The New Dylan

As a lazy rock critic appellation, ‘The New Dylan’ has been distinct less for accuracy or appropriateness and more as a marked curse on its recipients.  Down the ages (at least subsequent to the time in the mid-60s when Dylan became ‘Dylan’, necessitating the clamour for a new one), scores of literate, earnest singer-songwriters have been dubbed ‘The New Dylan’. And while a goodly number of these have been decent or even excellent musicians, none, with the possible exception of Bruce Springsteen, has approached the musical or cultural significance of the namesake.

Christened with a perfectly serviceable ‘Americana’ name, Carter Jensen chose to provoke the ire of the show biz gods by selecting a stage name seemingly begging for failure. That he compounded his error by making a baffling satirical concept album as his début demonstrated an appalling lack of judgement buttressed by almost Orson Wellsian self-belief. Sadly, Jensen didn’t lack talent. At least that would have made his short-lived music career more comprehensible. In fact, Jensen, who retained a look that combined the Millennial hipster with a 90s boy band member, was a too-clever-by-half prankster whose obscure in-jokes simply went over and around everyone’s head.

From an early age, Jensen was a prodigious smart-ass. While this earned kudos from classmates, his teachers were far less understanding. During his third grade year, for example, Jensen spent virtually every night in detention for one transgression or another. By the time he was in eighth grade, he was publishing a well-observed and bitingly harsh blog (“Eat My Ass–It Tastes Like Chicken”) based on his experiences and observations of Middle School life. Somehow, Netflix caught wind of Jenson’s work and optioned it for a series. A pilot episode for the series, tastefully shortened to It Tastes Like Chicken, was filmed with Asa Butterfield (The Boy In the Striped Pyjamas, Sex Education) as ‘Carter Johnson’, but a full series was not commissioned. Nevertheless, a substantial sum of money from the option was put into trust for when young Carter came of age.

In the meantime, Jensen took up the acoustic guitar and begun to investigate the ‘old timey’ music of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. Its manic energy, cleverly veiled sexuality, and muscular surrealism appealed and contrasted with the heavy irony and banal brutalism of contemporary pop.

There exists a folk clique dedicated to the ‘old, weird America’ around the University of Virginia, where Jensen, as a junior in high school, was taking advanced placement English courses. It was at this point, while hanging out with the bewhiskered, bespeckled, real-ale drinking academics of UVA, that he began formulating what would become his ‘The New Dylan’ persona.

Unlike many musicians of a folky bent, Carter Jensen never really fell for the music of Bob Dylan. He was something of a purist and regarded Dylan as a ‘popularizer’ who stole lyrics and themes from ‘genuine’ folk artists. Still Jensen recognised the great man’s career arc as ripe for parody. Unfortunately, his didn’t recognise the severely limited appeal that such satire might have in the 2010s, however well rendered, and heedlessly ploughed through his considerable Netflix money to finance the production of an audacious Lp, The New Dylan Has Arisen (2017) on Thirty Tigers (who really should have known better), based on the life and career of the erstwhile Robert Zimmerman, carefully aping the style of each era.

The song titles effectively tell the story:

• “This Song Is My Song (This Song Is Not Your Song)”
• “Moan Baez, More Like”
• “It Takes An Electric Guitar To Make Pete Seeger Cry”
• “I’ve Got Those Contract Breaking Motorcycle Crash Blues Again”
• “Big Stink”
• “Self Parody”
• “I Hate My Wife (But This Song’s Not About Her)”
• “Shilling For Jesus”
• “Knocked Out Another Album”
• “Frog In My Throat (For 30 Years & Counting)”

It was a bold move, but the jest quickly soured. Most of the prospective audience was completely turned off, believing the title a serious boast. Casual music fans were thoroughly nonplussed, regarding the album as simply peculiar. It effectively ruined any hope of a job in the music industry. Another proposed song-cycle, this one based on an imaginary meeting between Buck Owens, Roy Clark, and Jack T. Chick (provisionally titled Haw Haw), never materialised, nor did plans to rebrand himself as folk-rapper Nude Illin’. Shortly following the debacle, Jensen quit playing guitar altogether.

Jensen later worked for a short time as an assistant showrunner for The Simpsons, before his well-observed and bitingly harsh blog about the experience (“Not As Funny As It Used To Be”) got him fired.

In an interesting twist, Bob Dylan himself has been known to perform “Frog In My Throat” during rehearsals.