‘SNL’ Star James Austin Johnson Does The Best Bob Dylan Impression Ever

Lis Sinatra
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James Austin Johnson saved his own life last Saturday night.

Let me explain: Johnson became a breakout star on Saturday Night Live due to his impression of one of the world’s most famous men. But when I reached out to him with an interview request a few weeks ago, I wasn’t interested in talking about his hilarious and eerily accurate take on Donald Trump. I wanted to chat about his impersonation of a different world-famous man: Bob Dylan.

While Johnson, 35, has portrayed Trump numerous times on SNL, his public appearances as Dylan have been rarer and therefore infinitely more precious. In 2022, he went viral for a Tonight Show spot in which he sang “Jingle Bells” with The Roots using a series of different Bob Dylan voices: Folk Scene Bob, “Lay Lady Lay” Bob, Coked-Out Rolling Thunder Revue Bob, Time Out Of Mind Bob (which, according to Johnson, sounds like a “Disney vulture”).

As a hard-core Dylan fan, what dazzled me about Johnson’s Dylan impression — which is hands down the best (and funniest) I’ve ever heard — was its specificity. Any hack comedian can do a generic Bob voice. (Blowin’ in the wiiiiiind, I’m Bob Dylan!) But Johnson clearly has done his homework, even to the point of potentially confusing audience members unfamiliar with the particulars of Dylan’s late-sixties country-rock period or his chaotic mid-seventies concert tour. Johnson not only captures Dylan’s myriad vocal tones, but he also replicates Bob’s idiosyncratic phrasing, in which words are sensually elongated or rapidly clipped with the seemingly random abandon of a drunken 1940s film-noir con man.

Johnson double-downed on that fan-geek scholarship in a recent SNL promo with John Mulaney, in which he plays an older, chain-smoking Dylan speaking in the florid prose of his Theme Time Radio Hour guise from the aughts. Again: This is some deep cut, relatively obscure Dylanology on display here.

When we talked, Johnson expressed hope that he would finally get to do his Bob Dylan impression on the actual show, hopefully before Christmas.

“If I don’t get a Bob bit on one of these Christmas episodes,” he told me, “I will kill myself. And you can print that.”

Fortunately, tragedy was averted this past weekend, thanks to this sketch.

Johnson plays Dylan as he stands on the red carpet with Timothée Chalamet (Chloe Fineman), Bruce Springsteen (Andrew Dismukes) and Bono (Paul Mescal) at the premiere of the forthcoming Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. It’s the same Dylan from the Mulaney promo, with some deliciously surreal flourishes. (Enjoy Johnson-as-Bob saying “Lisan al Gaib.”)

Turns out Johnson has a special connection to that particular era of Bob: As a teenager growing up in a “super evangelical south, hardcore conservative Christian” household in Tennessee, in which listening to the milquetoast NPR show A Prairie Home Companion “was an act of transgression,” discovering the weekly Theme Time Radio Hour — which featured Bob spouting purple-prosed tributes to an eclectic playlist of songs — was a revelation.

“When I heard Theme Time Radio,” he recalls, “I was like, ‘This is like Prairie Home Companion if Garrison Keillor was a cool dude who smokes cigarettes and has sex with women.’”

Johnson eventually workshopped a Dylan voice based on Theme Time Radio Hour and 2006’s Modern Times, one of Johnson’s first Dylan records. The impression was popularized on his podcast, What Things Are What Things, which got the attention of Mulaney. (“I had no clue he was a big Bobcat, but he is,” Johnson says.) But when he joined SNL, he was still a self-described “casual” fan. Then, while on summer vacation back home in Nashville, he decided that “if I’m doing an impression of him, I should probably know what I’m talking about.” So, he did a deep dive into Bob’s catalog guided by the popular Dylan podcast Jokermen. (Full disclosure: I am friends with the co-hosts of Jokermen, Ian Grant and Evan Laffer, and collaborate on the Jokerman spin-off, Never Ending Stories.)

“When you hear the hack Bob impression, you’re like, ‘You don’t like this guy. You don’t listen to him,’” Johnson says. “There’s so much good stuff there for a comedian to use if you are listening to all 39 records.”

I could not agree more. I was eager to geek out with Johnson about the details of his brilliant Dylan impression. Coincidentally (or not), Johnson also has a role in A Complete Unknown, the grandest and most high-profile example of Dylan impersonation this year. Naturally, I asked about that, as well.

You’re in the new Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, though sadly you are not playing Bob Dylan. Who are you playing?

I’m in one scene. It’s pretty much a cameo. I am a Pete Seeger stan. It’s early on in the movie, and it’s that thing that happens in music biopics where nobody’s ever heard of the new kid and everybody’s arms are folded. Then he plays and everyone’s arms kind of unfold while they’re watching him play. It’s one of those scenes.

You’re that guy who gets won over by young Bob Dylan.

I’m the guy, yes.

Anything else you can share?

Are they going to get mad at me for revealing what song it is? I think he plays “I Was Young When I Left Home.” I didn’t get a full script. I’m not completely sure what all goes on in the movie, but it seems to be about the fact that Bob Dylan was a cool motherfucker who showed up in a dorky scene and invented being cool.

Honestly, there’s no way for it not to be great. How could you mess up a Bob Dylan movie if the point of the movie is Bob Dylan is a cool guy? Also, if this movie is super cheesy or whatever, and it’s just a Hollywood confection, Bob Dylan fans should know that Bob Dylan would love it if the movie made about him was a Hollywood product. He would want a movie about him not to be very accurate, and to be legendary and mythological.

