ECHO IN THE CANYON (2019)

Starring Jakob Dylan, Lou Adler, Fiona Apple, The Beach Boys

Directed by Andrew Slater

Screenplay by Andrew Slater and Eric Barrett

82 minutes. Opening May 24 at ArcLight Hollywood and The Landmark.

Echo in the Canyon is as much a hybrid of a movie as the “California Sound” it pays tribute to. A love letter to a time (the mid-1960s) and a place (Laurel Canyon, nestled off the Sunset Strip in the Hollywood Hills), Echo in the Canyon is equal parts documentary and concert film.

Although the film is directed by music industry veteran Andrew Slater, it’s musician Jakob Dylan who is front and center, dissecting the folk-rock music that emanated from this hilly enclave – showing how the “echo” of this musical genre is still going strong some 50 years later.

Dylan entices those who lived the dream to share some choice anecdotes about the chance meetings and communal vibe that led to the creation of some of the greatest pop music ever made.

What’s largely unspoken is the impact the narrator’s father had on the musicians who appear in both archival footage and current interviews. After all, it was Roger McGuinn’s band The Byrds, credited as the godfathers of the jingly jangly sound that emanated from this area, who famously electrified Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

So while the elder Dylan is barely mentioned, his peers — including McGuinn — revel in telling stories of this truly magical time: Michelle Phillips (of The Mamas and the Papas) reveals the story behind “California Dreaming” (as well as some good gossip about her band’s love triangle) and David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash (interviewed separately) have plenty to say not just about their union, but also about their involvement in Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds. Ringo Starr is on hand to relate The Beatles’ encounters in the canyon, and both he and The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson speak of the friendly competition that fueled their bands’ work. Echo is dedicated to the late great Tom Petty, who reminisces about how these California bands inspired his music, a different sound that would take hold in L.A. about a decade after the Laurel Canyon scene was no more.

While Wilson, as well as Stills and Eric Clapton, take their turns in the studio, most of the singing in the movie is left to Dylan and his posse of stellar contemporary collaborators including Beck, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, Cat Power, Norah Jones, and Jade Castrinos. Dylan and company record some choice selections from the Laurel Canyon repertoire (“Go Where You Wanna Go” is particularly effective) and also perform them at a 2015 concert.

Whether too much time is spent on the 2015 show is debatable. Clearly, Dylan and Slater use the concert as a way to introduce these seminal songs to a younger generation. One thing we could have used less of are random scenes from Model Shop, a 1969 film by French writer-director Jacques Demy that reportedly inspired Slater and Dylan to make their own movie capturing a truly unique era in Hollywood. While the thread between Model Shop and Echo in the Canyon may be tenuous, we aren’t let down. Echo does its job, paying tribute to a truly bohemian movement that will likely never be replicated.