Dan Ross & Dylan: Cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it

American Treasure Bob Dylan is 80 today

Dylan once peddled the Streets of The Dalles, found solace at Klindt’s Booksellers

Bob Dylan

Dan Ross said it was a hot day in The Dalles on July 30, 2005.

“I was working at the music store downtown and it was just dead,” he said. 

Nobody around. 

Ross walked to Klindt’s Booksellers to visit with friend Phil Klindt.

He and Klindt were in the back of the store when a woman and a man entered the store, pushing old 10-speed bicycles. 

The woman asked if it was ok to bring them in.

Klindt nodded. 

The guy was wearing a stocking cap.

“Wow, it was a hot day for a stocking cap,” Ross said. “I was just back BS-ing with Phil probably trying to save the world.”

Meanwhile, the woman and man were in the isles looking at books. 

When Ross left the store, he walked down the aisle closest to the man in the stocking cap. 

“He looks at me and I recognize him,” Ross said. “I said ‘hi,’ and he said ‘howdy.’”

Ross went outside the shop. He had just passed an American Treasure - one of the greatest singer-songwriters this nation had known.

“I stopped outside the front window,” Ross said.” I was thinking should I go back inside and let him know I had tickets for his show that night.”

THE SCEPTRE BROTHERS - Dan Ross, drums; Cal Scott, guitar; Bob Bailey, bass; Stephen Anderson, guitar.

Photo Courtesy of The sceptrebrothers.com

Bob Dylan spent the night at The Tapadera in 2005, now The Dalles Inn, and once wandered the isles of Klindt Booksellers igniting an internal struggle for our own Dan Ross.

It was Bob Dylan in the stocking cap, perusing books on Northwest History. He was set to play Maryhill Winery.

Ross stood out front of the store paralyzed, knowing the man inside had written Blowing in the Wind, Masters of War, Don't Think Twice, Like a Rolling Stone, Mr. Tambourine Man.

Ross is a drummer. He had his own radio show at the time, called Singer Songwriters on Sunday.

And Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind  is part of the American song track,” he said. “I can’t believe a living breathing person still out there wrote that,” he said. “It was recorded by so many people - it’s a traditional tune that could have been done in the 1800s, and it was written by a guy that is still alive.”

Ross was locked in reverence to a master lyricist. 

“He did not open the door,” Ross said. “He blew it off its hinges for anybody that listens to the lyrics. This was a whole new thing he invented. Like a Rolling Stone - Oh My God. His first big hit is  Blowing In The Wind. Any songwriter today owes a debt of gratitude to Bob; there were no rules after him. There would be no Bruce Springsteen. He would not have started writing if not for Dylan.” 

And so Ross stood outside Klindt’s struggling on whether to go back in and strike up a conversation.

Dylan had chafed at being called the voice of his generation in the 1960s; He avoided the press and scoffed at being called a protest singer, simply calling himself a song and dance man.

Ross thought for a moment, tormented. 

I thought, just leave him alone. Then he took a couple of steps back toward the book store. 

“Then I stopped. I talked myself out of it. You could tell they did not want to be bothered,” he said. 

Ross turned and walked away.

Dylan and his friend ended up buying $300 worth of books from Klindt. 

“Phil said they stuck around for an hour and a half, and he was not a guy that would do that. But there was nobody there. He got to have a day in an American small town.”

Dan Ross continues to play and record with the Sceptre Brothers and has a weekly radio show called Off the Beaten Track on Y102.3 on Sundays from 11 a.m.- 1 p.m. 

CCCNews thanks Donnell Fasulo and Victor Johnson for tipping us off to this story.