Marcus Mumford (Mumford and Sons), Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops) and Elvis Costello have teamed up with producer T-Bone Burnett to write music for and record two dozen recently unearthed lyrics written by Bob Dylan.
The lyrics come from 1967, when Dylan's famous Basement Tapes were recorded in New York during informal sessions with The Band. The album was later released in 1975 after years of appearing on bootlegs. According to a 2013 press release, "Dylan's music publishing company recently discovered lyrics Dylan wrote in 1967 for informal sessions with members of The Band that later became known as The Basement Tapes. Dylan has entrusted [T. Bone] Burnett with these lyrics, and early next year -- nearly 47 years since the legendary original sessions -- Burnett will assemble a select group of contemporary recording artists in the famed Capitol Studios to complete the songs and record them as a band."
The final product, Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, is set for a fall 2014 release via Electromagnetic Recordings/Harvest Records. According to the project's press release, the album will be accompanied by a Sam Jones-directed Showtime documentary titled, Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued. It examines the making of the album within the historical and cultural context of Bob Dylan's original Basement Tapes.
"Great music is best created when a community of artists gets together for the common good," Burnett said about the recording process of this album. "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."
According to Jones, "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. 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."
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