T Bone Burnett has produced Rhiannon Giddens’ debut solo album Tomorrow Is My Turn< ,/em> which is set for a February 10, 2015 release.
Giddens, of course, is a member of the New Basement Tapes band, and was a major contributor to Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes.
I like her version of “Shake Sugaree,” and “Black is the Color” is interesting.
Joan Baez, of course, recorded “Black is the Color” in the ’60s, and Bob Dylan had the line “Where black is the color, where none is the number” in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”
I’m looking forward to hearing what Giddens does with Geeshie Wiley’s amazing “Last Kind Words.”
Check out three songs off the album.
“Black is the Color”:
“Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind”:
“Shake Sugaree”:
Album track listing:
1
Last Kind Words (Geeshie Wiley)
4:14
2
Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind (Dolly Parton)
3:45
3
Waterboy (Jacques Wolfe)
3:45
4
She’s Got You (Hank Cochran)
4:17
5
Up Above My Head (Sister Rosetta Tharpe)
3:09
6
Tomorrow Is My Turn (Charles Aznavour/Marcel Stellman/Yves Stéphane)
4:38
7
Black Is the Color (Traditional, arr. Rhiannon Giddens)
3:47
8
Round About the Mountain (Traditional, arr. Roland Hayes)
3:29
9
Shake Sugaree (Elizabeth Cotten)
4:25
10
O Love Is Teasin’ (Traditional, arr. Rhiannon Giddens)
4:31
11
Angel City (Rhiannon Giddens)
3:52
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[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
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[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.]
I’ll be discussing the Basement Tapes with DJ Brian Wise on his Melbourne, Australia radio show, Off The Record, on Triple R radio at 9:45 Australian time.
If you miss the live broadcast, the show will be available on-demand a few days after it airs and I’ll be doing a post about that with a link to the stream.
But listen live, it’s more fun.
I’ll talk about why the Basement Tapes are important, the context for their creation and more.
Following me Brian Wise will interview T Bone Burnett about the Basement Tapes and the New Basement Tapes album Burnett produced with Elvis Costello, Jim James ad others. Should make for a great show if you care about Bob Dylan.
Since the show is broadcast in Australia, those of us in the U.S. should tune in on Friday November 14 in the afternoon at 2:45 pm, and if you’re elsewhere in the world, you can figure out when to tune in easy enough. Use this time zone converter.
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[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”:
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[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.]
Page one of Bob Dylan’s 1967 lyrics to “Liberty Street.”
Yesterday I got access to a copy of Bob Dylan’s two pages of handwritten lyrics for “Liberty Street,” a song completed by Taylor Goldsmith of the band Dawes for the album Lost On the River: The New Basement Tapes (produced by T Bone Burnett).
I like what Dawes has done with the song, creating a piano ballad along the lines of “Dear Landlord.” Dawes’ voice is too smooth for me, and I’d love to hear Dylan sing this one (and bring his distinctive, bluesy approach to the piano part).
Dawes took quite a few liberties with Dylan’s words, only using a portion of the original lyrics, and by leaving out some key lines, turns it into a very different song, which is fine. I’m sure Dylan would dig that. Still, it’s worth noting a few of the missing lines. Dawes used some lines from these verses, as you’ll see:
In one verse, Dylan writes:
“6 months in Kansas City, can’t find no room and board,
6 months in Kansas City, what can’t lead to what kind of reward,
All my friends in jail lost out,
Some who ain’t got no bail bust out, but then find the tracks did make you come back,
Down on your knees, ain’t it a pity, not even a breeze,
6 months in Kansas City, make a man ready to do anything.”
And the one that follows:
“6 months in Kansas City! Woe! Can’t be begging for no last meal,
Things sure don’t look too pretty! Cause a man to rob and steal
All my friends confounded, indeed
Some lost and some drown and some turn to greed.”
Elvis Costello also took a shot at this one, and I do prefer his version, which he calls “Six Months In Kansas City (Liberty Street),” but that may be because I’m a big Elvis fan. Soon enough you’ll be able to decide for yourself, as the album will be out on November 10.
Goldsmith starts the song with Dylan’s second line, “He came from the old religion, but possessed no magic skill, Descending from machinery, he left nothing in his will.”
He also uses Dylan’s next two lines — “The crops are failing, the women wailing” — before rewriting Dylan’s first line — “I see by the papers that” — to complete the verse with “it’s in the paper at your feet.”
Although Dylan wrote a couple of possible choruses, Goldsmith made his own using Dylan’s title for the song which appears to have been “Liberty Street (Six Months In Kansas City).”
Goldsmith’s chorus: “Six months in Kansas City, down on Liberty Street.”
The strangest thing Goldsmith does is leave out what to me is a really key pair of lines: “Thank you for not helping me out, for not treating me like a fool.”
