At the top of the list being producer extraordinaire T Bone Burnett and singer-songwriter Neko Case, the latter of whom serves as his vocal foil on several of the songs.
But it's entirely possible the whole project never would have existed if not for Glen Campbell.
The Campbell connection came up earlier this year when Dylan went to visit Burnett, a longtime Dylan family friend, at work in the studio with another artist. They'd periodically talked about another collaboration after “Bringing Down the Horse," the Burnett-produced 1996 collection by Dylan's band, the Wallflowers, that yielded three Top 40 singles on its way to two Grammy Awards and quadruple-platinum sales.
“T Bone asked me if I had any songs to play, and I didn't. He said 'You must have something.' “ The only thing Dylan had in his back pocket was a song he'd written with Glen Campbell in mind. Jakob's friend Julian Raymond had produced a surprising late- career album for the guitarist and singer on which he covered material by Green Day, U2, the Replacements and Velvet Underground. Raymond and Campbell were considering a follow-up with new songs from a similarly varied batch of writers, and asked Dylan for anything he might have to offer Campbell. So he wrote “Nothing But the Whole Wide World," which became the genesis for “Women and Country," which arrives April 6.
