Press Play with Madeleine Brand
The Basement Tapes
On July 29, 1966, Bob Dylan wrecked his treasured Triumph motorcycle on a road outside Woodstock, New York. He wasn’t badly hurt, but it forced him to break from his grueling tour schedule. While convalescing, he wrote music and recorded songs in houses and studios around Woodstock.
By Madeleine Brand • • 1 min readOn July 29, 1966, Bob Dylan wrecked his treasured Triumph motorcycle on a road outside Woodstock, New York. He wasn’t badly hurt, but it forced him to break from his grueling tour schedule. While convalescing, he wrote music and recorded songs in houses and studios around Woodstock. Some of that music was released on an album called The Basement Tapes. But recently, Bob Dylan discovered more stuff that he’d written at the time: pieces of songs, ideas for songs, songs he’d never finished. So he asked his publisher to call producer and musician T-Bone Burnett to see if he wanted to do something with the material. The result is Lost on the River, a new album featuring such musicians as Elvis Costello, Jim James, Marcus Mumford, Taylor Goldsmith, and Rhiannon Giddens.
