Where Are You Tonight?

A Bob Dylan song puzzle

Hi everyone! I have something a bit different to share today, and it’s something for the Bob Dylan fans, because today I’m the featured guest on the wonderful podcast Pod Dylan!

About a year ago, I discovered this show, in which host Rob Kelly and his guests tackle one Bob Dylan song at a time. I got hooked. During a year of gloomy news on both the worldwide and local levels, Pod Dylan lifted my spirits and reconnected me with the work of an artist I’ve loved for so long. (The fact that I took a little trip to Toronto to see the 82-year-old Bob Dylan perform, also contributed to my renewed interest!)

Around the same time I saw Dylan in Toronto, I started this Substack, posting old autobiographical comics I wrote and never published. Some of them are about my adventures following Bob Dylan’s tour in the late 90s.

But today I have a different old Dylan-themed comic to share. And I’m posting it today, because it’s about the song Rob and I discussed on Pod Dylan: 1978’s “Where Are You Tonight (Journey Through Dark Heat)” from the album Street-Legal.

You can check out my conversation with Rob Kelly here (and find out why Street-Legal is my favourite Dylan album). I don’t know if I made much sense, but I sure had fun chatting with someone who loves Bob Dylan as much as I do!

The Puzzle

Why did I choose “Where Are You Tonight?” One of the reasons is because I made a kind of comic strip puzzle about it, many years ago.

Back then, some Dylan friends were planning to gather after a show on Dylan’s Neverending Tour. At this kind of get-together, there was always lots of Dylan talk. Once, a friend even organized a Dylan trivia contest, the winner of which received a statuette she had bought. It was a night-light that looked like a little statue of Jesus: a “flesh-coloured Christ that glows in the dark.” Something only a Dylan fan could appreciate.

I couldn’t make it to the get-together, but I wanted to contribute something. So, while I was riding on a train in Germany, I drew this comic strip. Every panel represents a line or two from the song “Where Are You Tonight?” For example, this panel represents the song’s alternate title, “Journey Through Dark Heat.”

I’ll give away the first two panels so you’ll get the idea. They’re from the first few lines of the song. “There’s a long-distance train/rolling through the rain.” “Tears on the letter that I write.” Now you take it from there, and see if you can figure out the rest of them. Each panel represents either one or two lines from the song. The lyrics appear at the end, in case you need a refresher.

That last panel (above) of the two women shaking hands in front of a clock and a car, was an inside joke. This one goes with the line “At that last hour of need/we entirely agreed/sacrifice was the code of the road.” It was meant to show myself and my Bob Dylan road trip friend, thinking about all the sacrifices and codes and agreements that go along with the many road trips we took. You can read about some of those adventures in my Bob Dylan comics, and stay turned for more in the weeks ahead! Let me know if you if you solve the puzzle!

Where are you Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)

There’s a long-distance train rolling through the rain
Tears on the letter I write
There’s a woman I long to touch and I’m missing her so much
But she’s drifting like a satellite

There’s a neon light ablaze in this green smoky haze
Laughter down on Elizabeth Street
And a lonesome bell tone in that valley of stone
Where she bathed in a stream of pure heat

Her father would emphasize you got to be more than streetwise
But he practiced what he preached from the heart
A full-blooded Cherokee, he predicted it to me
The time and the place that the trouble would start

There’s a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage
And a longtime golden-haired stripper onstage
And she winds back the clock and she turns back the page
Of a book that no one can write
Oh, where are you tonight?

The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure
To live it you have to explode
In that last hour of need, we entirely agreed
Sacrifice was the code of the road

I left town at dawn, with Marcel and St. John
Strong men belittled by doubt
I couldn’t tell her what my private thoughts were
But she had some way of finding them out

He took dead-center aim, but he missed just the same
She was waiting, putting flowers on the shelf
She could feel my despair as I climbed up her hair
And discovered her invisible self

There’s a lion in the road, there’s a demon escaped
There’s a million dreams gone, there’s a landscape being raped
As her beauty fades and I watch her undrape
I won’t but then again, maybe I might
Oh, if I could just find you tonight

I fought with my twin, that enemy within
’Til both of us fell by the way
Horseplay and disease is killing me by degrees
While the law looks the other way

Your partners in crime hit me up for nickels and dimes
The man you were lovin’ could never stay clean
It felt out of place, my foot in his face
But he should have stayed where his money was green

I bit into the root of forbidden fruit
With the juice running down my leg
Then I dealt with your boss, who’d never known about loss
And who always was too proud to beg

There’s a white diamond gloom on the dark side of this room
And a pathway that leads up to the stars
If you don’t believe there’s a price for this sweet paradise
Remind me to show you the scars

There’s a new day at dawn and I’ve finally arrived
If I’m there in the morning, baby, you’ll know I’ve survived
I can’t believe it, I can’t believe I’m alive
But without you it just doesn’t seem right
Oh, where are you tonight?
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