Today's program featured several tracks from Bob Dylan's "Shadows in The Night," to be released this Tuesday. We spent time talking about the album, sharing our initial concerns when we heard about this project (which sent shivers of fearing something along the lines of "Christmas in the Heart.") However, this album works for us on several levels. Dylan's weathered voice is well-suited to these American standards and he has avoided the temptation to surround the singer's voice with heavy (Gordon Jenkins' like) orchestration. Instead, it is basically his touring band accompanying him and the sounds of some beautiful pedal and lap steel guitar serve to link many of these songs. Aside from a few tracks, he's avoided the usual chestnuts artists seize upon when they venture into the "great American songbook" territory and has included some more obscure works. Finally, the album serves to remind us of the great tradition of pre-rock and roll songwriting by ironically having one of the most noteworthy exponents of the singer/songwriter tradition which emerged in the 1960's use his distinctive voice to cast some light on this era that is an important (but increasingly overlooked) part of our musical heritage.