Studio 4 in Conshohocken has recorded with a lot of well known artists, however, on June 17, 2005, Bob Dylan and his band arrived on the first block of Fayette Street to record “Tell Ol’ Bill” for the soundtrack for the film North Country. An alternate version of the song appeared on Dylan’s Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8.

The Conshohocken recording session is well known to Dylan fans because a series of audio recordings from the session were uploaded o Youtube in 2009. Evan Schlansky from AmericanSongwriter.com writes:

The 12 videos offer a fascinating, fly-on-the-wall peek into the modern Dylan’s recording process, as he and his band work to give the song life and shape. The storied songwriter sounds feisty on take 1 (“Again? You wanna keep that take or what?” he asks sarcastically,) and mercurial on take six (“Maybe we should just change it all, totally. Change the melody, change everything about it. Put it in a minor key, I mean everything.”)

Perhaps the most striking thing about the sessions is hearing Dylan’s casual speaking voice, which, compared to his singing voice, makes him sound 30 years younger.

It appears the YouTube videos have all been removed, and we can’t even find Dylan singing the song at all on YouTube. There is a snippet available on Dylan’s own website.

So that is the time Bob Dylan came to town.