In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, published on Bob Dylan's official website at the time of the album's release, Dylan said that the genesis of the record came when French film director
Olivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his new
road movie,
My Own Love Song, which became "Life Is Hard". Indeed, according to Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin, "Dahan was keen to get a whole soundtrack's worth of songs from the man" – and "then the record sort of took its own direction". In an interview with
Rolling Stone magazine, Dylan commented on the collaboration: “Hunter is an old buddy, we could probably write a hundred songs together if we thought it was important or the right reasons were there... He's got a way with words and I do too. We both write a different type of song than what passes today for songwriting”. Dan Engler, writing in the
Verde Independent, noted, "Bob Dylan claimed he could feel the presence of
Buddy Holly while recording his landmark album
Time Out of Mind in 1997. On his latest disc,
Together Through Life, you get the feeling the ghost of old Dylan chum
Doug Sahm was haunting the recording sessions". In their book
Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track, authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon note that Sahm "embodied the long history of American popular music, from blues to Tex-Mex. It is to this history that Dylan referred when he composed
Together Through Life." Dylan is backed on the album by his regular touring band plus guitarist
Mike Campbell of
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and
David Hidalgo of
Los Lobos (whose accordion playing on many of the album's tracks caused critics to describe it as possessing a "south of the border" feel). Dylan commented on Campbell's guitar work in his interview with Flanagan, "He's good with me. He's been playing with Tom for so long that he hears everything from a songwriter's point of view and he can play most any style". ==Release and promotion==