Look Up
To some, Bob Neuwirth will forever be seen as Bob Dylan's acerbic road  manager/comic accomplice, an identity immortalized in D.A. Pennebaker's classic  1967 documentaryDon't Look Back. In fact, Neuwirth has long been an  exceptional singer-songwriter in his own, recording superior (albeit largely  ignored) sets for a slew of labels, including Asylum and Gold Castle. This seat- of-his-pants 1996 set finds the weathered troubadour mixing it up on the road  with an assortment of peers and apostles. Contemporaries Billy Swan, Sandy Bull,  and Patti Smith turn up on songs they co-wrote with Neuwirth, while relative  youngsters Victoria Williams, Mark Olsen, and Peter Case make equally obliging  contributions. Conceived as "a modern-day field trip," Neuwirth laid  down these tracks during stays in Texas, New York, Southern California, and  Paris. The result is a varied and vital aural postcard from a man who travels  like a trouper.--Steven Stolder