Lawrence.com

Minneapolis — Bob Feldman, president of Red House Records, says it's only natural for the Minnesota label to want to honor native son Bob Dylan on his 60th birthday. Various Red House folk singers and songwriters interpret Dylan on a new CD tribute.

"He invented the genre, he opened up doors for them, for how to express themselves," Feldman said.

Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth and grew up in Hibbing, on the gritty Iron Range of northeastern Minnesota.

"A Nod to Bob," which came out May 8, has 14 songs culled mainly from Dylan's voluminous 1960s output, when he was the era's premier folk singer.

Except for a definitive version of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" performed by Dylan cohort Ramblin' Jack Elliott at a 1990 concert in St. Paul, all the songs on the CD were recorded specifically for it. Feldman asked the artists to pick songs they wished they had written and to write liner notes.

Songwriter Eliza Gilkyson of Austin, Tex., admits she worried about taking on a Dylan classic, the enigmatic love song "Love Minus Zero/No Limit."

"But our approach was homespun, and we put a lot of homespun family effort into it," she says. "We didn't try to be fancy."

Martin Simpson, 47, an interpreter of traditional songs, contributes a six-minute rendition of "Boots of Spanish Leather," from Dylan's 1964 album "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

"It was just one of the first records that ever made me want to turn out the lights, lie on the floor and get completely into what was going on in that music," Simpson recalls.

Spider John Koerner, who hung out with Dylan during his coffeehouse days near the University of Minnesota, turns in the folk tune "Delia" with Dave Ray on slide guitar. Norman Blake and Peter Ostroushko, who have done session work for Dylan, cover his "Restless Farewell."

Koerner, 62, remembers the young Dylan as a guitarist who "played in a sort of a straightforward way. He was thinking about Woody Guthrie at the time."