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All Artist’s Royalties to Benefit Millions in Need Through Feeding America and International Charities More Than 4 Million Meals To Be Provided During Holidays

Bob Dylan will release a brand new album of holiday songs, Christmas In The Heart, on Tuesday, October 13, it was announced today by Columbia Records. All of the artist’s U.S. royalties from sales of these recordings will be donated to Feeding America (http://feedingamerica.org/), guaranteeing that more than four million meals will be provided to more than 1.4 million people in need in this country during this year’s holiday season. Bob Dylan is also donating all of his future U.S. royalties from this album to Feeding America in perpetuity.

Additionally, the artist is partnering with two international charities to provide meals during the holidays for millions in need in the United Kingdom and the developing world, and will be donating all of his future international royalties from Christmas In The Heart to those organizations in perpetuity. Details regarding the international partnerships will be announced next week.

“When we reached out to Bob Dylan about becoming involved with our organization, we could never have anticipated that he would so generously donate all royalties from his forthcoming album to our cause,” said Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America. “This major initiative from such a world renowned artist and cultural icon will directly benefit so many people and have a major impact on spreading awareness of the epidemic of hunger in this country and around the world.”

Bob Dylan commented, “It’s a tragedy that more than 35 million people in this country alone — 12 million of those children — often go to bed hungry and wake up each morning unsure of where their next meal is coming from. I join the good people of Feeding America in the hope that our efforts can bring some food security to people in need during this holiday season.”

Christmas In The Heart will be the 47th album from Bob Dylan, and follows his worldwide chart-topping Together Through Life, released earlier this year. Songs performed by Dylan on this new album include, “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Little Drummer Boy” and “Must Be Santa.”

Feeding America provides low-income individuals and families with the fuel to survive and even thrive. As the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief charity, our network members supply food to more than 25 million Americans each year, including 9 million children and 3 million seniors. Serving the entire United States, more than 200 member food banks supports 63,000 agencies that address hunger in all of its forms. For more information how you can fight hunger in your community and across the country, visit www.feedingamerica.org.

Bob Dylan’s four previous studio albums have been universally hailed as among the best of his storied career, achieving new levels of commercial success and critical acclaim for the artist. The Platinum-selling Time Out Of Mind from 1997 earned multiple Grammy Awards, including Album Of The Year, while “Love and Theft” continued Dylan’s Platinum streak and earned several Grammy nominations and a statue for Best Contemporary Folk album. Modern Times, released in 2006, became one of the artist’s biggest albums worldwide, selling more than 2.5 million copies and earning Dylan two more Grammys.

Those four releases fell within a 12-year creative span that also included an Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning tune, “Things Have Changed,” from the film Wonder Boys, in 2001; a worldwide best selling memoir, Chronicles Vol. 1, which spent 19 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List, in 2004; a Martin Scorsese-directed documentary, No Direction Home, in 2005; and several volumes of the best-selling Bootleg Series, which culminated in last year’s highly-acclaimed Tell Tale Signs.

Dylan was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.” He was also the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1997, the French Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 1990, Sweden’s Polar Music Award in 2000 and numerous other awards and accolades.

Source: Columbia Records

ALBUM MARKS SECOND U.S. #1 IN A ROW

“Beyond Here Lies Nothin’”

First Single & Lead-Off Track From Together Through Life

Featured In HBO True Blood Promotional Campaign

Bob Dylan’s new album, Together Through Life, has entered both the U.S. and UK album charts at #1, marking the artist’s second consecutive U.S. #1 debut and his first chart-topping release in the UK since New Morning in 1970. Together Through Life is a true international hit, as well, achieving #1 debuts in Austria and Denmark, Top 5 entries in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Holland, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and New Zealand, and Top 10 rankings in Italy, France and Belgium.

