“It was a dream come true as a Canadian kid to work with Robbie. He was a trailblazer. I also realized that he was a great storyteller, so I asked him what it was like when he first went to Arkansas. At that point we were just working in his studio so the vocal mic was always on and so I made sure that I recorded all of his stories. You know he has that beautiful low voice and he’s talking about the mystery of the nighttime and the crazy river and Nick’s cafe and hanging out with Levon Helm and fishing with dynamite. It all seemed so far out and so mysterious and had this nighttime feel to it. I still had that Suzuki Omnichord and I presented it to Robbie and said, “Why don’t you play with this?” And he was fiddling around with it saying, “These are lovely chords,” so after work, I superimposed his storytelling over those chords and we used that as a template to carry on with the composition. The steaminess of the story was complemented by that little toy instrument and everybody overdubbing on that.” – Robbie Robertson.
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