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)
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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.]
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.]
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.]
Recording is nearing completion for Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes, an album of songs based on lyrics that Bob Dylan wrote in 1967 during the time he recorded the original “Basement Tapes” with the future members of The Band, according to a press release from Big Hassle Media.
“These are not B-level Dylan lyrics,” T Bone Burnett, who is producing the album, told The Los Angeles Times Monday. “They’re lyrics he just never got around to finishing.”
Artists involved in the new album are Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops) Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Marcus Mumford (Mumford & Sons) and Burnett.
The album is being recorded at Capitol Studios. The musicians have had to write new music to go with the two-dozen lyrics that Dylan wrote.
As of Monday Burnett told the Times that they’d cut 48 tracks including the title song, “Lost On the River,” “Florida Key,” “Card Shark” and “Hi-De-Ho.”
Burnett said he and Costello are going for the magic of the original “Basement Tapes” sessions, which took place in a house in upstate New York, in terms of its creative process.
According to the L. A. Times:
One intriguing facet of the current project is the collaboration among the participants. Each has come up with his or her own music for many of the lyrics, resulting in multiple versions of the same songs and allowing a perspective on the ways different artists respond to Dylan’s lyrics. Each artist takes the lead on the tracking of his or her song, and all provide suggestions and whatever instrumental and vocal support the others require, with Burnett overseeing final production.
“It runs the gamut from everybody having a blast in the studio to being really serious about doing things right,” Giddens told the Times.
Dylan gave Burnett, who was part of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review back in 1975, his blessing to make an album with the lyrics. “Great music is best created when a community of artists gets together for the common good,” Burnett said in the press release. “There is a deep well of generosity and support in the room at all times, and that reflects the tremendous generosity shown by Bob in sharing these lyrics with us.”
There will be a Showtime documentary titled, “Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued,” directed by Sam Jones (the Wilco documentary, “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”). The film will focus on the making of Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes and provide context regarding the original “Basement Tapes.”
“The discovery of these previously unknown Bob Dylan songs that were thought lost since 1967 is the stuff of Hollywood fiction and a find of truly historical proportions,” Jones said in the press release. “It is a unique opportunity to film T Bone and these great artists as they collaborate with a young Bob Dylan, and each other, to create new songs and recordings. These days and nights in the studio have been nothing less than magical.”
“Lost On the River,” interestingly enough, is the title of a Hank Williams song.
Dylan, of course, has long been a huge Hank Williams fan.
