No. 149 - Bob Dylan & Joan Baez’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” changed my life

After a surprise breakup, Sadie Menicanin was properly introduced to Dylan

Jul 10, 2026

This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.

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The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan by Bob Dylan album cover 1963.

• 4 min read •

A few years ago, I was in a bad place. The pandemic had been a brutal period. In 2020 I was on the receiving end of a surprise breakup with a long-term boyfriend. Not long before that, I’d been diagnosed with OCD, which was in turn exacerbated by the unexpected circumstances of the breakup and the bizarre vacuum of the pandemic. These issues fed on each other for months, instigating painful ruminations that spiraled nearly into self-torture. After the breakup, I moved out of my ex’s condo and formed a COVID bubble with several friends, who were a tremendous source of support. Soon after, I found my own apartment and began to settle, begrudgingly, into my new reality. All this time I was slowly chipping away at my PhD dissertation, a solitary endeavour under the best of circumstances, which was made significantly more isolating by the pandemic. Spending the majority of my time on my own, sometimes my OCD could be all-consuming. I was struggling with the worst self-esteem of my life, which on bad days manifested as a kind of self-loathing I had never known before.

By summer 2021, there were some reasons to feel hopeful: vaccines had finally arrived in Toronto. Restrictions were tentatively starting to lift. I’d been slowly, gingerly healing. Yet I still felt distant from myself, my torn seams somewhat haphazardly sewn up. Dark thoughts were never far away. My parents and a close friend of mine decided to go on a week-long summer getaway together to a lakeside lodge with a few cottages near Sudbury, Ontario. Once there, I was relieved to discover I didn’t have cell service. Loon calls and campfires and hammocks and morning kayaking were a salve over my wounds accumulated throughout the previous year.

Close-up selfie of Sadie smiling on a green bridge with a river and forest in the background. — Sadie on a hike near the lodge

My friend and I got there the day after my parents. Once we arrived, my dad excitedly told me about one of the lodge’s staff, a man I’ll call V, who was apparently a talented guitarist and Bob Dylan aficionado. Ever the proud father, my dad had relayed to V that I was a singer and a pianist, and convinced him that we’d have to connect over music. V gave a free weekly concert at the lodge — we’d be hearing him perform in a day or two.

I admit that my dad’s enthusiasm over V, who I hadn’t yet met, didn’t inspire much expectation in me. I was embarrassed by my dad’s innocent delight in advertising my musical abilities to strangers, and, perhaps unfairly, I was a little doubtful of V. Music is a foundational part of my life — core to my identity, my self-expression, my education, even the area of my graduate research. Over the years, I’ve met plenty of members of the category of musicians I’ll call “guitar bros.” Many of them have an unpleasant tendency to mansplain my native art form to me or have a frustratingly narrow view of music (and a low opinion of female musicians, preferring to maintain a sort of boys’ club). My initial suspicion was that V would probably just be another one of them.

To my enormous surprise, meeting V was the inciting incident of a restorative, inspiring chapter of my life.

V was an exceptional guitar player with a superb ear and an encyclopedic knowledge of Bob Dylan. He was absolutely captivating on stage, and had an uncanny ability to cover Dylan’s singing style, mimicking his subtle performance quirks with a magic that I hadn’t ever encountered in a tribute musician. In fact, it’s a bit of a disservice to refer to V as a tribute artist. V was unlike any musician I’d ever met.

That week at the lodge we started collaborating. Our musical skills dovetailed in a remarkable fashion: I was blown away by V’s ability to remember long, early Dylan ballads with an obscene number of verses. V couldn’t believe that I could easily improvise harmonies to sing along with him. I was a classically trained pianist who’d done some pop-style keyboard improvising over chord charts. V hardly read music but had a knack for picking out classic songs with obscure tunings and unexpected harmonic progressions by ear. Enjoying playing together, we excitedly experimented with songs by a bunch of different artists we loved, from Joni Mitchell to Leonard Cohen to Simon & Garfunkel, but, of course, we stuck mostly to Dylan. I knew some classics by Dylan, but collaborating with V opened me to many unfamiliar (and now-favourite) songs from his enormous catalogue; in effect, V properly introduced me to Dylan.

A calm lake at sunset with a tree-lined shoreline and scattered clouds in the deep blue and orange sky. — Sunset at the lodge

I joined in on several of V’s performances at the lodge that season (returning there after my family trip had ended). Both based in Toronto, V and I also continued collaborating in the months to follow, as the pandemic situation gradually eased. We rehearsed in my tiny apartment, where I had a piano; I made a few appearances as a back-up singer at V’s shows and our repertoire list kept growing. Nonetheless, adopting the roles of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, we always returned to a classic, one of the earliest songs we worked on when we first met, which became a kind of signature: “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Retrospectively, I have come to understand my time at the lodge, my collaborations with V, and Bob Dylan’s music as a profound turning point in my life, and as vital to the restoration of my self-love and self-compassion.

In 2023, I finished my PhD and moved to Oslo for a new research position. V and I still keep in touch. ◆