Decoding Dylan

Odds are, you know of musician Bob Dylan and his groundbreaking career. But not many college students have studied Dylan like Mason Moreno, a junior history major at Texas State University.  

A self-described Dylan superfan, Moreno even saw A Complete Unknown—the 2024 biopic starring Timothée Chalamet as Dylan—three times in the theater and called it a “cathartic” experience.  

Last summer, Moreno’s interest in Dylan reached new heights when he was invited to present his original research publication, “Men with no Alibi: The Dylan/Shepard Tapes,” at the World of Bob Dylan conference held in Tulsa, Oklahoma.   

Moreno’s research focused on a recording of the late Sam Shepard, a celebrated playwright, interviewing Dylan for the article “True Dylan,” published in Esquire in 1987. The recording is archived with the Sam Shepard Papers at The Wittliff Collections at TXST.  

“This specific tape is interesting because Dylan has always had a hard time being interviewed by people and is very combative with reporters,” Moreno says. “This was with Sam Shepard, someone he had been friends with for over 10 years. Dylan’s a very elusive guy. He doesn’t always want to be in that spotlight of having his words taken as concrete fact. This tape is the uncut, real Dylan. We don’t always get to see that.”  

Moreno’s archival project is distinctive because very few people have listened to the tape, and no one has ever transcribed the interview in its entirety, making him the first person to do so.  

“My paper dives into the noteworthy moments in the interview that aren’t included in the article and that no one has ever heard before,” Moreno says. “There are many references to other contemporaries of Dylan, or people who have come before him, in ways that we don’t often see him give reverence to. It’s more than his public persona.”   

Moreno found out about the tape from Dr. Jon Lasser, a Regents’ Professor in the Department of Counseling, Leadership, Adult Education, and School Psychology who teaches a course called “The Art of Bob Dylan.”  

“One of the most rewarding experiences as a professor is to see students like Mason challenge themselves to try new things and apply their intellectual curiosity to research,” Lasser says.    

Katie Salzmann, lead archivist at The Wittliff, says it’s exciting when TXST students discover and explore the archive’s holdings.  

“There are countless theses, dissertations, books, articles, and seminar papers just waiting to be written using our collections,” she says. “Once Mason was settled in our reading room and able to listen to the material himself, he was hooked and off on his own research journey.”