Jenny Eliscu talks to Elvis Costello and others about The New Basement Tapes album. Includes an unreleased version of “Hidee Hidee Ho” that ELvis sings.
The New Basement Tapes – Live on the Sirius XM, November 14, 2014.
Recorded on November 14, 2014 in Hollywood, CA. Featuring:
Elvis Costello – piano, Rhiannon Giddens – fiddle, vocals, Taylor Goldsmith – bass, vocals, Jim James – guitar, vocals, Marcus Mumford – guitar, vocals, Jay Bellerose – drums, Griffin Goldsmith – drums. Setlist:
00:00 intro
02:01 Diamond Ring (Goldsmith)
05:48 interview 1
10:37 Hidee Hidee Ho – “bootleg volume 2 version” (Costello)
12:25 interview 2
16:00 Down On The Bottom (James)
20:44 interview 3
29:31When I Get My Hands On You (Mumford)
32:53 interview 4
38:27 Lost On The River #20 (Giddens)
42:50 outro
Plus on November 12, 2014 the group did this radio performance:
00:00 Married To My Hack (Costello)
02:41 When I Get My Hands On You (Mumford)
05:48 Florida Key (Goldsmith)
10:01 Spanish Mary (Giddens)
15:27 Down On The Bottom (James)
19:42 Kansas City (Mumford)
—
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Last night (Nov. 13, 2014) the band T Bone Burnett put together to turn a bunch of lyrics Bob Dylan wrote in 1967 while recording the Basement Tapes in upstate New York into an album, performed songs from the new album, Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes, at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Los Angeles.
That band, dubbed The New Basement Tapes, consists of Marcus Mumford, Elvis Costello, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Rhiannon Giddens. For the show, they were augmented on a few songs by the three women of Haim, and Johnny Depp.
Rhiannon Giddens and the Haim sisters.
Here you can see them perform “Kansas City,” with Marcus Mumford on lead vocal, “Duncan and Jimmy” with Rhiannon Giddens singing, “Card Shark, with Taylor Goldsmith taking the lead and some of “Married To M Hack,” which Elvis Costello sings.
“Kansas City”:
“Duncan and Jimmy”:
“Card Shark”:
“Married To My Hack” (partial):
Plus here they are with Elvis on vocals singing “Lost On The River” on Jimmy Fallon. This aired on NBC on November 10th, 2014.
And here’s Marcus Mumford taking the lead on “Kansas City” on Ellen today.
Setlist:
Down on the Bottom – Jim James vocals
Spanish Mary – Rhiannon Giddens vocals
Liberty Street – Rhiannon Giddens vocals
Married to My Hack – Elvis Costello vocals
The Whistle is Blowing – Marcus Mumford vocals with Haim on backing
vocals
Diamond Ring – Taylor Goldsmith vocals
Nothing to It – Jim James vocals
Lost on the River – Elvis Costello vocals
Florida Key – Taylor Goldsmith vocals
Stranger – Marcus Mumford vocals
Hidee Hidee Hidee Ho – Rhiannon Giddens vocals
Hidee Hidee Hidee Ho (alternate version) – Jim James vocals
“Unreleased track” – Elvis Costello
Kansas City – Marcus Mumford Vocals with Johnny Depp on guitar and Haim
on back-up vocals
Duncan and Jimmy – Rhiannon Giddens vocals with Johnny Depp on guitar
and Danielle Haim on shakers
– Encore break –
When I Get My Hands on You – Marcus Mumford vocals
Lost on the River – Rhiannon Giddens
Card Shark (unamplified) – Taylor Goldsmith vocals
Quick Like a Flash – Jim James vocals
Golden Tom – Silver Judas – Elvis Costello vocals
—
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Three videos songs from Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes.
These are tremendous.
The footage is from the Showtime documentary “Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued” that will air on Showtime on November 21.
The documentary was directed by Sam Jones, who is best known for the Wilco Documentary, “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco.”
Jim James, “Down On The Bottom”:
Rhiannon Giddens, “Hidee Hidee Ho #16”:
Elvis Costello, “Six Months In Kansas City”:
—
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Bob Dylan’s doodles on the piece of yellow, blue-lined paper on which he wrote the lyrics to “Married To My Hack” during the summer of 1967.
Elvis Costello made only the most minor changes to Bob Dylan’s 1967 lyrics for the song “Married To My Hack” that is included on the not-yet-released album, Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes — with one exception.