“Beyond Here Lies Nothin’,” the first track on Together Through Life, is serving as the soundtrack for a series of on-air and online promotional spots for the highly anticipated second season of True Blood, the smash hit HBO vampire series. The eagerly awaited second season of True Blood launches on HBO on Sunday, June 14.

The True Blood promos debuted on HBO on Saturday, May 2, and are airing in heavy rotation on HBO and HBO’s multiplex channels. The True Blood/”Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” promos premiered online on both HBO.com and BobDylan.com May 4. The promotional spots can be viewed by clicking on the following link: www.hbo.com/trueblood/video.html

“When I heard the song, I knew it would be a perfect fit for our characters and storylines,” said True Blood creator Alan Ball.

A short film for “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” has been lensed by AFI and Sundance Film Festival award winning director Nash Edgerton, and will be seen on the IFC Channel and on IFC.com, beginning Tuesday, May 12.

Released on Tuesday, April 28, Bob Dylan’s Together Through Life is the artist’s first full-length studio album since 2006’s platinum-certified Modern Times, which also debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200. Produced by Jack Frost, Together Through Life, was recorded late last year, prompted by the composition of a new song, “Life Is Hard,” which was written for a forthcoming film by French director Oliver Dahan (La Vie En Rose).

Together Through Life is already receiving worldwide raves:

“Critics Choice! A vibrant new album.”
People Magazine

* * * (out of four)”Dylan’s 33rd solo album lives up to the artistic standards established by a trilogy of career-recharging gems that started with 1997’s Time Out Of Mind. But he deviates from their apocalyptic burdens to spin yarns, wry and real of ordinary folks in the grip of lust, longing and heartache,”

Edna Gundersen — USA Today

“Latter period Dylan is turning out to be some of his deepest, richest work. Together Through Life is another brilliant, sure-handed outing by one of the few certified greats still living up to his legend.”

Joel Selvin — San Francisco Chronicle

* * * (out of four)”His greatest achievement on this, his 33rd studio album, is his ability to shut out the expectations of a world that in recent years has sent his stock skyrocketing, and to assemble his warmest, most unforced, set of songs in recent memory.”

Pete Paphides — London Times

“Dylan has found his 21st century feet in musical touchstones almost 100 years old. And yet, through his growling, puckish delivery and crack band, it comes across fresh and vibrant. Here’s to Dylan finding more of his future in the sounds of the past.”

Jed Gottleib — Boston Herald

* * * (out of four)

Together Through Life is an album that gets its hooks in early and refuses to let go. It’s dark yet comforting, with a big tough sound, booming slightly like a band grooving at a soundcheck in an empty theatre. And at its heart there is a haunting refrain. Because above everything this is a record about love, its absence and its remembrance.

Danny Eccleston – Mojo

“Another genius Dylan disc….Together Through Life continues Dylan’s Indian summer string of masterpieces, and it’s a cut above 2006’s Modern Times.”

Brad Bamberger in the Newark Star-Ledger

“As crafty and moving as anything in Dylan’s catalog”
Corey duBrowa — Paste Magazine

“Together Through Life is the perfect soundtrack for down-but-not-out America, a clear-eyed, often elegant-sounding, road map that notes the struggles, but keeps its focus on making it through – with your sense of humor intact, no less.”

Glen Gamboa — Newsday

www.bobdylan.com

Source: Columbia Records

Bob Dylan & His Band

John Mellencamp

Willie Nelson

Bob Dylan has just announced an ambitious line-up for this year’s summer concert tour. Along with fellow troubadour Willie Nelson, this summer The Bob Dylan Show will also feature John Mellencamp, marking just the second time in the past 24 years that these three performers have shared the concert stage.

Since first embarking on a tour of minor league baseball parks in 2004, over a half-million fans have come together to spend a night under the stars. With free admittance for children*, these tours draw a multi-generational fan base rarely seen on the concert circuit, causing one reporter to describe it as, “more like a backyard party than a rock concert.” The Boston Globe ranked the tour amongst “the most relaxed, enjoyable shows of the year. “You Can’t Beat Fun At The Old Ballpark,” came a headline from the Chicago Sun Times.

