In addition to the music selections hyperlinked throughout this essay, an extensive playlist of referential works by Laube, Dylan, and related artists is available. Click here to listen to the curated YouTube playlist.

Anna Elizabeth Laube and the Spirit of Countercultural Folk Music

Anna Elizabeth Laube, a contemporary folk musician, reinterprets the ethos of the Beat Generation in her music, creating a timeless reflection of artistic freedom, introspection, cultural rebellion, spiritual exploration, and environmental consciousness. Her work, building upon the foundations set by Bob Dylan and the Beats, offers a fresh yet familiar perspective on love, independence, and the natural world. Integrating themes of social responsibility, environmental consciousness, and personal liberation–core tenets of both Beat literature and folk protest music–she creates a profoundly connective and emotionally moving listening experience that bridges past and present countercultural traditions.

Spontaneous Song of San Francisco: The Beat Roots of an Impassioned Folk Rebellion

The Beat Generation emerged from bohemian artist communities, including San Francisco’s North Beach and New York City’s Greenwich Village, as a social and literary rebellion against the capitalist-oriented conformity of 1950s America. Through raw, uninhibited poetry readings at countercultural third spaces like City Lights Bookstore, the Beats cultivated a movement that was both celebrated and condemned.^[1] These radical ideas rippled like waves in a pond, inspiring a rise of Beat-infused folk musicians like Bob Dylan. This legacy endures in contemporary folk and blues, including the work of Anna Elizabeth Laube.^[2] As a historic hub of Beat activity, San Francisco remains a symbolic stronghold of this countercultural artistic expression, and its influence is still distinguishable in the city’s modern creative landscape.

Natural Reverence, Urban Discontent: Beat Imagery in Laube’s Lyrics

After relocating from Madison, Wisconsin, Laube’s first few years as a musician in San Francisco shaped her artistic approach, grounded in the city’s Beat-folk legacy and reflecting her engagement with themes of nature and transcendence. Her lyrics eloquently juxtapose urban chaos with natural serenity, mirroring the Beats’ longing for escape and spiritual connection through the wild, untamed landscapes across the West Coast and on distant shores. Through songs like “Wild Outside,”^[3] “Please Let It Rain In California Tonight,”^[4] and “Om Namah Shivaya,”^[5] Laube explores messages that resonate with her audience and align with the ecological philosophy that Gary Snyder outlines in Earth House Hold.

Minimalist Mantras: Meditation and Intergenerational Reflections

Laube’s body of work echoes Snyder’s reverence for the natural world in “Buddhism and the Coming Revolution” and its urgency for social and environmental activism, suggesting that nature offers communal responsibility and a path toward spiritual awakening and inner peace.^[6] Her song “Om Namah Shivaya (Ulysses)”^[7] epitomizes this exploration of minimalism, meditation, and interconnectedness. Drawing upon the mighty Hindu mantra by the same name,^[8] the song is a reflective meditation, seeking spiritual tranquility amid the complexity of modern life. And yet, the song’s simplicity contrasts vividly with the layered artistic and literary references it contains, mainly through its direct engagement with the song “Ulysses”^[9] by fellow contemporary folk singer Mason Jennings. Jennings, inspired by painter Robert Motherwell’s fascination with Joyce’s novel Ulysses,^[10],^[11] believed that Ulysses would answer all of his life’s questions, but instead, with his quest to acquire the tome achieved, he fully realized its complexity,^[12] by the end of the song’s first stanza, it simply sat on the table–unread, unexplored, “Another word for the Universe.”^[13]
This network of synchronically linked passages and ideas across time and artistic mediums mirrors Rob Sean Wilson’s method of intertextual exploration in Beat Attitudes,^[14] where he interweaves Beat literary traditions with historical and contemporary thoughts from a wide range of artists, emphasizing the persistent search for clarity and chaos of our modern existence. Laube thus participates in this rich tradition and offers a nuanced reflection on minimalism, spiritual peace, and interconnections that transcend generations, opening “Om Namah Shivaya (Ulysses)” by singing:

Lyin’ by the lake in a little wood hut listenin’ to Mason
Tryin’ to understand what he means when he says
That Ulysses can explain everything
I don’t have it here
Nor have I ever read it
Guess that’d be a good place to start^[15]

Revolutionary Intimacy: Love and Connection in Laube’s Music

Laube’s pop-infused “Sunny Days”^[16] captures the mindful celebration of simplicity and presence in both urban and wild environments that Jack Kerouac explores in Dharma Bums.^[17] Laube channels the same joyous ethos in her song’s buoyant optimism and straightforward appreciation for life’s uncomplicated beauty, crooning at 0:15:

I’ve been sitting down practicing the truth of love
Wondering ‘bout what I’ve been dreaming of
Sunny days, sittin’ on top of the world^[18]

