Songfacts®:

• Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes is an album featuring a collective of musicians recording under the moniker The New Basement Tapes. The record consists of a series of tracks based on lyrics handwritten by Bob Dylan in 1966-67 with each artist taking the lead on adding the music and vocals for several songs each. T Bone Burnett oversaw the production.
• This song features the voice of Marcus Mumford, who also supplied the tune for Dylan's lyrics. Mojo magazine asked Mumford what drew him to the words of Stranger? He replied: "I liked that it was a bit dirty, I liked that it was a bit gritty."
  
  "There's a conversation within the song, so I enjoyed singing as the object and the subject," Mumford added. "That's a style you find through reading people like T.S. Eliot who jump around in conversations all the time, and Dylan does that all the time in songs. It also has a kind of outlaw feel to it, and that was fun to play with."