Bob Dylan’s next album of new studio recordings will be all covers of songs Frank Sinatra recorded, a source told Billboard.
Two days ago I broke the news that the album, titled Shadows In The Night, would be released during 2015.
Front of insert.
The only other detail yet revealed about the album is that it will include Dylan’s cover of Frank Sinatra’s 1945 hit, “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” A source told that to Rolling Stone back in May of this year, when the album was scheduled for a 2014 release. The release date apparently changed when it was decided to release the Basement Tapes this year.
“Full Moon and Empty Arms”:
Now that we know the entire album will consist of songs associated with Sinatra, it’s near certain that “Stay With Me,” another song associated with Sinatra that Dylan is now using for an encore, will be on the album, although that has not been officially confirmed.
“Stay With Me” as performed at the Dolby Theater, October 26, 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 a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Bob Dylan’s next album will be titled Shadows In The Night, and released in 2015, according to an insert included in Dylan’s new boxed set, The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11.
In May of this year, Bob Dylan released a cover of Frank Sinatra’s 1945 hit “Full Moon and Empty Arms” on his website.
“Full Moon and Empty Arms”:
“Full Moon and Empty Arms” was written by Ted Mossmann and Buddy Kaye and based around Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 1901 composition “Piano Concert No. 2 in C Minor.”
The retro nature of “Full Moon And Empty Arms,” sparked speculation that Dylan’s next studio album of new recordings would be a cover album of standards.
”This track [“Full Moon And Empty Arms”] is definitely from a forthcoming album due later on this year,” a spokesperson for the singer who wouldn’t confirm the title told Rolling Stone in May.
A month later a source who has heard the album enthused about it to me. “It really is a great album,” my source said, offering no additional details.
Obviously plans changed, and it was announced earlier this year that most of Dylan and The Band’s Basement Tapes recordings would be released as Dylan’s next album. The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11, a 6-CD set (as well as a 2-CD version of highlights), will be released on Tuesday, November 4.
Now, based on an insert in the box that The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11, comes in, I can tell you that the title of Dylan’s next album is Shadows In The Night,, that it will be released in 2015 and that for now at least, the Shadows In The Night image seen on Dylan’s website is the cover (unless of course something changes).
No track listing has been released.
In addition to “Full Moon and Empty Arms,” which is still expected to be on the album, Jerome Moross and Carolyn Leigh’s “Stay With Me,” which was recorded by Frank Sinatra in December 1963 and released a month later, could be included.
Dylan performed “Stay With Me” for the the first time the other night at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. So this is speculation. There is no confirmation that “Stay With Me” will be on the album. “Stay With Me” was the main theme of the Otto Preminger film “The Cardinal.”
“Stay With Me” as performed at the Dolby Theater, October 26, 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 a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Yesterday the pop culture site PopMatters, posted a terrific review of my novel “True Love Scars.”
PopMatters contributing editor Greg M. Schwartz writes:
…the novel is a whirlwind tale of a young music fanatic’s quest for true love, high times and “the authentic real” (not necessarily in that order).
Teenage protagonist Michael Stein, aka “Writerman”, lives in Marin County and longs to be a musician, or at least a music writer. He’s into almost all of the musical icons of the era, especially Bob Dylan. Writerman is obsessed with finding his “Visions of Johanna” chick, who eventually appears in the form of Sweet Sarah. But conflict is ordained from the start. Chapter One begins with Writerman speaking in a sort of fever dream about how he betrayed and lost Sarah and has been on a quest to redeem his crushed soul ever since.
And later in the review, talking about the narrator’s obsession with Bob Dylan, Schwartz writes:
He can analyze those Dylan lyrics all day. He and a girl who’s charmingly fond of speaking in Dylan lyrics pore over Dylan’s albums in a scene from 1965, going over his evolution as an artist. “First time I heard that Dylan song it saved my life,” Writerman says of “Like a Rolling Stone”. It’s a sentiment that speaks for several generations of rock ‘n’ rollers, from those who came of age in Goldberg’s era to the present. They get deep into Dylanology in the scene as Writerman speaks of how Dylan opened his eyes to “how almost nothing is what it appears to be and I think that’s when I got it in my head I got to figure out the authentic real, see the world for what it is and not the facade of delusional humans erect in front of the truth.”