Her soulful ballad, “The Most Beautiful Thing I’ve Ever Seen,”^[19] embodies a similar and deeply heartfelt appreciation for human connections and the immediacy of the present moment that Gary Snyder emphasizes in Earth House Hold, particularly when he emphasizes the authenticity needed to create poetry and music^[20] and the ways Revolutionary tribe-members will be able to recognize one another: “The signal is a bright and tender look; calmness and gentleness, freshness and ease of manner.”^[21] Laube’s tune, off of her debut album from 2006, provides a vehicle for her appreciation of the humanity surrounding her. Backed by her plucky banjo at 4:30, she sings:

I miss you my friend
And I miss the sweet sweet tune
I wanna feel the heat
Hear the crickets sing in June

And I want to be free
Wanna know what it is to be me
I want to give and I want to receive

I want to make you smile
Make you mine if only for a while
I want to know love
But tonight in your arms just might be
It might be enough^[22]

This song also resonates with Diane Di Prima’s radical insistence on interconnectedness in Revolutionary Letters, notably in “Revolutionary Letter #69: Matagalpa, 1978,” where she proclaims,

All love
is revolution
& all touch
a form of love
The moment of revolt is the moment of victory.^[23]

Like Beat greats, who paved the way for her music to blossom, Laube celebrates human connections as foundational to personal happiness and broader communal well-being.

Joyful Rebellion: Countercultural Rhythms in “Hippie Boyfriend”

Reflecting the playful rebellion against societal conformity exemplified by Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm,”^[24] Laube’s rejection of capitalist materialism and conventional societal norms maintains a light-hearted energy in her early-career earworm, “Hippie Boyfriend.”^[25] She evokes an idyllic day spent with her love, “Diggin’ dirt and plantin' flowers / Work real hard in the daytime light / Incense, records, and sweet caresses / Play real soft in the darkness of night,” creating a vivid scene of countercultural simplicity. This gentle defiance builds as she directly channels Beat ideals of liberation from materialistic value and the embrace of alternative lifestyles, beginning at 1:11:

“Smoke some pot and play guitar
How I wonder where you are
So, I send a message through my heart
This fairy tale’s about to start

(Chorus) I’m gonna get me a hippie boyfriend
And live with him in a hippie house
I’m gonna get me a hippie boyfriend
And kiss him on his hippie mouth

I woke up in the nighttime hours
Sky full of starlight and head full of you
You shine so bright Creature of light
Reflecting back to me what’s true.”^[26]

Laube’s lyrics echo the profound critiques of society’s disconnect from the joyful pursuit of connection with one another without characterizing or casting judgment upon the freedom of one another to love freely–and do so publicly, as Allen Ginsburg articulates so eloquently in “A Supermarket in California,” writing,

Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! –and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys…

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Where does your beard point tonight?^[27]

Healing Melodies: Overcoming Alienation in “All My Runnin’”

Stylistically, Laube’s music video for “All My Runnin’”^[28] revisits Dylan’s postcard prompts in the “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video, interweaving personal photo and video submissions from fans with handwritten lyrics on index cards. Dylan’s cautionary message at 0:58–"Keep a clean nose, watch the plain clothes / You don’t need a weatherman / To know which way the wind blows”–speaks to the urban alienation and distrust of authority that the Beats rebelled against. Laube responds melodically, offering a comforting salve in her healing counterpoint, symbolizing reconnection and emotional resilience. As heard at 1:52:

I couldn’t help but start to smile
Been by myself for all this while
Waitin’ for so long, but for whom?
And now I see you sittin’ there
With your heart blazing bold and bare
And everything I need is in this room

(chorus)
Oh, let’s go home together
Far beyond these waves
Darlin’ all my runnin’
Led me to your face.^[29]

Laube’s song becomes a meditative response–a gentle repair–to the socio-emotional damage inflicted by capitalism's isolating forces and perpetual violence. This sentiment is deeply resonant with Di Prima’s denunciation of everyday social violence in “Revolutionary Letter #80: Good Clean Fun,”^[30] and Snyder’s critique in “Why Tribe,”^[31] wherein he sharply confronts the Civilization Establishment’s persistent erosion of communal bonds and environmental harmony in its attack of the Great Subculture.

