Marcus Mumford, Elvis Costello, and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James are combining forced to record new versions of old, unrecorded Bob Dylan tracks. It’s all part of a project curated by T Bone Burnett and involving lyrics Dylan wrote in the ’60s, but never turned into actual songs. Dylan’s words will get matched to new music written for Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes, which should see the light of day this fall. Similar to what Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue albums did with Woody Guthrie, Costello et al. will mix Dylan’s ideas with modern recording techniques and musical styles.
According to the L.A. Times, about 50 tracks have already been recorded, including songs by Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Rhiannon Giddens and Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith. As the Times notes, all tracks are collaborations, and some sets of lyrics were handled by more than one set of artists, meaning multiple tracks use the same words.
The recording, currently taking place at Hollywood’s Capitol Studios, is also being documented by filmmaker Sam Jones (I Am Trying To Break Your Heart), and will be turned into a documentary to air on Showtime around the record’s release.