Bonus Tracks: Mikael Jorgensen (Wilco) & Ethan Miller (Howlin' Rain) Talk 'Tarantula' and the Bass Part on "Desolation Row"

"We were all in a Dylan frame of mind. Just rolling with the punches."

I’ve already shared my backstage interviews with three of the five “Million Dollar Bashers”—the house band at the Bob Dylan Center’s recent “Going Electric” concerts at Cain’s Ballroom. Today, the final two: Keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, who plays in Wilco alongside Nels Cline, and bassist Ethan Miller, who leads Howlin’ Rain and plays in the new avant-rock supergroup Orcutt Shelley Miller with guitarist Bill Orcutt and his fellow Basher Steve Shelley.

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All of these casual Bonus Track conversations backstage at the Bob Dylan Center’s “Going Electric” shows are archived here—and here’s the main piece I did from the shows

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Mikael Jorgensen: Million Dollar Bashers Keyboardist

Mikael Jorgensen at the ‘Going Electric’ concert. Courtesy American Song Archives

How did you get involved in this event?

I got a DM from Lee Ranaldo that said, "Hey, I have a gig inquiry for you. Send me your email address." I was thinking, "What could this mean?"

Very mysterious.

Yeah. I thought that maybe he was going to be on tour and wanted to book a show in Ojai, where I live. I sent him my email and he wrote me back and he's like, "We're doing this Bob Dylan ‘65 concert at Cain's. You wanna play keys?" I was like, "Yes! Yes I do."

Do you consider yourself a Dylan guy?

I don't. I don't know all of it. I know some of it and I love some of it.

In college in like '91, I bought the first Dylan record, self-titled, on CD. Just him with the cap on. Probably that's the first folk record that I actively pursued. Then my dear friend Erik Paparozzi I went to high school with—who has been playing with Cat Power, who has also done a Dylan thing—he and I discovered Tarantula.

The main takeaway for me was those letters that are in that book from and to characters, fictional figments of some imagination. They were so funny to us. We just started improvising on those letters, before we even knew that's what that would be called. We would just make them up and videotape ourselves in these sort of like surreal [scenes]. I mean, we were big David Lynch fans, and there's a lot of crossover between what David Lynch tries to evoke with his films and what Dylan tries to do. Shining this light on this impossible-to-illuminate central idea.

I got to say, I've heard a lot of Dylan origin stories. This has to be the first with Tarantula.

Yeah, like the not-musical--

Most people don't get to the end of Tarantula.

I don't know that I read it all. I mean it was it's like 35, 40 years ago,

I'm trying to remember what caused me to buy that record. There must have been some Dylan something happening in the early '90s.