Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine, Vol. 6 : 1979–1987: Surviving in a Ruthless World

Mark Davidson is the Curator of the Bob Dylan Archive and Senior Director of Archives and Exhibitions for the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie Centers in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He holds a PhD in musicology from the University of California–Santa Cruz with an emphasis on folk music collecting, and an MSIS in archiving and library science from the University of Texas at Austin. He has written widely on music and archives, including his dissertation, “Recording the Nation: Folk Music and the Government in Roosevelt’s New Deal, 1936–1941,” and the essay “Blood in the Stacks: On the Nature of Archives in the Twenty-First Century,” published in The World of Bob Dylan (2021). 

Parker Fishel is an archivist who served as co-curator of the inaugural exhibitions at the Bob Dylan Center. His company, Americana Music Productions, provides consulting, research, and production work for artists and estates, record labels, and other entities looking to preserve archives and share the important stories found in them. His selected credits include Ann Arbor Blues Festival 1969 (Third Man Records), the Chelsea Hotel–inspired Chelsea Doors box set (Vinyl Me, Please), and several volumes of Bob Dylan’s GRAMMY Award–winning Bootleg Series (Sony/Legacy). Fishel is also a board member of the Hot Club Foundation and a co-founder of the nonprofit improvised music archive Crossing Tones. 

Michael Ondaatje is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels, a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and eleven books of poetry. The English Patient won the Booker Prize and Anil’s Ghost won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis.

Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker, is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including two ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism. In 2008 he was a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, given for achievements in creativity and potential for making important future cultural contributions.

Jeff Slate is a songwriter and music journalist who regularly contributes to Esquire, Rolling Stone, and other publications. A lifelong fan of Roy Orbison, he recently contributed liner notes to The Ultimate Roy Orbison and the fiftieth anniversary reissue of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He and his partner, Lynn, reside in New York City with their children.