Bob Dylan Says Minnesota Has Its Own Mason-Dixon Line

Bob Dylan doesn’t give many interviews, but he recently sat down with author Bill Flanagan to talk about everything from his new album to the death of Muhammad Ali.

Even Dylan's home state of Minnesota came up. During the interview, he discussed the life and culture of the state, including Minnesota's own Mason-Dixon line:

Interviewer:

You’ve traveled a lot for a long while. Is there still something that makes Minnesota different from other places? Is there any quality people have there that you don’t find elsewhere?

Bob Dylan:

Not necessarily. Minnesota has its own Mason Dixon line. I come from the north and that’s different from southern Minnesota; if you’re there you could be in Iowa or Georgia. Up north the weather is more extreme – frostbite in the winter, mosquito-ridden in the summer, no air conditioning when I grew up, steam heat in the winter and you had to wear a lot of clothes when you went outdoors. Your blood gets thick. It’s the land of 10,000 lakes – lot of hunting and fishing. Indian country, Ojibwe, Chippewa, Lakota, birch trees, open pit mines, bears and wolves – the air is raw. Southern Minnesota is farming country, wheat fields and hay stacks, lots of corn fields, horses and milk cows. In the north it’s more hardscrabble. It’s a rugged environment – people lead simple lives, but they lead simple lives in other parts of the country too. People are pretty much the same wherever you go. There is good and bad in most people, doesn’t matter what state you live in. Some people are more self-sufficient than other places – some more secure, some less secure – some people mind their own business, some don’t.

Read the entire interview here.

Image via Xavier Badosa, Flickr, used under Creative Commons