You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere—Murfin Home Confinement Music Festival

You Ain't Goin' Nowhere by Bob Dylan on The Byrds  Sweetheart of the Rodeo album.

A big tip-‘o-the-hat for today’s Music Festival feature goes to David Troast, a tireless progressive activist here in McHenry County.  A few days ago he struck gold in describing our current condition when he posted The Byrds 1968 recording of You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.

You Ain't Goin' Nowhere was included on the 1975 album The Basement Tapes five years after it was recorded with The Band.

Bob Dylan wrote the song in 1967 while he was secluded in his Woodstock, New York home and recovering from his near fatal motorcycle accident.  He recorded the song with The Band, then his back-up group at their near-by Big Pink studio.  But it was not commercially released until it was included on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II in 1971 and again as a track on his 1975 album The Basement Tapes.

Meanwhile Dylan sent a demo of the song and others from those sessions to The Byrds who were preparing a new country music sound album to be recorded in Nashville.  The Byrds then consisted of founder, singer, and lead guitarist Jim (formerly Roger) McGuinn, Chris Hillman, and English born country rock pioneer Gram Parsons.  Original member Guy Clark, David Crosby, and drummer Michael Clarke had all left the group by then.  They had risen to fame as leading folk rock band of the mid-sixties introducing young pop audiences to material by folk and protest song artists like Pete Seeger, and especially Bob Dylan.  They had hits with Mr. Tambourine Man and other Dylan songs.

But now, under the influence of Parsons, The Byrds were exploring country sounds and western swing.  Dylan was also becoming more interested as reflected in his first three post-seclusion albums, John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, and the double-album Self Portrait.

The Byrds laid down You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere in March of 1968 with studio session man Lloyd Green on pedal steel guitar.  It was released as a single on April 2and was the first commercial release of the song three years prior to Dylan.  It was only a modest hit reaching #74 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and #45 on the UK Singles Chart. 

The song became the lead track The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo album which is widely considered the first true country rock LP.  It was the least successful of the band’s albums but was warmly received by critics and achieved a cult following.  It was controversial on two fronts.  First, the Nashville country music establishment resented the invasion of long haired hippies so the song got virtually no country radio air time.  Second, rock fans who had embraced The Byrds’ foray in psychedelic music on Eight Miles High thought the band was selling out to red neck yokels.

The Byrds in 1968. McGuinn and Hillman were joined by Hillman's cousin Kevin Kelly on drums and Gram Parsons on guitar and vocals for their Nashville country recording sessions

Parsons, who had largely driven the new sound, had already exited The Byrds over tensions with McGuinn by the time the album was released in August.  He had been with the group less than six months.  McGuinn would slap together various line-ups for touring and recording through 1973 when he officially disbanded the group.  The original band briefly reunited that year.

Despite the travails Sweetheart of the Rodeo may have been my favorite album of 1968, a year in which it had plenty of competition.