Bob Dylan’s latest album, Christmas In The Heart, is an unusual collection of Christmas standards. All proceeds from the album will go to support homeless services. Dylan granted an interview exclusive to members of the North American Street Newspaper Association to talk about the album.

Bob Dylan has at various times revolutionized folk, rock, country, and gospel music. However, any Dylan fan who claims not to have been surprised that Bob has released an album of traditional Christmas songs is pulling your leg. Christmas In The Heart is another surprising move by an artist famous for surprises. Yet when you hear Dylan’s direct and obviously sincere readings of “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “Little Town Of Bethlehem,” and “The First Noel,” this unlikely exercise seems of a piece with the rest of Dylan’s work.

From the very first, this was an artist who made us look at the familiar with new eyes and ears. While some critics tie themselves into knots analyzing Dylan’s motives, it has usually turned out that Bob Dylan means exactly what he says. Featuring members of his touring band along with Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and Chess Records vet Phil Upchurch, Christmas In The Heart is Bob Dylan’s celebration of family, community, faith, and shared memory. And a timely celebration it is. Recognizing the worldwide problem of hunger, Bob Dylan has donated all of his proceeds from the record, in perpetuity, to organizations around the world to help with hunger and homelessness.

We sat down to talk in the Waterfront Plaza Hotel in Oakland on a rainy, windy, October day.

To read this article in full, get a copy from a local Street Sheet vendor. If you’re not in San Francisco, there’s a good chance your local street paper is running the interview.

It’s common, if infrequently articulated, knowledge that homelessness isn’t good for you. Homelessness is accompanied by a substantially higher mortality rate than has the population at large, difficulty obtaining employment, and enormous social stigma.

These negative impacts are compounded for homeless children, and their schooling suffers as a result. Researchers at Columbia University have found that homeless children are half again as likely as their housed peers to perform below grade level in reading and spelling, and more than twice as likely to perform poorly in math.

The causes are obvious: Without stable housing, homeless children are subject to far higher stress; they frequently do not have adequate space to do homework. They lack access to many of the resources employed by their housed peers.

With the current recession, this problem is expanding dramatically. Looking at the first year of the recession, the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) and First Focus published the report The Economic Crisis Hits Home: The Unfolding Increase in Child & Youth Homelessness. NAEHCY looked into homeless student populations at 1,716 school districts across the country. In the first semester of the 2008–2009 school year, nearly 20% of these districts had enrolled more homeless students than they had in the entirety of the 2007–2008 school year. A further 49% had seen at least half the prior year’s number of students within the first few months. Over 95% reported some increase. And 2008–2009 built on increases the prior school year.

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