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We Can Talk

Written by Richard Manuel and opening side two of Music from Big Pink, "We Can Talk" is the loosest, funniest song on an otherwise fairly grave album. Three of the group's singers, Manuel, Levon Helm, and Rick Danko, trade lines and pile harmonies on top of each other through the whole song, closer to a gospel quartet cutting up between takes than a tightly composed pop arrangement. It's the only track on the record credited to more than two members as lead vocalists.

The song stayed a staple of the group's live shows through the group's early years before being quietly dropped from the setlist around 1971, as the group's sound moved toward the more serious, story-driven songwriting Robertson was developing. Where songs like "Tears of Rage" and "I Shall Be Released" carry the weight of the record, "We Can Talk" is there to let the singers simply enjoy each other's company on tape, a reminder that underneath the gravity, this was still a bar band that had spent a decade learning how to make a room move.

Notable versions