Robyn Hitchcock - The Basement, Sydney, Australia, 5-23-2014 (The Basement Tapes)

"The Basement Tapes" were a collaborative music project between Bob Dylan and the Band in the summer of 1967. Over 100 songs were written and performed, the vast majority of them by Dylan. When a double album of the best songs from these sessions were released in 1975, it became a classic. In 2014, Robyn Hitchcock was living in Australia for a few months, and performed a lot there. One place he played in Sydney is called the Basement. I'm guessing that gave him the idea to perform all the songs from "The Basement Tapes" there, since he's a massive Dylan fan.

Actually, I should clarify he didn't perform all the songs from that double album. For one thing, he skipped the eight songs that primarily featured the Band, and honed in on just the Dylan songs. He also skipped a couple of the Dylan ones: "Apple Suckling Tree" and "Odds and Ends." But on the plus side, he did play a couple of Dylan songs that were recorded at that time and arguably should have been released on the double album: "I Shall Be Released" and "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)." He also ended the concert with a later Dylan classic, "Not Dark Yet."

Robyn was mostly in solo acoustic mode for this concert. However, he did have some backing on some of the songs in the second half of the concert, with Jenny Shimmin on banjo, Brendan Gallagher on acoustic guitar and backing vocals, and Emma Swift on acoustic guitar and vocals. (In addition to being a talented musician, Swift has been Hitchcock's romantic partner from some time prior to this concert through today in 2026.)

I've had this bootleg in my music collection for years, but I'd never considered posting it here due to sound quality issues. It was only an audience boot, with a lot of reverb/ echo. But audio editing technology has improved drastically in recent years, so I attempted to fix it. I ran every song through the MVSEP program, using their de-reverb filter. The banter between songs then got extra treatment. I ran all of those tracks through the Adobe speech enhancer. In my opinion, this recording now sounds much better. Almost as good as typical soundboard. Not quite, but close.  

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. 

01 This Wheel's on Fire (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Lo and Behold (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Quinn the Eskimo [The Mighty Quinn] (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Million Dollar Bash (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Too Much of Nothing (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Tears of Rage (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Crash on the Levee [Down in the Flood] (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 Please, Mrs. Henry (Robyn Hitchcock)
15 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
16 Nothing Was Delivered (Robyn Hitchcock)
17 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
18 Yea, Heavy and a Bottle of Bread - Tiny Montgomery (Robyn Hitchcock)
19 I Shall Be Released (Robyn Hitchcock)
20 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
21 Open the Door, Homer (Robyn Hitchcock)
22 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
23 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Robyn Hitchcock)
24 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
25 Clothes Line Saga (Robyn Hitchcock)
26 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
27 Not Dark Yet (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bUZD6pgk

alternate:  

https://bestfile.io/en/zWq4QA5nQ41ifHx/file

I was stumped for what to do with the cover art here, since I wanted something that showed both Robyn Hitchcock and something about the Basement Tapes. So, first, I found a photo of Hitchcock from 2014 (specifically, from the City Winery in Nashville, Tennessee, September 18, 2014). Then I found a black and white photo of the Band performing in a basement in 1969. Note I said "a basement," not THE basement of the Basement Tapes. This picture was taken in the basement of the house of Band member Rick Danko, not the basement of the Big Pink house where the Basement Tapes were recorded in 1967. But it was in the same small town of Woodstock, New York, and the Band did practice there a lot, so I'm sure it had a very similar vibe. (Unfortunately, Band member Levon Helm was in the middle of the image, so he is blocked by Hitchcock's body.)

Anyway, I colorized that image. Then I used Photoshop to put Hitchcock in front. It's not a perfect merger by any means, but it works for me.