Bob Dylan is guiding Cameron Winter into a new chapter: “He’s a dude”
When a prophetic new artist comes along, culture can’t help but label them as “the next” version of someone. In 2025, when Cameron Winter’s croon punctuated whatever remaining air of silence existed, critics hastily grabbed the opportunity to put his name alongside Bob Dylan’s. But besides the scruffy hair-do, New York-inspired frown and of course, songwriting ability, how fair an assessment even is that?
Unfair in respect of how reductive it is for both artists, but undoubtedly fair in respect of Winter’s prospective impact on culture. Once you wade through internet-fuelled trends and momentary popularity, it is clear that Winter, both solo and with Geese, is onto something uniquely special in the modern age. His songwriting isn’t just prolific, but interesting at every turn, and while Dylan’s greatness was rooted in many things, that was perhaps his primary strength.
But in the process of being prolific, artists must push boundaries. Ideas can’t be simply rehashed at will and then praised under the guise of songwriting quantity, no they have to evolve constantly and as we know, with evolution comes shock. Music that divides in the process of taking listeners to the very edge and while Geese’s Getting Killed was largely palatable indie rock, there were moments that surely tested the audience.
Be it Winter’s vocal style or the crashing instrumentation, Getting Killed thrusts you into a state of concentration that regularly checks if you are enjoying the ride. It was a trope Winter clearly adopted from his favourite Dylan album.
“I listened to Freewheelin’, and it scared me for some reason,” he explained. “Not all the songs-some of the songs made me roll my eyes. There were stinkers. But I remember walking to the practice space, and I was listening to ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ for the first time.
He continued, “It scared the shit out of me, because it was so stark. It gripped my chest, and I thought, ‘This is weird.’ By the time I got to ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,’ I had to turn it off. I thought I just wasn’t into it at the time, and I only realised looking back it had this real effect on me, just hearing his voice with guitar and hearing those words.”
It’s Dylan’s uncompromising sense of self that makes him at times, confronting to listen to. Never has Dylan used his music to appease the masses, but in doing so, he created art that captured the spirit of the times, warts and all. It’s an uncomfortable truth that Winter isn’t just learning to accept, but using it to inspire his own brand of music.
“This is the problem with a lot of people with Bob Dylan: He’s a dude, and he’s been several dudes. If you prefer one dude over the other, you’re demeaning him as a person. It’s sad to me that I prefer this younger version of him that died 60 years ago to another version of him. Maybe died is a strong word, but it’s gone now.”
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