Final Reading: Another side of Dick McCormack

A select collection of tapes have transformed American political history. The Watergate tapes led to former President Richard Nixon’s resignation. The Access Hollywood tape led to former President Donald Trump’s … election.

I’m here to tell you I’m in possession of one such tape, a tape few knew existed but many could have predicted: a cassette of Sen. Dick McCormack — who is retiring after three decades in the Senate — performing satirical versions of Bob Dylan songs.

I acquired the McCormack tape last June. Reporting had taken me to the almost-forgotten Barnard record label Rooster Records , which burned to the ground in 1987.

When I met Will Wright, the label’s founder, in his Pomfret home, he slipped me a still-plastic-wrapped cassette. “The Best of Dillon Simmerman,” it read, with a 1985 copyright and a black and white photo of a sunglasses-wearing, harmonica-playing, polka-dot-adorned someone clearly doing their best Bob Dylan impression on the cover.

That’s Dick McCormack, Wright told me.

But despite my intrigue, the tape sat unplayed in my bedroom. The Zoomer I am, my lack of a tape player proved an impassable obstacle.

McCormack, a folk singer by trade, cut “Who Ever Said It Would Be Easy?” an album of original folk songs, for Rooster in 1981. But the Simmerman tape appeared to have no trace online. I was in possession of a secret.

When I finally sat down to listen after a colleague’s husband graciously digitized the cassette, I didn’t know what I was in for.

“Hey Mr. Franks-and-Beans Man, fix one up for me / I’m starving and I really want a wiener,” McCormack croons, setting off a hot dog motif that persists throughout.

McCormack captures the youthful exuberance of Dylan’s early acoustic work, a sense of self-satisfaction with every additional rhyme. Many tracks begin with a muffled “we’re rolling, Bob” from some out-of-frame engineer, cultivating the DIY-feel of folk music’s origins.

Side One: “Hey Mr. Franks ‘n Beans Man,” “Fried Brain,” “War is Bad,” “Most Probably All Else Being Equal More Or Less.”

Side Two: “Cross Eyed Lady Of Long Island,” “All Along The White Tower,” “The Moon In June,” “A Pirate Tape,” “Follow The Trend Back To Jesus.”

The man who would become senator riffs on “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” with “Fried Brain,” the “blue-eyed son” becoming a “freeloading” one in a tale of waiting for pizza and bothering girls. He considers joining the Peace Corps, joining the Marines, homesteading in Canada.

“War is Bad” rhymes “martinis” with “meanies,” and includes such insights as: “You think war is good / but actually war isn’t good, it’s bad!”

Well said, Senator. Politicians have built political platforms out of less.

After a listen, I knew I needed to talk to the senator himself. My secret — his secret — needed to be known.

On a chaotic May evening, after a four-hour Senate Finance Committee meeting had dissolved into musings of wild ways to buy down property taxes, a spring breeze wafted weed smoke into the room.

“Pot!” McCormack exclaimed, his colleagues struggling to restrain giggles. “I mean, excuse me, cannabis .”

I decided to make my move.

The Windsor County senator lit up when handed the cassette.

“I don’t think I even have this one,” he exclaimed.

“I was satirizing someone I love and someone whose work I love,” McCormack continued. “Dylan’s wackiness — and he is wacky — has always fascinated his fans, and I appreciate that.”

McCormack, who will be 77 at the end of his last term in the Senate, recorded “Dillon Simmerman” at a time when he was making his living as a folksinger. But the tape, he joked, was no money maker.

“There’s a reference to a hot dog in every song,” he said. (I, an astute listener, picked up on that.)

Yet with 40 years’ distance since its recording, McCormack mused that maybe things have changed.

“Wouldn’t that be something if ‘Dillon Simmerman’ caught on?” he said, suggesting that taste, like the weather, changes with the seasons.

Well, Senator, in the words of Bob Dylan himself, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

— Ethan Weinstein

On the move

Vermont’s annual state budget is one step closer to the finish line — and in it, lawmakers are making a go at whittling down this year’s double-digit property tax hike.

On Tuesday afternoon, a conference committee of House and Senate budget writers signed off on a final, $8.6 billion package to fund the government this coming fiscal year, which begins July 1. The legislation faces final votes on the Senate and House floors before it can head to Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s desk.

In most of the compromise budget’s individual line items, legislators did not stray far from the proposal Scott put forth in January. At his weekly press conference on Wednesday, the governor told reporters that the budget is “nowhere near perfect,” but “I think it can work.”

“Although I still believe it spends a bit too much, the budget appears to be on a path to something I can live with,” Scott said.

Read more here .

— Sarah Mearhoff

Both chambers of the Vermont Legislature have passed a bill that would create a new supervision program for people released from state custody while awaiting criminal trials . It’s one of a slate of bills lawmakers are weighing in the final days of the session that they say respond to widespread concerns over crime in the state.

Vermont courts already allow certain defendants to be detained in their homes, rather than in prison, while waiting for their cases to be resolved. The program has typically been used as an alternative to incarceration for people who can’t afford to post bail.

But S.195 , as it has passed both bodies, would create a new supervision framework for alleged offenders whom lawmakers believe pose significant threats to public safety.

A court could order someone to be placed in this new “pretrial supervision program” if they have five or more pending criminal dockets or have violated other court-ordered conditions of release.

Read more here.

— Shaun Robinson

A bill that would address the long-standing problem of timber theft in Vermont is headed to the desk of Gov. Phil Scott, now that it has cleared both chambers of the legislature. Senators on Tuesday unanimously passed the legislation, which was given the final stamp of approval in the House on Wednesday.

Sen. Richard Westman, R-Lamoille, who presented H.614 on the floor last week, said he encountered timber theft during his first term in the Legislature. While carpooling home with another lawmaker in 1983, he said, the passenger pointed to a hillside property of a homebound woman in her late 80s and said loggers were working there, even though the woman didn’t know what was happening.

“The issue of people going onto other people’s lands and stealing timber has long been a problem,” Westman told lawmakers. “And it’s a really hard problem to deal with.”

Read more here .

— Emma Cotton

Vermont has a state mushroom : Hericium Americanum, commonly known as the bear’s head tooth mushroom, after effective advocacy by students from two Windham County schools. The legislation, signed by Gov. Scott in law on Tuesday, was shepherded by noted mushroom enthusiast Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun, D-Westminster.

Scott also signed into law two other bills: One makes removal of a “sexually protective device” (such as a condom) a criminal misdemeanor, another prohibits a broader range of sexual activity between employees of the state Dept. of Corrections and those under their supervision and between an adult and a minor over which he or she holds a position of power.

— VTD Editors

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