"The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1976 Live Recordings" Listening Session with David Mansfield

Bob Dylan Center members are invited to an exclusive online advance listening session highlighting selections from “The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1976 Live Recordings,” with commentary by the tour’s multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield.

This revelatory 39-disc collection, the latest in Sony Legacy’s series of complete live recordings covering pivotal tours, takes listeners back fifty years to the rollicking second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue, for which Dylan and an ever-evolving troupe crossed the U.S. for a carnivalesque run of 27 shows. As band member T Bone Burnett writes in his essay included with the set’s liner notes, “He called several of his friends from the good old days—Bobby Neuwirth, Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Roger McGuinn. Ronee Blakley and Joni Mitchell showed up with a rotating cast of other face cards from the folk scene. Bob and Bobby Neuwirth also put together a group of young musicians including Scarlet Rivera, David Mansfield, and Steven Soles, among others, right off the mean streets of New York City.”

One of those “young musicians” — the in-demand session player David Mansfield — will join Bob Dylan Center Senior Director Steven Jenkins for this members-only Zoom chat. Mansfield will share stories of crossing the country with Dylan and their remarkable cast of collaborators — including Kinky Friedman, Allen Ginsberg, Willie Nelson and Mick Ronson — and share select tracks from the mammoth volume. Dylan Center members will be among the very first to hear these recordings.

Following the Rolling Thunder Revue, David Mansfield formed The Alpha Band with fellow tour mates T Bone Burnett and Steven Soles, releasing three albums. In the ensuing decades, Mansfield has been the go-to recording and touring musician for a wide range of artists including Johnny Cash, Elvis Costello, Bobby McFerrin, Ringo Starr, Sting and Lucinda Williams. As a soundtrack composer, Mansfield’s credits include “Heaven’s Gate,” “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” and “The Apostle.”