Bob Dylan’s handwritten lyrics to “Married To My Hack.” Note the unfinished final line.
On the copy I got of a piece of yellow, blue-lined paper on which Dylan wrote the lyrics, the final line of the song is incomplete.
Dylan wrote, “Just gimmie a bottle and the”
That’s it.
He never finished it.
But Costello sings, “Gimmie a bottle and someone to throttle ’cause I’d rather be married to my hack.”
It’s certainly a controversial line in an otherwise humorous song in which Dylan details all the many women who apparently want him.
He wrote that he’s “got 15 women,” and later on the page, that he’s “got loose eye’d ladies who never seen a man just waiting around out back.”
The punchline is, of course, the song’s title. Dylan repeatedly tells us throughout the song that he would “rather be married to my hack.”
But the song’s best lines comes early on.
“I move like the breeze, and the birds and the bees
I’m never known to look back…”
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” There’s info about it here.]
Producer T Bone Burnett and the New Basement Tapes band.
Last November we first learned that a batch of song lyrics that Bob Dylan had written during the summer of 1967, had been turned over to producer T Bone Burnett so that Burnett could record them for an album. Dylan wrote the lyrics while the recordings that became known as the ‘Basement Tapes’ were made at the house known as ‘Big Pink.’
Since then I’ve wondered how this was going to work.
Were these lyrics finished? If not, who would have the balls to finish them? Or would the lyrics be sung as written, even if they weren’t complete?
Burnett invited Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Jim James (My Morning Jacket) and Marcus Mumford to be involved in writing music for the lyrics and recording the completed songs.
The album is called Lost On the River: The New Basement Tapes and it will be released on November 20, 2014.
In March of this year, Burnett said this to the L. A. Times:
“These are not B-level Dylan lyrics. They’re lyrics he just never got around to finishing.”
Aha! So the lyrics weren’t finished, I thought. Well then who was going to finish them? Or were Costello and the others musicians going to sing these unfinished lyrics, and how would that work?
As it turns out, most of the lyrics were completed by Dylan at the time he wrote them.
“When T Bone gave that quote,” said Larry Jenkins, who is involved with the project, “the context was that Dylan never got around to finishing them as full songs (with music) or recording them.”
Well it turns out that, according to both Jenkins and a second source, in some cases the musicians who wrote music to the songs also added their own words.
“In some instances, the lyrics were used verbatim,” said my second source.,”In other ones, folks have added to them.”
“Most of the lyrics appeared to be complete and were sung by the artists as they were written on the page by Bob in 1967 (maybe with a small word change here or there),” Jenkins said. “Some lyrics were unfinished and were fair game for the artists to complete if they wanted to.”
So far, I haven’t been able to get specifics regarding which songs had additional lyrics added to them, but stay tuned.
But think about what that means. Who has the guts to add their words to a Bob Dylan song? What if Dylan doesn’t like the words that were added?
“I will tell you that ‘Nothing To It’ is word-for-word as Bob wrote it on the page,” Jenkins said.
Check out this post, which contains a copy of Dylan’s hand-written lyrics for “Nothing To It.”
So give another listen to this great new Dylan song, “Nothing To It,” sung by Jim James with help from Elvis Costello and Marcus Mumford.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” I’ve got a Goodreads. book giveaway going right now. Click here and enter.]
T Bone Burnett has produced an album based on unfinished lyrics Bob Dylan write while recording the songs that became known as the ‘Basement Tapes’ in 1967.
This song is called “Nothing To It.”
Jim James sings with musical help from Elvis Costello and Marcus Mumford.
Bob Dylan at the Fisher Auditorium at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, on April 22, 1997.
“I Shall Be Released”:
Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello, “I Shall Be Released,” Tramps, New York, NY, July 26, 1999:
Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers, fragment:
Neil Young with some help from his friends, Bridge School Benefit, 1999:
The Band, Festival Express:
Jeff Buckley:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
Of just buy the damn thing:
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
On May 19, 2014 Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl will be reissued with a bunch of additional tracks.
Helping Orbison out on the album were U2’s Bono and Edge, George Harrison, Brian Eno, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Elvis Costello, T Bone Burnett and Mike Campbell.
In addition to the tracks on the original album, there are nine additional recordings — all demos except for the previously unreleased “The Way Is Love.”
Here’s the demo Orbison cut for Elvis Costello’s brilliant “The Comedians.”
Thanks USA Today!
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
