Bob Dylan’s newly released classic from 1997, Red River Shore has invited comparisons to the traditional song Red River Shore (as done by the Kingston Trio) as well as the song The Girl On The Greenbriar Shore. The comparisons to the latter are particularly invited because the same Tell Tale Signs collection includes Bob’s live performance of that song.

However, in spirit, I don’t hear these songs as being all that similar. The stories are different, and the emotions which the songs evoke in the listener seem to be quite different (I’ve written previously about some of what I hear in Bob Dylan’s Red River Shore).

There is an older song, though, that does seem to me to occupy territory not a million miles away from Bob’s Red River Shore. That’s the traditional song The Lakes of Pontchartrain. And Bob delivered one of his most incandescent performances of this song on June 30th, 1988, in Jones Beach, New York. Click here for clip.

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