Every artist is influenced to varying degrees by musicians from a previous era and their resulting compositions are often a cut and paste amalgamation and reinterpretation of what has gone before.
Dan Bern goes further than that and proves to be the Rory Bremner of musicians, by actually impersonating Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello with frightening accuracy. It does not sound as though he is just performing cover versions, he actually IS these people.
'Fly Away' is possibly the most precise imitation of Dylan on the album. Bern mimics the drawled spoken vocal and opening acoustic guitar picking that switches to a familiar bluesy stomp. Incredibly, less obvious detail has also been included; vocal inflections, pronunciation, theme, and phrasing; e.g: 'I feel like a tightrope walker / and they took away my string".
