Dion on Why His New Version of ‘Abraham, Martin and John’ Is Timely: ‘It’s Troubled Times’

Dion DiMucci considers his new album, The Rock ‘N’ Roll Philosopher, to be “like a concert” experience.  

“I thought I would just let it run like a concert,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and proud son of the Bronx tells Billboard via Zoom, sporting a New York Yankees baseball cap shortly after the team was eliminated from the playoffs. “That was my vision; if I had to do a set with a band, I’m gonna do these 16 songs, in this order. It’s the perfect concert.”

The Rock ‘N’ Roll Philosopher — Dion’s fourth album released within the last five years with Joe Bonamassa’s Keeping The Blues Alive (KTBA) Records label — is not simply a compilation, however. As Dion notes, “some of (the songs) are new, some of them are redos that I felt I could do better versions of.” Based on his January book of the same name, it includes six fresh recordings — some of older favorites such as Tom Waits’ “Serenade” and his own “Abraham, Martin and John,” for which Dion recently released a video — along with previously released collaborations with Bonamassa, Eric Clapton (who wrote a foreword in the liner notes), Mark Knopfler and Sonny Landreth, plus signature Billboard Hot 100 hits “Runaround Sue” (No. 1), “The Wanderer” and “Ruby Baby” (both No. 2).

Dion penned the brand-new songs — “New York Minute,” released in January, and “Mother and Son,” inspired by Michelangelo’s Pietà — with good friend Mike Aquilina, an author who specializes in Catholic Church history and has been writing with Dion since Tank Full of Blues in 2012; he co-wrote Dion’s 2023 book, Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth (Stories, Humor & Music). Dion also salutes his late Little Kings bandmate Scott Kempner, also of the Dictators and Del-Lords, via new recordings of “New York Is My Home” and “In a Heartbeat of Time,” which Kempner co-wrote; the former, from the 2016 album of the same name, is a version of the track before Paul Simon added his guest vocal to the recording.

“When I get down into it, I really love that blues thing,” Dion, 86, explains. “That John Lee Hooker thing, just that groan. I love expressing myself with those three chords, even two chords; it doesn’t have to be very fancy. I just love the thing grooving. The beauty of rock ‘n’ roll is repetition, the beauty of repetition and the groan and the groove and the communication of the words. It’s very simple.”

The Rock ‘N’ Roll Philosopher album is an outgrowth of the book project, Dion’s third. Co-authored with Adam Jablin and sub-titled Conversations on Life, Recovery, Faith and Music, it’s a loose collection of stories and concepts, housing high-minded concepts, anecdotes and lists of favorite books and performers.

“The book was events in my life that I’m reflecting on, all these little stories I have, and it comes with a life lesson,” says Dion, whose first memoir,  The Wanderer: Dion’s Story, was published in 1988. “So then Bonamassa and (KTBA) co-founder Roy Weisman said, ‘Let’s get an album, something compatible with the book.’ At the time I was doing the audiobook, and I just had a ball doing that ’cause you could have songs (play) in the stories, just coloring or complementing. (The album) developed out of that.”

One of the most striking inclusions is “Abraham, Martin and John,” an elegy written by Dick Holler about the legacies of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy during 1968. Dion’s recording reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 that year and was certified gold. It went on to be covered by a number of other performers, including Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles and Bob Dylan.

The Rock ‘N’ Roll Philosopher re-recording of it is a more intimate treatment with just Dion, a guitar and strings along with atmospheric backing vocals arranged and performed by Robert Florczak. “I wanted it in the set,” Dion explains, referring to the album’s setlist concept. “If I do a set, then ‘Abraham, Martin, and John’ has to be there, so I did it for that reason. And when I gave it to Roy Weisman he said it really struck a chord in him; he said, ‘Dion, this song is 57 years old. There are people who never heard it. I would like to release it as a single.’ And we had David Niles do the video, which is my favorite video I’ve ever done. Now, I tell ya, it seems almost timely for this song, ’cause it’s troubled times. But I didn’t even think of that when we were putting it together. It was never meant to be a political song…. It’s about a state of love and it plays so much into that speech Bobby Kennedy gave back then; he was saying love conquers all if we could understand rather than be understood, or if we could love rather than be loved, all that high-minded stuff. You can’t have cable news thinking like that, because then there’d be no shows.”

He’s also pleased that The Rock ‘N’ Roll Philosopher gives him a chance to revisit guitarist collaborations, which appeared on previous albums.

“I did ‘Cryin’ Shame’ with Sonny Landreth,” Dion says, “and that guy, man, kills me every time. He’s ridiculous. It’s just thrilling. ‘Dancing Girl’ with Mark Knopfler, I love his sound; he just hurls me into a higher reality, another dimension, and it’s just all in his hands. And ‘If You Wanna Rock and Roll’ I did with Eric Clapton. I was totally surprised when I called him to play on his; he wrote me emails telling me how he grew up with my music, and I was like, ‘Wow.’ We became friends and he did this and it was so great; I called him and said, ‘Eric, you sound like you’re 19 on this song.’ He said, ‘I stood up. I wanted to do a good job in the studio.’”

In the meantime, Dion is looking at a proposed documentary that he says might involve a couple of performances back in New York, and he’s keeping tabs on The Wanderer jukebox stage musical, which debuted during 2022 and is now working on further financing to take it to Broadway.

As for another album, Dion says, “I’m always working on something. Like I said, I do like the blues thing; it’s in my head that it grooves and it has a mantra to it. I like that. But when I get my guitar and get in there, whether it’s a Phil Spector or Michael Omartian production, or Wayne Hood or myself, it’s all Dion music. When I did gospel music, it’s all Dion music. If it’s just me and the guitar, without the window trimmings, it’s just Dion music. So whatever I do, that’s what it’ll be — Dion music.”