In the summer of 2013, a call came in on behalf of Bob Dylan asking Duke Robillard to become his lead guitarist. To follow a songwriter whose catalog spans folk, country, early rock and roll, Delta blues, and swing, you need an encyclopedic command of American music, and Robillard had spent nearly six decades building exactly that. Born Michael John Robillard in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, in 1948, he first played as Mike Honey Bear Robillard and took a day job on the factory floor of the Guild Guitar Company, learning how wood, pickups, and electronics shape tone before he ever headlined a festival.

This episode treats his career as a series of case studies in versatility: co-founding the horn-driven jump blues band Roomful of Blues with pianist Al Copley in 1967 while everyone else was buying fuzz pedals, walking away from it in 1979, and t ...