching sensitivity filtered through delicate beauty and a fragility that would break and disappear in less capable hands...Hill's cuts drenched in prairie sod, the workingman's lament, and a salt-of-the-earth sprechestimme...So what about Marty Rifkin? Jesus, but this guy knows the depths of his art and instruments dead cold, nailing colorative and side-lead aspects in witheringly arresting lines, fills, and incidentals. His dobro playing is heavenly and that pedal steel's highly reminiscent of Red Rhodes."
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I was really happy to find this CD. [After purchasing a few others that were disappointing from other artists.] Each year around the anniversary of Dylan's birthday I take my Dylan CDs including Dylan cover songs to a local public radio station and play them.  It's an early program [6 to 8AM] but I enjoy doing it. This is one CD I hope to play at least 3 songs from this year [May 20, 2006 - WJFF in Jeffersonville, NY]
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There are many ways to make a tribute album. Andy Hill and Renee Safier do 14 Bob Dylan songs here, some better known than others.

The reason this album works (and it does) is that Hill and Safier make the songs their own. Even while (generally) using Dylan's phrasing, the duo messes with the arrangements just enough to provide a fresh take on these songs.

What also helps is the bare-bones sound. Hill and Safier keep the songs acoustic (with the exception of some keyboards programmed to sound like a piano and some electric guitar on "Emotionally Yours"), and that helps the songs ring out true.

Tributes like this can often sound forced or strained, like the artists are reaching for something they can't attain. Hill and Safier are extremely comfortable with these songs, and so the pieces roll off like old friends. Which, of course, they are.


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 You'll have to go on-line (www.andyandrenee.com) to pick this one up, but if you're admirer of the songwriting skills of Bob Dylan (i.e., if you're alive and not deaf), then this tribute from the SoCal folkies Andy Hill and Renee Safier is worth the effort. 
Drawing on a wide chronological range of the Dylan songbook, Hill and Safier, accompanied by Marty Rifkin on bass, guitar and various slide variations, offer 14 straightforward interpretations. Their selection of material is impeccable and impressive, frequently departing from the obvious in order to include the excellent. Their ten years as a performing duo, and five previous albums largely devoted to Hill's songwriting, contribute to a fine intuitive sense of arrangement, with their voices weaving and blending in just the right ways in all the right spots. 

The duo has been throwing Bob Dylan birthday parties for as long as they've been singing together, inviting all comers to arrive in costume and join in the music. They may have trouble getting the sing-a-long going next year, because any guest who has heard this disc is likely to want to just sit back and hear more excellent interpretations from this talented pair. 


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