Betty Dylan

I chatted on the phone with Betty Dylan’s Dan and Vickie Dubelman on February 15, 2006.

Tell me everything I need to know about your band Betty Dylan.

Vickie- Betty Dylan is a singer/songwriter duo out of Nashville, Tennessee. Dan and I are husband and wife, and we met through our day jobs. Neither of us knew that the other played music. The name Betty Dylan came out of my mouth, and it still sounded good the next day. Betty Dylan is a pretty even mixture of country, rock, blues, and soul.

Dan- I thinks it’s just rock and roll, but back when guys like Neil Young were playing it. They call us alt-country these days, but we’re more old school 70’s rock.

Vickie- Sometimes we’re a duo, other times we’ll play as a full band with semi-regulars, depending on where we are playing.

Talk about your current CD, “Abdicate the Throne.”

Dan- This record differs from our other five records, almost sounding like a White Stripes record. We made the record in a couple of days in Cincinnati. It’s just the two of us, without a bass player, joined by Kenny Aronoff on drums. It’s hippies and rednecks trying to get across a political concept and get our message out. Our other records, aside from our first, were different sessions put together to make a statement. On “Abdicate the Throne,” the three of us went into the studio to get our message out fast and simple.

Vickie- “Abdicate the Throne” is a raw, rock, concept record. It’s sold at cdbaby.com. Sound clips are available at our website and at our Myspace page. My favorite cut is our cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” We do it very differently, and it came out sounding heavy and nasty. It’s hard-hitting.

Dan- My favorite cut is “Sheryl Crow,” which has become my signature song when we play live. The song is a laundry list of all my weaknesses of character. It’s an interesting contrast of verse and chorus. It’s about being insecure and doing whatever you can to cover it up while watching Sheryl Crow or the current hottie wearing a mini-skirt and dancing around on top of a bull.

Vickie- It kind of makes you feel better and worse at the same time. It’s NOT an attack on her, it’s all about observations.

Dan- She’s a symbol in our society of beauty, cleanness, and hipness. Here I am with all of my faults and here she is. The song is not about her, it’s about the image she represents to average folk. We’ve got to be very careful playing that song in southern Missouri, where they are very defensive of Sheryl Crow. Again, it’s all about image. Bob Dylan saw Napoleon in rags, I see Sheryl Crow in a mini-skirt.

Tell me about the Nashville music scene and Betty Dylan’s local and national touring plans for 2006.

Vickie- The Nashville music scene has been very good to us although we’ve been banned from a famous club called The Bluebird. Our last show there was a big success for us. We sold a bunch of CDs, the crowd was laughing and cheering, and they mobbed us afterwards to get on our mailing list. When we called to re-book, they didn’t want us back. I guess we weren’t your typical Nashville singer-songwriters. They told us we had too harsh a sound.

Dan- Nashville is a tough music town and likes to break people’s spirits. If everything isn’t right, if equipment breaks down or you don’t execute your riffs, it’s part of your musical history forever.

Vickie- We’ve played a lot of the other music clubs here that play original music and it’s gone great. We have a residency in East Nashville every Wednesday at the Radio Café. We do a monthly show at The Basement called “Go Plug Yourself.”

Dan- When you get outside of Nashville, it’s a whole different world, and people respect it. We’ve developed a good following because of what we’ve done in Nashville. Betty Dylan plays about 100 dates a year. We try to get to the Northeast twice a year and California once a year. The price of gas these days almost forces you to stick to the places where we make money. Before, we’d get in the motor home and travel anywhere. We’ll do anything that makes sense.

What does Betty Dylan have in store for your existing fans in the next 12 months?

Dan- We’re still negotiating a deal but the plan is to get a new CD out right away. The producer wants to re-do an album of the best of Betty Dylan and include new material, kind of a “definitive” album. We don’t have the biggest budget, but they want us to take some time and care. There is no working title yet.

Vickie- We’ll definitely be playing and touring all year.

Feel free to promote anything else you’d like that applies to your band.

Vickie- Our website is www.bettydylan.com and our Myspace page is www.myspace.com/bettydylan. We have plenty of merchandise and CDs at our website. Our blog is at www.bettydylan.com.blogspot.com. We just did a rough cut of a movie about ourselves, and we hope to make it available to our fans soon.

Dan- We did a funny political commercial that is at our blog.

Vickie- We do pod-casting. Sometimes it’s excerpts from our “Go Plug Yourself” show. Sometimes it’s cuts from our live shows.

Please share your thoughts on Dimebag Darrell.

Dan- Dimebag was an incredible musician and a great guitar player. What really struck us was that his murder happened on the anniversary of John Lennon’s murder. It was so ritualistic and that’s disturbing. There’s a lot of meaning and strange coincidences in his death.

Vickie- If you’re a rock star, in a funny type of way, that’s the way to go out if you’re going out.



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