By Rob Ribera

In August, Bob Dylan and Columbia Records released, Another Self Portrait, the tenth in a series of official bootleg recordings.  Collecting nearly forty tracks of unused takes, alternate versions, half-starts, and demos, the album provides a much clearer picture of one of the most divisive years in Dylan’s career.  After a motorcycle crash in 1966, the details of which are still relatively unknown, Dylan remained in Woodstock to recharge and continue creating music on his own terms.  The results were startling, which is saying a lot for an artist who at that time had successfully changed his musical persona so many times that it really shouldn’t have been a surprise.  John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, the Basement Tapes—these albums from the late 1960s capture an artist finding a new voice, experimenting with his style, and in the case of the oft-bootlegged recording sessions in the basement of Big Pink that he did with the Band, plain just having fun and getting back to his roots. Continue reading Another Self Portrait: In Conversation with Michael Simmons →