Season Two of Bob Dylan's Award-Winning XM Music Show to Debut in September

Good news (in both senses) for me. On the one hand, I get to continue Dreamtime, which I've had more fun writing than anything I've done in say, oh, the past 20 years or so. I was already planning on doing a new - non-Theme Time Radio Hour-based - podcast, probably to have been titled Old Weird America, if Dylan had decided to end TTRH with today's Show 50. But I'm not sure it would have been as much fun without being able to riff off something Dylan has said on air.

On the other hand, I - and my equally obsessive peers at the Expecting Rain forums, the Annotated Theme Time Radio Hour, and elsewhere around the Web, all can use a well-deserved Spring/Summer break to recharge our TTRH batteries, as I assume Our Host will be doing too. I'm only at Show 33 with Dreamtime, and would like to get to 50 before Mr. D. comes back on the air in September.

Here's the Press Release...

via PRNewsWire and Yahoo Finance:

Wednesday April 18, 10:00 am ET

WASHINGTON, April 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Bob Dylan's award-winning XM music show, "Theme Time Radio Hour," will return to XM with all-new episodes in September, it was announced today. The new season will feature the show's signature eclectic mix of songs related to a specific theme, along with entertaining stories about the music and topics of interest. In addition, fans of "Theme Time Radio Hour" can expect to hear contributions from more special guests during the second season, including Ellen Barkin, whose sultry voice has heralded the start of each "Theme Time" episode since its debut last year.

Dylan's critically-acclaimed weekly show wraps-up its first season today with a special two-hour episode. Devoted to the theme "spring cleaning," the season finale features a diverse list of artists that spans from Memphis Minnie to Tom Waits and Roy Orbison to Igor Stravinsky, among many others.

Following the show's first-anniversary on May 3, XM will air a "Theme Time Radio Hour" marathon during Memorial Day weekend, broadcasting every episode from the first season of Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour" back-to-back, beginning May 26 at 6 p.m. ET on The Village (XM 15).

In May 2006, Bob Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour," debuted to popular and critical-acclaim exclusively on XM. Rolling Stone calls the show "revelatory ... Dylan's song choices are impressively varied," and the Boston Herald says of Dylan as DJ, "he's informative, funny ... his taste is impeccable." Among the shows myriad accomplishments of the past year, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum added the "baseball" episode of "Theme Time Radio Hour" to its archives in June 2006.

Dylan is one of music's most iconic performers. He has released more than 45 albums containing more than 600 songs that have been covered by more than 2,000 different artists ranging from The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder and Guns N' Roses to Duke Ellington, Garth Brooks, Pearl Jam and Rage Against the Machine.

His last four albums have been critical and popular successes with 1997's Time Out Of Mind garnering three GRAMMY® Awards, including Album Of The Year. In 2001, he won an Academy Award® and a Golden Globe® for the song "Things Have Changed." In 2004 his best selling memoir, Chronicles Volume 1, spent 19 weeks on The New York Times' Best Sellers List. Last year, Dylan received mass critical praise for his latest studio release "Modern Times," which had its world premiere on XM in August 2006. Certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), "Modern Times" debuted at number one on the Billboard Top 200 Chart and became Dylan's first number one album in 30 years.

"Theme Time Radio Hour" airs Wednesdays at 10 a.m. ET on XM's deep classic rock channel, Deep Tracks (XM 40), with additional encores airing throughout the week on both Deep Tracks and XM's dedicated folk music channel, The Village (XM 15).

Complete show details are available online at http://www.xmradio.com/bobdylan.