Helping Bob Dylan Audition Guitarists

Joe Romersa also talks recording a Dylan cover WITH Dylan himself

Apr 23, 2024

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Carlene Carter at Bobfest with Dylan, her mother June Carter Cash, and her stepfather Johnny Cash

When I was researching the first episode of my Bob Dylan covers podcast Watching the Covers Flow, I came across a cover of “Trust Yourself” recorded by Carlene Carter (June Carter’s daughter from her first marriage). It featured something most Bob Dylan covers don’t: The man himself on backing vocals. Researching the cover led me to Joe Romersa. He engineered that recording, with his longtime collaborator Howie Epstein (bassist for The Heartbreakers, who toured as Bob’s backing band in the ‘80s) producing. Despite Bob’s involvement, “Trust Yourself” was left off Carter’s album, 1993’s Little Love Letters, emerging later on a B-side and a compilation.

This was not Romersa’s only connection to Dylan around this time. An accomplished drummer as well as engineer, he and Epstein served as Dylan’s pick-up rhythm section on a day when Dylan was auditioning new guitar players at his home in Malibu. This was around 1991—likely the auditions that led to John “J.J.” Jackson’s hiring, though the timeframe is a little fuzzy and Romersa doesn’t remember Jackson specifically.

Romersa told me those stories, and about the time Bob saw the ghost of Elvis.

Romersa (center) with Howie Epstein and Carlene Carter

Was that session engineering for Carlene Carter your first time meeting him?

Yes. We were recording with Carlene in the studio up at Howie's house and in walks Dylan. Everybody stops to talk to Bob.

When everybody leaves the room [eventually], he's the last one to leave. He looks at me and goes [Bob in italics]:

"What do you do?"
"I sit back here and make sure nobody screws anything up."
"You look like a cowboy."
"Well I'm a soy cowboy," because I was in a band called Soy Cowboy at the time.
"You ever ride a horse?"
"Yes, I've ridden a horse."
"You ever ride bareback?"
"No, never rode bareback."
"You ever fight a bull?"
"Well, my ex-wife."
"You ever ride a bull?"
"No."
"Well, you look like a cowboy."

Then he walked out of the room.

I'm sitting behind the console and going, “Wow I just talked to Bob Dylan.” He started with a chorus—“you look like a cowboy”—and then went through a couple verses, and then ended with the chorus. It was like, this guy is really living it, isn't he?

Why was he there? How did he end up on that recording in the first place?

He and Howie were pretty close. He would call Howie, ask him things. [Bob] was pretty cool. We talked - just little things, like we were out on the balcony and he was saying, “what street is that?”

Then it's a lot of us smoking cigarettes around the table in the living room. I needed a light for my cigarette, and there were matches on the table. I didn't want to bend over him, so I asked him to hand me the matches. He just gave me a look like, “How dare you ask me to do something for you? We're not friends; I don't know you.” He handed me the matches and was cold the rest of the night.

Was working for Howie your main gig at the time?

I played drums and engineered for Howie. We also did two records with John Prine, The Missing Years and Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings.

The way Howie and I did records was, instead of me setting up the drum kit, I had my computer setup. I'd create a little groove for people to play to. The computer would be the click, and I'd go in after.

It was a different experience for Prine, because he's not a “play to the click” kind of person. When John came in, he'd go out in the hallway. We had a vocal mic, and an acoustic guitar mic on him. He would lay down his track to the click and then we built the track around him once we got a good take. You could tell he hated playing to a click. In fact, when Prine did his tour after that record, the backstage passes had a drum set with a circle and a line through it.

A song Romersa co-wrote with Prine:

Getting back to “Trust Yourself,” it started off with just Carlene singing it. We kept working on it, working on it. Howie wanted group vocals, so we were all singing along [the song’s backing vocalists included Dylan, Epstein, Romersa, Dwight Yoakam, and Kevin Welch].

When Dylan came in to sing, he wouldn't get out there on the microphone by himself. Howie had to go out there and sing with Bob while he was putting his voice on.

They’re both singing into one mic?

Yes. Sharing a mic, old school style. I don't know what his reasoning for that was. Maybe he just didn't want his solo vocal being out there.

When Dwight Yoakam came out and he was putting his parts on, there was a line that originally was going to go to Dwight Yoakam, and Howie decided to give it to me. So I'm singing on that record as well, “My love may only be lust.”

I have a little story about Tom Petty and Mike Campbell. At the time, they were working with Jeff Lynne, and Howie was saying how tedious it was to record six acoustic guitars. Howie said, “Joe make up a device where you play one acoustic guitar, and it sounds like six.” So I created a device called the Syn-Doubler.

I had Mike Campbell listen to this bounce track that we did [that sounded like] six acoustic guitars. Howie was a practical joker, so he liked to play tricks on Mike. Howie made me make up a story about the Syn-Doubler. I told Mike, "You record into it, and it goes through the computer, and it speeds up and delays and raises the pitch and drops the pitch, and this is what you get.” He says, “Wow, it sounds great.”

Two days later, after Mike leaves, we're working on something, and Petty calls up Howie. He says, “Hey, I heard about this Syn-Doubler. Can I get one?” Howie goes, “No man, it was just a prototype. It's gone. The guys took it back.”

“Howie,” I go, “when you going to let him off the hook?” “Never.”