That’s what great rock ‘n’ roll can do, and True Love Scars is deeply dialed in to rock’s dichotomy of enlightening powers versus stonered party time.
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.]
Listen to 12 songs off Bob Dylan’s soon to be released The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11 at NPR “First Listen.” The 6-CD box set is out November 4, 2014.
The songs:
Edge Of The Ocean (Disc 1, Track 1)
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (Take 1) (Disc 3, Track 17)
I Shall Be Released (Take 1) (Disc 3, Track 19)
Quinn The Eskimo (Take 1) (Disc 4, Track 4)
This Wheel’s On Fire (Disc 3, Track 21)
Johnny Todd (Disc 2, Track 1)
Don’t Ya Tell Henry (Disc 4, Track 21)
I Don’t Hurt Anymore (Disc 2, Track 19)
Silent Weekend (Disc 5, Track 12)
Crash On The Levee (Take 1) (Disc 3, Track 10)
One Too Many Mornings (Disc 5, Track 2)
I’m Your Teenage Prayer (Disc 2, Track 8)
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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.]
Neil Young played at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia on October 8 and 9, 2014. I’ve got a bunch of videos from those shows, plus a new song from an earlier show in Boston.
There are two new songs here: “Plastic Flowers” and “When I Watch You Sleeping.”
“Thrasher,” Oct. 8, 2014:
“Thrasher,” Oct. 9, 2014:
“Plastic Flowers,” Oct. 9:
“Ohio,” Oct. 8:
“Heart of Gold,” Oct. 8:
“Old Man,” Oct. 8:
Plus another new song from Boston’s Wang Theater, October 6, 2014:
“When I Watch You Sleeping”:
“Southern Man”:
[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.]
Yeah that’s me, reading at LitQuake 2014. Photo from video shot by Jackie Bryan.
What a night!
It was billed as the “Rock ‘n’ Soul Circus: A Cavalcade of Stars,” and it featured a great group of music journalists, rock critics and musicians who each read from recent books or from books that haven’t been published yet.
It was held at The Make-Out Room, an atmospheric rock club in San Francisco’s Mission District, and that club was the perfect venue.
I’d never read in a club before, and it was a thrill.
A video excerpt of me reading — the first word, “She,” is cut off (video shot by Jackie Bryan). I had to sub in audio for the last part of this clip and so the audio and video stops syncing. But you’ll get the idea. Or just list to the entire audio clip below.
Reading at a book store is great, don’t get me wrong, but a cool club is really set up to highlight the performers.
When you’re standing on that stage, the stage lights making it impossible to see the audience, a microphone in front of you, it’s hard not to feel like a rock star.
Crazy I know, but it did feel a bit like that.
A stage, stage lighting, a PA system, a near capacity crowd of over 100 people fueled by alcohol — perfect for rock ‘n’ roll stories about the guy who discovered Van Morrison, the importance of Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville, the trials of making Dino Valenti’s 1968 self-titled solo album, Motley Crue’s crazy antics and more.
I read from my new novel, “True Love Scars,” and you can listen to the audio below.
I love how author Denise Sullivan, who organized the event, introduced me:
He interviewed everybody, everybody you’d want to read an interview with, he interviewed them. OK, so that’s part of his story. Another part of his story. Does anyone remember the dawn of the Internet? We didn’t have Internet and then we had the Internet? Remember that? He basically invented music journalism on the Web. OK, so that’s another distinction of our next author, whose latest book is ‘True Love Scars.’ But the reason that he lives large in my imagination, and this is true, he is the guy – he doesn’t know I’m going to say this — he snuck recording equipment past security so he could do the jailhouse interview iwht Rick James. Can I get a hand for him for that. Michael Goldberg!
