For anyone who’s a fan of The Basement Tapes, or good music for that matter, I highly recommend downloading A Tree with Roots. I recently re-listened to The Basement Tapes, decided it was in the top five albums ever made, then, thirsty for more, proceeded to waste away countless hours tracking down this surprisingly hard to find bootleg of Dylan and The Band’s sessions at The Band’s house Big Pink. Here they zealously laid down the ultimate American music. I know, I sound like a music dweeb. I probably am. But trust me, the skin crawling feeling you get when you realize that you might be one is a small price to pay for hearing this stuff.
Now that I’ve unquestionably convinced you to download A Tree with Roots, don’t worry as I did that the copy of The Basement Tapes you’ve been enjoying all this time is now unnecessary. It’s completely different. First of all, the original 1967 sessions at Big Pink were comprised mostly of Dylan songs. When The Basement Tapes was finally released in 1975, The Band added new recordings of their own songs without Dylan to the original sessions. Robbie Robertson also recorded a slew of overdubs.
For any other band, adding to Dylan’s material would almost certainly be a bad thing, especially but not only because their stuff would be right next to fucking Bob Dylan’s. Ballsy move… Almost too ballsy. However, The Band’s songs on The Basement Tapes are sooo strong. The literal lyrical style and feeling of camaraderie found in The Band’s material effortlessly compliments Dylan’s lonesome, mysterious American folk images and characters. So, listening to A Tree with Roots definitely doesn’t make you think less of The Basement Tapes. You might just realize that The Band is cockier than you may have thought. But holy shit they’re talented.
A Tree with Roots includes over 100 tracks from the original 1967 sessions. You may be asking yourself “Is this really necessary?” The answer is a resounding “YES.” Basically, you feel like you’re sitting in the same room as these guys while they create of some of the best music ever. This means that sometimes they’re just fucking around (let’s keep in mind that it’s geniuses who’re fucking around. They can’t help but sound amazing); and sometimes they’re doing an excellent reinterpretation of “I Forgot to Remember to Forget Her,” by Stan Kesler and Charlie Feathers, originally sung by Elvis.
A Tree with Roots makes it clear that Dylan and The Band set out to paint a picture of America through the lens of American folk music. This is not accomplished through mere replication. Rather, they mix elements from different types of American music together and approach these elements from unique angles, altogether reinterpreting American music and its depiction of America. In a given song, it’s not surprising to hear Dylan and The Band to include elements of blues, country, rock, and even jazz.
Basically, A Tree with Roots proves that Dylan and The Band are so good and American folk music is so ingrained in them that this amalgamation of sounds, characters, images, and ideas pours out with almost no coaxing. It’s pretty evident that all they had to do was just throw up a couple mics and hit ‘record.’ Anyone who knows American music this well must be a huge music dweeb. I think I’m in good company. You can be too. Just download “A Tree with Roots.”
You can find it Here:
