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Music Geek Track of the Day: Bob Dylan’s ‘Nothing To It’ Performed By Elvis Costello and Jim James

While recording the Basement Tapes with the Band in 1967, Bob Dylan penned a ton of tracks that didn’t make the cut the first time around. With T-Bone Burnett handling production, Elvis Costello, Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Marcus Mumford (Mumford & Sons) and several others pitched into provide new melodies for Dylan’s words on an upcoming album called, Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes.

“Nothing To It” is the first offering from the collection of twenty tracks, and it features Costello and James singing beatifically along to initially breezy Dylan lyrics about being young, able-minded, and wide-eyed. Once the track addresses the toxicity of avarice, you feel like you might have heard the acoustic version of this song on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The song is relatively simple (read: Bob Dylan), but James, Costello, and Burnett add a welcome amount of instrumental depth throughout the track until its coda when that pin sharp guitar stops and the rest of the instruments fade one at a time.

Based on this track alone, I am already looking forward to the new album and am really excited to revisit the Basement Tapes and start noodling around on my own guitar. Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes drops November 11.

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Comments

  1. frameofmind says:

    Gorgeous song. But try THIS nerdly twist: whole song is based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Yep. “Bank account,” for instance, is a Banquo-pun. And the visuals?–the cover-grab for the video (1:46 of the video) presents “Is that a dagger I see before me?” It is, and gobsmacked you should be. =O