Even if the name of author, musical artist and historian Elijah Wald (elijahwald.com) doesn’t necessarily ring a bell, chances are that you’ve experienced or at least heard of something he’s associated with.
A recent example is the 2024 Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures), which starred Timothée Chalamet and was directed by James Mangold. The film was inspired by Wald’s 2015 novel Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties (Dey Street/Harper Collins).
It’s one of a dozen books by Wald, 66, who started out as a globe-trotting, singing, finger-style guitarist specializing in folk interpretations and world music in the late 1970s before he embarked on his writing career. That more renowned side of Wald includes winning a Grammy Award in 2002 for his expert, roots music-themed liner notes to The Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Box: The Journey of Chris Strachwitz.
Both of Wald’s primary talents will be on display as he makes his first trip to the bottom of the Sunshine State to perform at the South Florida Folk and Acoustic Music Festival in Davie on Jan. 31, then engage in performance and discussion with Florida Atlantic University professor Rod MacDonald at the school’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute campus locations in Jupiter (Feb. 3) and Boca Raton (Feb. 5).
“I’ve traveled to damn near every corner of the United States, but I’ve never been south of Tampa in Florida,” Wald says by phone from his home in Philadelphia. “And travels in North Florida between Tallahassee and Tampa were mostly when I was hitchhiking. I also have relatives in South Florida to visit, so I’m really looking forward to the trip all-around.”
Wald has even written a book about hitchhiking (Riding With Strangers: A Hitchhiker’s Journey (Chicago Review Press, 2006) in addition to his wide-ranging selections covering multiple musical genres. Those include the Mexican-themed Narcocorrido: A Journey Into the Music of Drugs, Guns and Guerrillas (Harper Collins, 2002); Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (Amistad, 2005); and The Dozens: A History of Rap’s Mama (Oxford University Press, 2012). His latest offering is Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories (Hachette Books, 2024).
There are also a couple of album releases, notably Street Corner Cowboys (Black Rose, 2000), yet most of Wald’s recordings and performance videos now appear on the hundreds-deep “Songobiography” on his website.
“We’re living in a new world,” he says, “and my musical blog posts reach so many more people than an album could. And the Dylan movie has done amazing things for my career. My best-selling book was ‘Escaping the Delta’ before that movie, and my guess is that ‘Dylan Goes Electric!’ has since surpassed it. So I’ll probably play a couple Dylan songs at the festival, and maybe at the university appearances. Those will be mostly conversation with Rod, so I’ll leave it up to him to pick some of the directions we go in, perhaps about my work, American folk music, and pop, blues and jazz.”
A Complete Unknown wasn’t the first film that a Wald book preceded. The Coen brothers’ 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis (CBS Films) starred Oscar Isaac as a Greenwich Village folk performer in 1961, and was inspired by Wald’s book about his mentor, Dave Van Ronk: The Mayor of MacDougal Street (Da Capo, 2005). Van Ronk (1936-2002) was Wald’s co-writer after having been a seminal figure in New York City’s folk revival, and the two had rubbed elbows with MacDonald as he also ascended through the scene there as a singer/songwriter during the 1980s.
“I attended New York University for one year from 1976 to 1977,” Wald says. “But that was really specifically to study guitar with Dave Van Ronk, and that happened to be the college closest to him. When he said he was done teaching me, I left college. I was a freshman without a major, other than Dave. He was absolutely my deepest influence, not only on guitar but also as a writer and historian. He was probably the best-read, most intelligent human being that I’ve ever spent a lot of time with. And he was the one who said I should come back to New York more often when Rod was performing there in the ’80s, which I did.”
Another best-selling Wald book is the provocatively titled How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music (Oxford University Press, 2009).
“I couldn’t put it down,” the inimitable, gravel-voiced blues, folk and jazz singer/songwriter Tom Waits says in a blurb for the book on Wald’s website. “It nailed me to the wall. Not bad for a grand, sweeping, in-depth exploration of American music with not one mention of myself.”
“I didn’t get backlash from anyone who actually read the book,” Wald says with a laugh. “Only from people who saw the title and didn’t read it. John Lennon and Paul McCartney both made albums celebrating the rock ‘n’ roll they grew up on, and that really ended when they released ‘Revolver.’ The Beatles stopped playing live, and the music was taken off of the dance floor.
“I was doing a radio interview in New York after that book came out, and a woman called in and said, ‘What he’s saying is exactly how I remember it. By 1967, all the boys were in one room, smoking dope and listening to ‘Sgt. Pepper,’ and all the girls were in another room, dancing to Motown.’ I wrote that the Beatles destroyed rock ‘n’ roll, not ruined it. There’s a difference. Everyone agrees that they created a new world. But when you do that, there are losers as well as winners.”
A Cambridge, Mass., native with touring experience through locales from Belgium and Italy to Spain and Sri Lanka, Wald has sound reasoning for making the City of Brotherly Love his home.
“I’ve lived here about eight years now because of the cost benefit,” he says. “I think it’s by far the best urban environment for the money in the United States at this point. We have the museums and movies like Boston, New York City or San Francisco, but its way cheaper here than in any of those places.”
If You Go
See Elijah Wald at 2:45 p.m. Jan. 31 on the Gator Stage at the South Florida Folk and Acoustic Music Festival at Bergeron Rodeo Grounds, 4201 S.W. 65th Way, Davie ($42 for one-day ticket for members; $53 for non-members, 954-797-1181, sffolk.org); 7 p.m. Feb. 3 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Florida Atlantic University, 5353 Parkside Drive, Jupiter ($35.20 for members, $44 for non-members, 561-799-8547, olli.fau.edu), and 7 p.m. Feb. 5 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton ($35.20 for members, $44 for non-members, 561-297-3185, olli.fau.edu).