Jamming on Old Folk Songs with Bob Dylan and Ron Wood

The Empire Burlesque Interviews #3: Jon Paris

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Magazine ad for ‘Empire Burlesque’ 1985

Our Empire Burlesque anniversary series continues today with bassist Jon Paris. Paris is perhaps best known for his decade playing with Johnny Winter in the '70s and '80s (including some scorching live performances of “Highway 61 Revisited”), as well as touring with Robert Gordon & Link Wray, Bo Diddley, and more. But in 1985, he spent time in the studio with Bob Dylan recording Empire Burlesque.

As with Ira Ingber a few days ago, one of Paris’s tracks got used on Empire Burlesque (“Clean Cut Kid”), a second appeared on Knocked Out Loaded (“Driftin’ Too Far from Shore”), and more surfaced on the Springtime in New York box set.

'80s promo shot courtesy of Jon Paris

You mentioned you first met Dylan around the beginning of Rolling Thunder. What’s the story?

I moved to New York in '74. I lived on Sullivan Street near Bleecker, right in the heart of everything. I had a good friend, Stuffy Shmitt, singer-songwriter. He was also from Milwaukee, and we had kind of come up together. He came a little bit earlier, and he found this apartment. It was right down the block from the Bitter End, which became the Other End.

My apartment was so small that I didn’t have a living room. It was big enough for a bed and a desk. So every chance I got to get out of there, I would go hang out somewhere, and the Other End became like my living room.

Stuffy got us gigs there, and then I started doing solo gigs. I was there almost every night, playing or sitting in or just hanging out. It was a great musical beginning in New York, a really heady time. I mean, Gene Simmons from Kiss heard me play. He liked one of my songs.

One night, the minute I walked in, the vibe was different. There was sort of a buzz. I went and stood at the end of the bar watching the singer on stage. I look over and there’s Dylan sitting there with Jim McGuinn and a couple of people. People were kind of snickering and looking around. You know, here’s Bob Dylan, hanging out.

So Paul Colby, who had bought The Bitter End—it became Paul Colby’s Other End—introduced me to Bob. Bob was looking for musicians. He was scouting out people for Rolling Thunder. Bob said, “What do you do?” I said, “Well, I play guitar and harmonica and bass.” And he said, “Do you sing?” I said, “Yeah, I sing a little bit.” That never led to anything, but it was great to meet Bob Dylan.