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Music

Aaron Brown Looks At How Bob Dylan Was Shaped By the Language, Music, and Culture of the Iron Range.

Educational/Cultural Sites
Peter J. Sieger
Educational/Cultural Sites

Aaron Brown with Bob Dylan Creative Inspirations

On May 24, Bob Dylan turns 81. He’s still on the road, performing concerts on a never-ending tour. Most of us know that Dylan’s journey started in northern Minnesota. Born in Duluth and raised in Hibbing, Dylan was shaped by the language, music, and culture of the Iron Range. Hibbing author and college instructor Aaron Brown explains why that matters and what it means today.

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Aaron Brown grew up in a trailer house on his family’s junkyard on the Mesabi Iron Range. A sensitive boy and voracious reader, he fell into writing and radio to compensate for his lack of interest in transmissions. He has worked in Northern Minnesota media since he was 16, including stints at WEVE-Eveleth, KUWS-Wisconsin Public Radio in Superior, and the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Since 2001 he’s written a weekly column for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. In 2003 he got involved with Northern Community Radio and spent years as a contributing producer for The Morning Show and Between You and Me. In 2011 he founded the Great Northern Radio Show, the station’s traveling radio variety program that tells the stories of unique places through comedy, music and storytelling. A communication instructor at Hibbing Community College, Brown also writes the blog MinnesotaBrown.com. and is an occasional contributor to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He and wife Christina Brown live in Balsam Township with their three sons Henry, Douglas, and George.
Heidi Holtan is Director of Content and Public Affairs. She manages producers/hosts and is the host of the KAXE Morning Show, including a variety of local content like Phenology, What's for Breakfast, Area Voices, The Sports Page and much more, alongside Morning Edition from NPR.