Bob Dylan Good As I Been to You Hybrid Stereo SACD

Numbered, Limited Edition Hybrid SACD from Mobile Fidelity!
Sourced from the Original Master Tapes & Presented in Audiophile Sound for the First Time!
Bob Dylan's First Solo Acoustic Album in Nearly 30 Years Remains an Overlooked Gem: Good As I Been to You Is Punctuated with Strange Mystery, Common Circumstance, and Epic Adventure.
Bob Dylan's "Good As I Been to You" from 1992 is the exceptional artist's first acoustic solo album in almost 30 years and his first pure cover album in almost 20 years. The far too little-noticed recording was made at Dylan's house, shortly after the singer/songwriter had finished sessions with a full band in Chicago. Without accompaniment, he plays traditional folk songs, recorded on tape by Micajah Ryan, who has worked in the studio with greats such as Guns N' Roses, Megadeth, Brian Wilson and John Prine, among others.
"Good As I Been to You" builds a bridge to "Another Side of Bob Dylan" (1964) and its thematically similar follow-up "World Gone Wrong" (1993). The record also features the kind of music Dylan played in his acoustic sets at the concerts of his "Never Ending" tour; within a year of release, half of the songs on the album were part of his live shows.
Three decades before he released The Philosophy of Modern Song — an insightful book devoted to 66 tunes that both impacted his career and the music world at large — Bob Dylan issued Good As I Been to You. The under-heralded 1992 album, Dylan's first solo acoustic album in nearly 30 years and first all-covers effort in nearly 20 years, can be seen as a prophetic prelude to what has become the Nobel Laureate's celebrated late-career arc. It's also an absorbing continuation of the custom Dylan has embraced since he first picked up a guitar.
Sourced from the original master tapes, housed in mini-LP-style packaging, and strictly limited to 2,500 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's hybrid SACD of Good As I Been to You reveals the immediacy, detail, and stripped-down nature of recording sessions that took place in Dylan's garage studio in California. Simple, raw, and unplugged, the record presents Dylan in peak form — and showcases a diversity of vocal phrasing, soulful chording, harmonica accents, and close-up ambience that on this reissue emerge like never before. This is the very first time this title has been available on an audiophile-quality reissue.
Recorded and mixed by Micajah Ryan, and supervised by Debbie Gold, Good As I Been to You took shape at Dylan's home shortly after the singer-songwriter completed sessions in Chicago with a full band. Unaccompanied, he again gravitated to existing works — in this case, traditional folk music — and, with Gold serving as a trusted advisor, performed the songs in multiple keys and tempos until he arrived at what he desired. That careful, determined albeit loose, organic approach emanates from this reissue, on which each note, movement, and space come across more directly, fully, and immediately than on the original formats. It helps draw a through-line to Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964) as well as the similarly themed follow-up, World Gone Wrong (1993) and immersive old-world storytelling of Tempest (2012) and Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020).
Well before Dylan made those renowned 21st century LPs, however, he needed to find a way out of a funk that — save for his 1989 collaboration with Daniel Lanois, Oh Mercy — followed him for years. As author Clinton Heylin reported Dylan admitting in 1997: "My influences have not changed — and any time they have done, the music goes off to a wrong place. That's why I recorded two LPs of old songs, so I could personally get back to the music that's true for me."
Truth: Few, if any, concepts better encapsulate Good As I Been to You. It resonates with the same originality, honesty, resolve, and age- and time-defying relevance as the seminal Anthology of American Folk Music that fired Dylan's imagination as a kid in small-town Minnesota and, later, per Greil Marcus' That Old Weird America book, informed Dylan and the Band's Basement Tapes sessions. This record also contains the type of music Dylan was playing during his acoustic sets at his period Never Ending Tour shows; within a year of the record's release, Dylan would play half the album's songs live.
As for those songs: Rife with strange mystery, common circumstance, and epic adventure, the stories appeal to our base instincts. Their themes — jealousy, temptation, sacrifice, love, revenge, identity, opportunity — operate on a fundamentally human level immune to trends, generations, or eras. They're ancient and modern, serious and comical, open and disguised, simple and multi-layered. They talk of vengeance and justice ("Frankie & Albert"; "Jim Jones"), romance and tenderness ("Tomorrow Night," "Froggie Went a Courtin'"), the troubled and trouble-free ("Hard Times," "Sittin' on Top of the World"). They lend voice to lovers scorned and freed ("Blackjack Davey"), the used and users ("Diamond Joe"), the powerful and powerless ("Arthur McBride," "Canadee-I-O"), the followed and followers ("Little Maggie"). And akin to much of Dylan's finest output, things are not always what they appear to be.
Spanning country, folk, sea shanty, bluegrass, and blues motifs, Good As I Been to You re-confirms Dylan's position as an elite interpreter and sculptor — not of just structure but emotion. Dylan delivers the tunes as if he's known them forever. He plays with a subtle sense of mischievousness and retains a largely upbeat demeanor; his eyes seemingly twinkle as he sings and picks. His guitar serves as the guidepost for shuffles, boogies, ballads, and mess-arounds while his innate feel for each specific arrangement and melody helps inform pacing, tone, attack.
Like a great author, he understands the importance of adhering to concision, luring an audience, holding their attention, and maximizing the impact of details, actions, and unexpected turns. Though already coarse and ragged, his voice feels ideal for the subject matter and his phrasing — from the clever ways he stretches syllables to underline meanings on the surprise twists of "Canadee-I-O" to the sheer delight he gets from singing "rowdy-dow-dow" on the protest song "Arthur McBride" — outstanding.
Good As I Been to You? Dylan has seldom been better.

Features:

• Numbered, Limited Edition - 2,500 Copies
• Super Audio CD
• SACD Stereo SACD Layer
• This Hybrid SACD contains a 'Red Book' Stereo CD Layer which is playable on most conventional CD Players!
• Sourced from the Original Master Tapes
• Mastered by Neal Harris, Assisted by Shawn R. Britton at Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab
• Mini LP-Style Packaging

Selections:

1. Frankie & Albert
2. Jim Jones
3. Blackjack Davey
4. Canadee-I-O
5. Sittin' on Top of the World
6. Little Maggie
7. Hard Times
8. Step It Up and Go
9. Tomorrow Night
10. Arthur McBride
11. You're going to Quit Me
12. Diamond Joe
13. Froggie Went a Courtin'