Besides performing over 100 concerts each year for the past 15 years, Bob Dylan drops into millions of households each week with his highly popular satellite radio program Theme Time Radio Hour. In recent years, he has also received the big-screen treatment, courtesy of film director Martin Scorcese, with the critically acclaimed release of No Direction Home, the first feature-length film biography of Bob Dylan. Prior to that, he spent over 20 weeks on the New York Times best seller list with the publication of Chronicles: Volume One, the first in a series of the artist’s self-penned personal histories. In between these high-water marks, Bob has earned multiple Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Kennedy Center Honor (the highest honor of artistic achievement given in the United States). As a recording artist, he continues to hit the long ball. After debuting at #1 with his last record, Modern Times, Bob Dylan is about to release a brand new studio album on April 28 through Columbia Records. Entitled Together Through Life, it has already received 4-star reviews from MOJO, The London Telegraph and the New York Times.

Over the course of a career that has spanned more than 30 years, John Mellencamp, consummate songwriter and performer, has released 23 albums with worldwide sales of over 40 million units while amassing 22 Top 40 hit songs. In 2008, the same year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Life Death Love and Freedom, was issued which Rolling Stone called “one of the most compelling albums of Mellencamp’s career” and placed it among the top 5 albums of the year. Mellencamp’s ties to Willie Nelson date back to 1985, the year they joined forces to mount the first Farm Aid benefit concert that also featured a stellar set from Bob Dylan. Mellencamp and Bob Dylan have been friendly for the past 25 years. Besides rallying his friends each year to support Farm Aid, Willie Nelson is quite possibly the most prolific recording artist in any genre of music. In the past five years alone he’s released no less than a dozen records, and when he’s not in the studio recording new albums, he fills time writing books, acting in feature films and generally keeping a pace unimaginable for someone half his age. It’s a wonder he even finds the time to tour.

All concert tickets are priced at $67.50 and most shows are general admission, allowing fans to grab a seat in the stands or find a place to watch from the field. Tickets will go on sale throughout the month of May (see attachment) and will be available at the local ballpark ticket office and affiliated ticket outlets. *Children 14 and under get in free with each adult ticket holder. Showtime is 5:30pm and gates open at 5:00. There is no baseball game on the day of the show. For more information about the tour and presale opportunities, visit www.bobdylan.com.

Date Market On-Sale
7/2 Sauget, IL at GCS Ballpark 5/2
7/4 South Bend, IN at Coveleski Stadium 5/2
7/8 Louisville, KY at Louisville Slugger Field 5/9
7/10 Dayton, OH at Fifth Third Field 5/2
7/11 Eastlake, OH at Classic Park 5/2
7/13 Washington, PA at Consol Energy Park 5/2
7/14 Allentown, PA at Coca-Cola Park 5/2
7/15 New Britain, CT at New Britain Stadium 5/9
7/19 Syracuse, NY at Alliance Bank Stadium 5/9
7/21 Pawtucket, RI at McCoy Stadium 5/9
7/23 Lakewood, NJ at FirstEnergy Park 5/2
7/24 Aberdeen, MD at Ripken Stadium 5/9
7/25 Norfolk, VA at Harbor Park 5/9
7/28 Durham, NC at Durham Bulls Athletic Park 5/9
7/29 Sevierville, TN at Smokies Park 5/16
8/4 Round Rock, TX at The Dell Diamond 5/16
8/5 Corpus Christi, TX at Whataburger Field 5/16
8/7 Grand Prairie, TX at QuikTrip Park 5/30
8/11 Glendale, AZ at Camelback Ranch 5/16
8/12 Las Vegas, NV at Cashman Field 5/30
8/14 Fresno, CA at Chukchansi Park 5/30
8/15 Stockton, CA at Banner Island Ballpark 5/30

Source: Columbia Records