Earth Songs & Talkin’ Blues: Laube, Dylan, and Environmental Consciousness

Laube takes a more direct take on the environmental crisis we continue to enact on Mother Earth in an homage to the traditional “talking blues” style popularized by Dylan’s “Talkin’ World War III Blues”^[32] in “Talkin’-Singin’ Hybrid Earth Day Blues,”^[33] While an immediate comparison between the two songs lies in their shared use of the harmonica while playing guitar, more profound parallels emerge in their cautionary and emphatic messages. Laube pays homage to the 40th Anniversary of the first Earth Day–a very Beat rhetoric. Starting at 1:00:

Cause all these birds are dyin'
Big companies, they can't stop lyin'
Money, money money, why is that
What it's always about
You and I we got a choice
To stand up and unite our voice
Come together for the first-ever Earth Day

(chorus)
Cuz Mama Earth we don't want to do you wrong
We've been dead, but we're beginning to hear your sweet nature song
Well, I tell you once and tell you twice
She's the only one we got You better treat her nice
We love you, we love you
Mama Earth

(talking part)
Well Coast to Coast those rallies began
and pretty soon there were
20 million Earth Day fans
Inspiring each other with their love and strength
Recycling bottles and composting waste
Walkin’, bikin’, paddlin’ to make haste
Ice skatin’, celebrating Mama Earth
Then protective legislation Swept across the nation
National hiking trails and green education
They call those years the Environmental Decade
But two steps forward and one step back
The last Administration launched an earth attack
But now Obama helps us protect our Mama Earth^[34]

Like Dylan, Laube uses humor, a conversational tone, and a spontaneous-sounding style. Through her platform as a songwriter and performer, Laube effectively and humorously critiques society’s environmental degradation. While Dylan’s original addresses Cold War anxiety with a comedic yet cautionary approach, Laube revives the genre for contemporary environmental concerns, urging collective responsibility through witty storytelling and folk-driven rhythmic repetition. Also, like Dylan, she effectively fuses protest with her poetry, extending a lineage of Beat and folk activism into modern ecological consciousness.

Prayers for Rain, Poems of Wind: Symbolism and Spiritual Renewal

In another striking parallel, Laube’s evocative “Please Let It Rain In California Tonight”^[35] resonates deeply with Bob Kaufman’s poignant poem “Image of Wind.” Kaufman’s closing stanza,

But usually, I know the rain falls anyway,
Leaving only mud puddles
To catch dead leaves as they fall.
Leaves always fall.
There is nothing to say:
The wind is in charge of lives
Tonight.^[36]

captures a similar emotional landscape–acknowledging nature’s ultimate control over human fate. Laube’s song, similarly steeped in metaphor, becomes a musical prayer not only for literal rain amidst California’s devastating fire seasons but as a broader plea for comfort and emotional reprieve amid the intense social pressures Californians face. Beginning at 1:42, she implores:

Please let the cigarettes all burn down
And let the smoke blow far away from this town
Please help the addicted to be free
And vanquish from our hearts hatred, jealousy, and greed

Please let the rivers all run clear
Remove all of our worry and our fear
Please let love rule our bodies, hearts, and minds
And melt away every single chain that binds

Please let the darkness find the light
Please let my brother be all right
Please let forgiveness end this awful fight
And let it rain in California tonight^[37]

The imagery in “Image of Wind” closely parallels Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” reinforcing the symbolic use of rain as an emotional and cleansing agent. Kaufman, whose jazz-infused poetry epitomizes the Beat ethos of free expression, and Dylan, whose music holds the same place in the timeline of folk rock, both harness nature to articulate their societal anxieties; in drawing these parallels to Kaufman and Dylan, Laube aligns herself musically and spiritually within a profound Beat lineage that emphasizes nature’s immutable presence as a comfort and as a force beyond any human means of control.

Buckets of Rain and Timeless Rebellion: Keeping the Beat Alive

This thematic thread continues to Laube’s cover^[38] of Dylan’s introspective “Buckets of Rain,”^[39] a rendition demonstrating her commitment to preserving and refreshing these powerful musical traditions. Similarly, her heartfelt interpretations of Dylan’s “Wallflower”^[40] featured on her 2016 album Tree and in a 2016 music video,^[41] and “Mama You’ve Been on My Mind”^[42] recorded in her home studio in 2020^[43] emphasize how these intergenerational references, much like those explored by Wilson in Beat Attitudes,^[44] sustain the vibrant Beat ethos across generations.

Laube’s thoughtful blending of folk melodies, Beat ideals, and contemporary concerns underscores the enduring relevance of artistic traditions in embracing authenticity, interconnectedness, and social consciousness. By continuing to revisit and reshape these narratives in Beat literature and folk traditions, Laube uniquely contributes to the continuity of their messages, demonstrating the powerful potential of intergenerational artistic dialogues. Through her reinterpretations and original compositions, she ensures that the legacy of the Beats–and their passionate and artistic rebellion–remains dynamically resonant today and in the future.

Works Cited

All My Runnin’- Lyric (Original Song). YouTube, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ0-\_WVHlY4.

Anna Elizabeth Laube. The Most Beautiful Thing I’ve Ever Seen. YouTube. Outta My Head, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkonRVgDbnU.