At Howie's wake at McCabe’s, everybody gets up there and tells stories about working with Howie. I'm up on stage. The whole Petty band is in the front row. I go, “He was a prankster too.” Then I looked out at Tom and Mike and I say, “Sorry guys, there was no Syn-Doubler.” They just grinned at me like, “You fucker.”

Tell me about going to Bob’s house to help him audition guitar players.

His house was amazing. It was like Dylan-land. Once you pull in, before you get through the guard at the gates, you see these cars that are half buried with their butts sticking up. Like an art thing. Cars sticking out of the ground.

Then as you're driving in, you look to the left and you see a pool made of rocks and a farm with chickens. Then you drive to the right and you see his house and it's huge, overlooking this cliff. He also had a dining car from an old train right on the cliff. It was painted in all these psychedelic colors. On one of the breaks we took, I went out there, smoked a cigarette, and looked out over the ocean. It was like, “Wow, I'm hanging out at Dylan's place in a box car.”

His studio was a funky little place. It was not a state-of-the-art looking studio at all. It looked like egg cartons on the wall. It seemed like everything there was given to him. Like the guy from the Eurythmics, Dave Stewart, gave him a small 24-track machine.

But we didn't do it in his studio; we did it in his library. I set up my drums and we did the auditions there. The library was pretty live sounding—tall ceilings, hardwood floors, glass, and a staircase that would go upstairs. When the guitar player came, Bob would come down the stairs and we'd jam on some stuff. After we're done jamming with the guitar player, he'd go back up the stairs. He wouldn't hang out and talk or anything.

This is all in the course of one day? Like one guitar player after another is coming in and leaving?

Yes. There were about four players that came, so we did four different jams.

Hey, would you like to hear from one of those four guitar players who tried out and didn’t make the cut? Coming soon…

What are you actually playing with these rotating guitarists? Dylan songs? Instrumentals?

Pretty much jamming. Not really playing any songs. He had his back to me most of the time. He was playing an acoustic-electric type of guitar, not loud at all. I was concentrating on keeping as quiet as possible, but keeping a groove. Every once in a while, he'd turn around and look at me and I'd start playing [louder]. There was one time I closed my eyes. I was really concentrating on keeping the groove, like a good drum machine. I opened my eyes and he's standing right in front of me with his guitar up in the air. Just posing. That was wild. I opened my eyes and there he is, looking at me.

Is there any acknowledgement that you two have met before at this Carlene Carter thing?

No. It was a hot and cold experience. At his house, after we finished playing, he came down and talked with me and Howie. He looks at me and goes, “Hey man, you're a good drummer. Where you been?”

[I was thinking,] “You want my number?” I'm not that kind of guy; I didn't want to come off as being too pushy. Just trying to act like just another guy hanging out. I'm there to play drums and that was good enough for me.

Was the band just the four of you: you, Howie, Dylan, and a rotating guitarist?

That was it.

Are you getting any feedback or sense from Dylan about which guitarist he might pick?

We didn't really talk about that. He does what he wants to do, when he wants to do it.

I can't let you go without hearing the Elvis story you hinted at over email.

One time, Howie and I are working on, I think it was Carlene's record or John's, I don't remember which. All of a sudden, Dylan walks into the control room. He's got this look on his face. He's really confused and puzzled about something.

He goes, “I got to tell you a story, man.” I'll try to condense the story, because he went on for about a half hour.

He said he just got off the road someplace in the Midwest. The bus driver pulled off to this diner on a lake. So Dylan gets out of the bus, and he goes over to the lake to dig the scenery and the quiet. He just wanted to be out there alone. He’s out there a couple of minutes and this guy walked up. He's got a cook's apron on, walking up from the diner. He goes, “Aren't you Bob Dylan?” Bob says he's like, “Aw great…” You know, he was kind of hesitant talking to this guy. But then the guy starts saying, "I'm a musician too."

He started talking about the music industry, which caught Dylan's ear. He goes, “Wow, this guy is talking about stuff that only someone like me would know.” I can't remember the details. Then he said the cook looked out towards the lake, and Dylan looked at his profile. He goes, “Oh my God.” The profile was a spitting image of a 27-year-old Elvis Presley. This guy’s talking about inside music industry stuff, out in the middle of nowhere, and it looks like Elvis Presley. Bob goes, “I felt like I was talking to Elvis.”

They talked for a while more, then the cook says, “You want some coffee? I'm the cook down at the diner here. I can buy you a cup of coffee if you want.” Dylan says, “Okay sure, I'll be in.” So the guy goes back to the diner, and Dylan goes back to the bus. He says, “Did you see that guy I was talking to?” [The bus driver] goes, “No, I didn't see you talking to anybody.” “I was there talking to somebody, right there by the lake.” “I didn't see anybody.” “Well, it's a cook, man. He looks just like young Elvis Presley. You gotta check this out."

So he and the bus driver go into the café to get the coffee. They sit down; the waiter or waitress comes out. He says, “I want to talk to the cook.” They go and get the cook, and it's a different guy. Bob says, “No, I want to talk to the other guy that works here.” He goes, “I'm the only guy that works here in the kitchen.”

Now he's sitting there in the control room, and he's dead serious. Not any jokes. He thought he had been talking to the ghost of Elvis Presley. He's going, “Am I going crazy? I know I talked to this guy.”

Later, I told my daughter this story. I go, “Do you think it was the ghost of Elvis, or do you think Dylan was just making the story up?” She says, “I think the bus driver was in on it.”