Audio of my reading:
The other writers: University of San Francisco professor/ former rock critic Gina Arnold (author of the book “Exile In Guyville”), former San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic Joel Selvin (“Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues”), Kerouac/Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally (“A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead”), musician Bruce Cockburn (“Rumours of Glory”), rock journalist and author Denise Sullivan (“Shaman’s Blues: The Art and Influences Behind Jim Morrison and the Doors”), rock historian and college teacher Richie Unterberger (“Jingle Jangle Morning: Folk-Rock in the 1960s”) and best-selling authors Keith and Kent Zimmerman (“Shining Star: Braving the Elements of Earth, Wind & Fire”).
Camper Van Beethoven cofounder Victor Krummenacher performed a short but tremendous two-song set. After hearing his transformation of Woody Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home,” I immediately bought his CD with that song on it.
Some of the rock critics and music writers and musicians who read at the LitQuake event.
Thanks to Jackie Bryan for the video!!!
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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.]
“All Along the Watchtower” and “Blowin’ in the Wind”:
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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.]
One of my favorite bands of all time, and one of the most important to emerge during the ’90s, Sleater-Kinney are back from an eight-year hiatus and will release a new album, No Cities To Love, on January 20, 2015.
During the break Corin Tucker has released to Corin Tucker Band albums and devoted time to her family. Most recently she was recording and performing as part of a supergroup with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck that they were calling super-Earth. Carrie Brownstein played in Wild Flag and co-created and co-starred in “Portlandia.” Weiss has played drums in a number of situations including Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks.
First song to be released is “Bury Our Friends,” with a lyric video featuring director and longtime Sleater-Kinney friend, Miranda July.
“Bury Our Friends”:
In an email to NPR, guitarist/singer Carrie Brownstein wrote:
“I feel like creativity is about where you want your blood to flow. Because in order to do something meaningful and powerful there has to be life inside of it. Maybe after The Woods that blood had thinned; we felt enervated, the focus had become disparate and diffuse. We drifted apart in order to concentrate on other elements of our lives and careers. Sleater-Kinney isn’t something you can do half-assed or half-heartedly. We have to really want it. And you have to feed that hunger and have the energy to. I’m not saying we need to be in a dark place to be in Sleater-Kinney. In fact, we could be in the best places in our lives. But we have to be willing to push, because the entity that is this band will push right back.
“We had no desire to revisit sounds and styles and paths we had treaded before. But in order to move forward, Corin and I worked together in a way that was more reminiscent of earlier albums like Dig Me Out. Meaning that we would write just the two of us and then bring songs to Janet later on in the process. I think we had to go back to an earlier model of writing in order to reacquaint ourselves with the language of the band. It’s a sonic vernacular that isn’t easily translated into other contexts in which we’ve played. This was a very deliberate writing process, there were many edits and iterations of the songs. We thought a lot about melody and structure.
“I spent a lot of time writing choruses for this record. Melody is what I was most picky about. I really drove Corin crazy sometimes. We would have choruses that we would work on for hours, days, maybe on and off over a matter of weeks. And we’d think we had solved it, but then I would listen to it later on and decide to discard it, that it wasn’t good enough. I did that with my guitar parts too. In the end we were all more scrutinizing with our own parts than we ever have been. I think we didn’t want to take any second of the song for granted, everything had to have an intention and earn its place.”
No Cities To Love Track List:
1. Price Tag
2. Fangless
3. Surface Envy
4. No Cities To Love
5. A New Wave
6. No Anthems
7. Gimme Love
8. Bury Our Friends
9. Hey Darling
10. Fade
And there will be a tour:
2015 Tour Dates:
02-08-15 Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory
02-09-15 Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory
02-10-15 Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot
02-12-15 Denver, CO @ Ogden Theater
02-13-15 Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
02-14-15 Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
02-15-15 Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall
02-17-15 Chicago, IL @ Riviera
02-22-15 Boston, MA @ House of Blues
02-24-15 Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
02-26-15 New York, NY @ Terminal 5
02-28-15 Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
03-01-15 Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
03-18-15 Berlin, Germany @ Postbahnhof
03-19-15 Amsterdam, The Netherlands @ Paradiso
03-20-15 Paris, France @ Cigale
03-21-15 Antwerp, Belgium @ Trix
03-23-15 London, UK @ Roundhouse
03-24-15 Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall
03-25-15 Glasgow, UK @ O2 ABC
03-26-15 Dublin, Ireland @ Vicar 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 a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