If you haven’t seen the movie, then you don’t know how it ends. Maybe Bob doesn’t go electric this time.

Maybe he joins the Beatles in India like in Walk Hard.

Tiimothée Chalamet has hosted SNL twice. Did you get the chance to chop it up with him about playing Bob Dylan? Maybe give him some pointers on the Bob voice?

We got along because he is an enthusiastic, silly young man. I think he is loving his moment, and he’s getting to do a lot of really cool projects. He gets to pick whatever cool project he wants. His big franchise is Dune. Even his summer movie is a French art film.

At first, I was like, “Really? Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan? It’s got to be an ugly guy because Bob Dylan is an ugly guy who convinced everyone he was cool and sexy.” I was like, “I don’t know about Timmy. Timmy’s too hot.” But he has a jittery, spazzy vibe, which worked so great in the “folk scene” Bob that I saw. I think he’s a perfect choice. Bob loves that a hot guy is playing him, I’m sure.

The genius of your Bob Dylan impression is that it’s a series of impressions. You recognize that he has a different voice through various stages of his life and career. Most people just do the stereotypical Bob Dylan voice.

I wanted to find something more believable. That impression has only just become more important to me, the more Dylan scholarship that I’ve undergone. By the time I did The Tonight Show, I was much more aware of what he sounded like on Time Out of Mind, and what he sounded like on Desire and the touring off of Desire.

I hope to get better at it. I don’t really have a raspy quality. That’s what’s missing from my Bob — I don’t smoke and I don’t have a lot of grit in my voice. I have a white gospel voice. But I have enough nasal quality going on that I can approximate Bob. It’s more about attitude. It’s not so much about sounding exactly like him.

When you’re on The Tonight Show and you’re referencing these specific eras of Dylan, do you worry about the audience getting it? Most people aren’t going to immediately recognize or appreciate “Rolling Thunder Revue era” Dylan.

I think they’re just laughing because I’m going for it and just screaming in a silly voice, I mean, everybody loves that. Doing Rolling Thunder “Jingle Bells” with The Roots, that was a big pop. Then it was like, “Okay, I have 30 seconds to do whatever I want and it doesn’t have to be good.” I look back at that clip and I’m like, “My Time Out of Mind Bob could’ve been so much better.” That’s really elusive.

I thought you did great!

Whatever is happening in his voice after Under The Red Sky, no one can really do it. Evan Laffer is really good at it. Tim Heidecker does a really good Shot Of Love Bob. I literally don’t have the components in my throat do Tempest Bob. It’s so nasty sounding that I just couldn’t do it. If you are a listener you know his vocal limitations and how he adapts to them. Especially if it’s an album where he’s coming off a really heavy tour. like Tempest. His voice is crazy on that thing. Then Rough And Rowdy Ways, knowing how old he is but also how clear he sounds on the record, you can tell he’s pretty rested.

I loved your Nashville Skyline Bob. That’s also a very specific Bob voice.

They didn’t go crazy for that [on The Tonight Show]. I was like, “Come on, that one’s pretty good!”

When I hear a hacky Dylan impression, I feel like what they are doing is mid-eighties Dylan, and specifically the Dylan part of “We Are The World,” where his voice is extra whiny and hectoring. The irony is that Dylan is basically doing an impression of himself on that song, after Stevie Wonder coached him up on how to sing like Bob Dylan.

One of my most famous “almost on the show” pieces was Andrew Dismukes and I did Bob and Bruce Springsteen standing side by side in the choir on the chorus of “We Are The World.” And we’re chit-chatting about our sandwich orders. I’m really proud of it. It’s one of the hardest we’ve ever laughed writing something, and then it murdered at the table. Bob is like, “I got the herbed chicken breast. That sounds good, right? You ever have that herbed chicken breast?” Then Bruce is like, “I got a meatball sub. I’m still waiting on it.” Then he goes, “Bob, don’t look now. Looks like Cyndi Lauper just got her muffaletta.” And then it cuts to Sarah Sherman as Cyndi Lauper getting ready to munch on a muffaletta. Then we have to sing the chorus. Then Bob and Bruce notice that Hall & Oates got their sandwich. “Shit!” Then we have to sing the chorus again.

Genius.

God, why didn’t they make that? We heard that the song is too expensive. That’s what we were told.

What’s incredible about “We Are The World” is that just four years later he’s doing Oh Mercy, and it’s another completely different voice.

He’s been the Oh Mercy guy pretty much ever since. There’s not a big difference in how he powers his voice and where he goes with it. Rough And Rowdy, he just sings really softly. He’s not singing really loud these days. He’s not that raspy anymore.

You’re basically doing that Dylan in that SNL promo you made with John Mulaney.

It was a little bit Theme Time and it was a little bit what I think he sounds like when he’s talking live these days. I saw him at the Beacon in ’21, where he was talking about Herman Melville and Rimbaud. I was just trying to replicate what he sounds like to me when he’s talking on the mic to the audience. He’s not being real raspy when he’s talking to the crowd. He’s a little higher pitched than normal, I guess. He’s not that growly when he’s speaking. He’s more growly when he sings on certain songs.

I feel there has been a shift in Dylan fandom in the internet era. For a long time, he was the “spokesman of a generation” sixties guy. It was this very broad and very serious image being foisted on him. But his younger fans have really dug into the minutia of his career, and there’s this appreciation for his most perverse moments that were once rejected or disregarded. Like, the fact that he’s on Twitter now is hilarious.

The Twitter stuff is really funny. He’s not even on Twitter, he’s on X. It’s not Twitter anymore. That in itself is so funny — Bob, you’re into this now and not in 2010. The train has left the station.