Bob Dylan Announces New Bootleg Series
Bob Dylan's ongoing Bootleg Series is receiving another volume later this year. Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 is set to be released on 17 September, through Columbia/Legacy.
The series is something that his fans eagerly await and debate about year after year, and with no release since 2019's Travelin' Thru', which included the infamous session with Johnny Cash, many fans have anticipated this announcement.
Three albums from the 1980s are getting the bootleg treatment: Shot of Love (1981), Infidels (1983) and Empire Burlesque (1985). In total, Springtime in New York will feature 57 tracks, 54 of which have never been heard before.
It contains five CDs of outtakes, alternate versions, live/rehearsal takes, new mixes and perhaps most excitingly, tracks that were left inside the vault. Considering Empire Burlesque came at a time when Eighties production ran rife, new mixes of the songs featured on EB is an exciting prospect for many Dylan fans. Also highly discussed is the bootleg release of Infidels, which is considered Dylan's best album from that decade.
The bootleg releases from Shot of Love will not include his Christian-adjacent music from this period, as it was already included within Vol. 13 (Trouble No More), which delved into his three-album Christian phase.
Highlights from previous bootleg albums have included his Royal Albert Hall show from 1966 (Vol. 4), More Blood, More Tracks, which included alternative takes from the Blood on the Tracks record, which many fans regard as Dylan's best (Vol. 14), and a compilation album from the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour (Vol. 5), which was a predecessor to Martin Scorsese's 2019 film, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, which shows stunning restorative footage from the tour.
This announcement follows the release of Dylan's live-streamed concert, Shadow Kingdom, on July 19. This was his first performance after the release of his critically acclaimed 2020 album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, one of his most impressive and lyrically dense albums to date.
It featured renditions of 'Queen Jane Approximately', 'Forever Young', and many others taken from his extensive discography.
To see more Bob Dylan content,
click here to read about
Thin Wild Mercury. Authored by Jerry Schatzberg, it features nearly 500 of his photographs of Dylan, many of which have never been seen before.