Anna Laube - Project M Finale - Talkin’-Singin’ Hybrid Earth Day Blues. YouTube. Project M. 1055tripleM, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REKJzqCe9Z0\&list=PL84iz44yTV1UgmC7LSApFMNaBDAJTeN18\&index=15.

Bob Dylan. Mama, You Been on My Mind (Live at Harvard Square Theatre). YouTube. Harvard Square Theatre, Cambridge, MA, 1975. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etk6lD3RGqQ.

Bob Dylan - Talkin’ World War III Blues (LIVE FOOTAGE 1964). YouTube. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: CBC TV Studios, 1964. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFWQaLUNEdA.

Di Prima, Diane. Revolutionary Letters. 50th anniversary edition, Expanded edition. The Pocket Poets Series, Number 27. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2021.

Dylan, Bob. Buckets of Rain. YouTube Music. Blood on the Tracks, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGsOmKZXDvo.

———. Maggie’s Farm (Live At Newport Folk Festival - 1965). YouTube. Newport Folk Festival, Newport, Rhode Island, 1965. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPfsUlFxhrI.

———. Wallflower - Studio Outtake, 1971. The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased) 1961-1991, 1971. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQndCbvoM6s\&list=PL84iz44yTV1UgmC7LSApFMNaBDAJTeN18\&index=20.

Ginsberg, Allen. Howl, and Other Poems. The Pocket Poets Series, no. 4. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1996.

Jennings, Mason. Ulysses. YouTube Music. Use Your Voice. bar / none records, 2004. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlQ3MHlZGmQ.

Johnson, Martin. “Interview: Anna Elizabeth Laube on Celebrating Her 15 Year Career.” Americana UK (blog), January 19, 2021. https://americana-uk.com/interview-anna-elizabeth-laube-on-celebrating-her-15-year-career.

Joyce, James. Ulysses. 1st Vintage International ed. Vintage International. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Kaufman, Bob, Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye, Tate Swindell, and Devorah Major. Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2019.

Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums. Distributed Proofreaders Canada, 1970.

Laube, Anna Elizabeth. Buckets Of Rain. YouTube Music. Ahh... Pockets! Records, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymq2GLiKsPU.

———. Hippie Boyfriend. YouTube. Pool All the Love * Pool All the Knowledge. Santa Monica, CA, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wwo3a\_4GiU.

———. Please Let It Rain In California Tonight. YouTube, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7aHerJuU7c.

———. The Most Beautiful Thing I’ve Ever Seendharma. YouTube Music. Outta My Head: Ahh... Pockets! Records, 2006. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkonRVgDbnU\&list=PL84iz44yTV1UgmC7LSApFMNaBDAJTeN18\&index=8.

———. Wallflower (Bob Dylan Cover). YouTube. Tree, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hajs7Es8u9w.

———. Wild Outside. YouTube Music. Wild Outside: Ahh... Pockets! Records, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKDO45TBR9U.

Laube, Anna Elizabeth, and Ben Ferris. Sunny Days. YouTube. Tree, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdA6D7SV6qI.

Laube, Anna Elizabeth, and Rebecca Roudman. Om Namah Shivaya (Ulysses). YouTube. Released on Apr. 17, 2009. Filmed in Petaluma, California, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOjI9WSLV1M.

Mama You Been On My Mind (Bob Dylan Cover). YouTube, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlirkIREbak.

McHugh, Kati. “The Beat Goes On: Anna Laube & Bob Dylan Songs, as Interpretations of the Beat Movement.” YouTube videos, Playlist. Owl Salt, March 11, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL84iz44yTV1UgmC7LSApFMNaBDAJTeN18.

“Om Namah Shivay: Know the Importance of Chanting Om Namah Shivay - Times of India.” Accessed March 19, 2025. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/religion/mantras-chants/know-the-importance-of-chanting-om-namah-shivay/articleshow/75203903.cms.

Snyder, Gary. Earth House Hold: Technical Notes & Queries to Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries. New Directions. New York, NY: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1969.

The Dedalus Foundation. “Word and Image: Literary Influences in Motherwell’s Works.” Accessed March 19, 2025. https://dedalusfoundation.org/programs/online-features/view/word-and-image-literary-influences-in-motherwells-works/.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Beat Movement | History, Characteristics, Writers, & Facts.” Encyclopaedia. Britannica, February 20, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/art/Beat-movement.

Wilson, Rob Sean. Beat Attitudes: On the Roads to Beatitude for Post-Beat Writers, Dharma Bums, and Cultural-Political Activists. Santa Cruz, Calif.: New Pacific Press, 2010.

Winkie, Luke. “Rawdogging Ulysses.” Slate, November 26, 2024. https://slate.com/culture/2024/11/ulysses-james-joyce-book-club-amazon-annotated.html.

Notes