While living in Canada in the late 1960s, Redbone began performing in public at Toronto area nightclubs and folk music festivals. He met Bob Dylan at the Mariposa Folk Festival in 1972. Dylan was so impressed by Redbone's performance that he mentioned it in a "Rolling Stone" interview, leading that magazine to do a feature article on Redbone a year before he had a recording contract. The article described his performances as "so authentic you can hear the surface noise an old 78 rpm." Dylan said that if he had ever started a label, he would have signed Redbone. His first album, "On the Track", was released by Warner Bros. Records in 1975.