Instead, for his next verse Goldsmith jumps to the bottom of the first page and slightly changes Dylan’s lyric to: “It was sad to see it, that little lady goin’ in, arrested for arson, once they’d asked her where she’d been.”
The second page of Dylan’s “Liberty Street” lyrics.
Then he grabs a line from later in the song — “Down on your knees, ain’t it a pity, not even a breeze — and turns it into: “Down on her knees, not even a breeze, another victim of the heat.”
And back to the chorus: “Six months in Kansas City, down on Liberty Street.”
For his final verse, Goldsmith goes to Dylan’s final verse for the lines “Things sure don’t look too pretty, cause a man to rob and steal, I got [unintelligible word] six more months out here, can’t be begging for my meals.”
And turns some lines from the first page — “Now look here Baby Snooks, don’t matter how many books, you got underneath your thumb” — into “Now look here Baby Snooks, doesn’t matter what books, you got underneath your seat,” before ending with “Six months in Kansas City, down on Liberty Street.”
About the song, Goldsmith says in a press release:
“Liberty Street” was one of the last songs I put together for the record. We didn’t see the lyrics for this song until we got into the studio. Bob Dylan has a way of saying lines like ‘Six months in Kansas City down on Liberty Street’ and it having an immediate, yet sometimes ineffable, power. When I started putting these words to music, the structure of the words dictated the way the chords rolled out so it came together really fast. And the recording of it was our first take.”
“Liberty Street”:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Today we get another track from Lost On the River: The New Basement Tapes.
This one is titled “Liberty Street.” While the lyrics were written in 1967 by Bob Dylan, the music was written earlier this year by Taylor Goldsmith of the band Dawes.
About the song, Goldsmith say in a press release:
“Liberty Street” was one of the last songs I put together for the record. We didn’t see the lyrics for this song until we got into the studio. Bob Dylan has a way of saying lines like ‘Six months in Kansas City down on Liberty Street’ and it having an immediate, yet sometimes ineffable, power. When I started putting these words to music, the structure of the words dictated the way the chords rolled out so it came together really fast. And the recording of it was our first take.”
“Liberty Street”:
The album will be released on November 10, 2014.
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Bob Dylan’s notebook page where he wrote the lyrics to “Spanish Mary.”
During the summer of 1967, up in Woodstock, New York, Bob Dylan wrote a batch of song lyrics that he didn’t set music to and didn’t record.
Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes is an album of those songs produced by T Bone Burnett due out November 10, 2014. Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Jim James (My Morning Jacket) and Marcus Mumford are the artists that came together to record the songs.
Today, one of those songs, “Spanish Mary,” was released and I was able to get a copy of Bob Dylan’s notebook page, on which he wrote the lyrics to the song.
For this one, Rhiannon Giddens wrote the music and her performance on the recording is very powerful.
She stays true to the lyrics as Dylan wrote them.
In examining Dylan’s notebook page, there are a couple of lines he crossed out.
In the second verse, the second line, “Upon their ship quite scary” was crossed out and replaced by “no longer could they tarry.”
Dylan crossed out the beginning of the third line, “it was to see them,” leaving only the end of that line, “Swoon and Swerve.”
Off to the side Dylan tried out some alternatives, writing “Some sing like,” and then right under it, “Song sing like a canary.”
In the third verse, “In Kingsport town was changed to “In Kingston Town,” and minor changes in the line that follows were made.
Minor – one or two word – changes were made in the third, fourth and fifth verses.
Check out the video:
In a press release, Giddens, who wrote the music for the song and sings the lead vocal, says of the track:
“Out of all the lyrics I looked through for the New Basement Tapes project, the one for ‘Spanish Mary’ attracted me first – here was a ballad, and I know ballads! It’s also set in the Caribbean, so I felt the deep African sound of the minstrel style banjo (circa 1856) was appropriate. It was an absolute thrill to get to set music to Dylan’s lyrics, what an opportunity! This project is marked with utter generosity from everyone involved.”
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[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.]
Here is “Spanish Mary,” the latest song off Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes to be made available prior to the album release on November 10, 2014.
In a press release, Giddens, who wrote the music for the song and sings the lead vocal, says of the track:
“Out of all the lyrics I looked through for the New Basement Tapes project, the one for ‘Spanish Mary’ attracted me first – here was a ballad, and I know ballads! It’s also set in the Caribbean, so I felt the deep African sound of the minstrel style banjo (circa 1856) was appropriate. It was an absolute thrill to get to set music to Dylan’s lyrics, what an opportunity! This project is marked with utter generosity from everyone involved.”
—
[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.]
Still from video for “When I Get My Hands On You.”
The third song to be released off the upcoming album, Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes, is called “When I Get My Hands On You” and features Marcus Mumford on lead vocal.
The album, produced by T Bone Burnett and also featuring Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes) and Jim James (My Morning Jacket), is out November 11, 2014.
“When I Get My Hands On You”:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new 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.]
