The New Basement Tapes

The New Basement Tapes is the name given to the studio collective assembled by T-Bone Burnett to set discarded and discovered Bob Dylan lyrics from 1967 to music and record. Upon their discovery in the fall of 2013, Dylan's publisher approached Burnett with the job of turning the handwritten manuscripts into songs, and he set about assembling a cast of sympathetic souls to put the words to music. He hired his Coward Brothers partner Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, and Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops to write and perform the material (drummer Jay Bellerose anchored the proceedings), which was cut during the early months of 2014. The resulting Lost on the River appeared in November of 2014, accompanied by a Showtime documentary called Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued, which told the tale of the project.