Times Like These was Band bassist Rick Danko's final album, a posthumous release featuring tracks from a variety of sources dating from an aborted solo project in 1993 to Danko's final live performance in Ann Arbor, Michigan just days before his death.[1]
Those tracks recorded specifically for the project were the title track (a song Danko had written in the 1970s but had yet to find a place for), "Ripple" (suggested by the President of Breeze Hill Records, who issued the album), "All Our Past Times" (in keeping with Danko's revisiting of a song from his younger days), "This Wheel's on Fire" (a second, unfinished, revisit, it features an entirely redone arrangement by The Crowmatix and Garth Hudson), "You Can Go Home" and "People of Conscience" (both written by Tom Pacheco, the former co-written by Danko, and focusing on human rights).[2] Of the remaining four, "Book Faded Brown" and "Let the Four Winds Blow"- the latter sung by Danko cohort Aaron Hurwitz- date from Danko's last live show on December 6, 1999, both featuring posthumous overdubbing by Hurwitz and others. "Chain Gang" dated from the sessions for The Band's High on the Hog album and featured all of the late-period members of The Band except Levon Helm and "Change Is Good" featuring Joe Walsh dated from an aborted 1993 solo project for Elektra Records.[3]
