Artist: Billy Bragg & Wilco
Album: Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions
Bitrate: 239kbps avg
Quality: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.98.4 / -V0 / 44.100Khz
Label: Nonesuch
Genre: Folk
Size: 291.56 megs
PlayTime: 2h 40min 15sec total
Rip Date: 2012-04-26
Store Date: 2012-04-20
Track List: Disc #1/3
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01. Walt Whitman's Niece 3:53
02. California Stars 4:58
03. Way Over Yonder In The Minor 4:06
Key
04. Birds And Ships 2:15
05. Hoodoo Voodoo 3:12
06. She Came Along To Me 3:28
07. At My Window Sad And Lonely 3:27
08. Ingrid Bergman 1:50
09. Christ For President 2:42
10. I Guess I Planted 3:33
11. One By One 3:26
12. Eisler On The Go 2:57
13. Hesitating Beauty 3:05
14. Another Man's Done Gone 1:36
15. The Unwelcome Guest 5:05
Track List: Disc #2/3
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01. Airline To Heaven 4:50
02. My Flying Saucer 1:45
03. Feed Of Man 4:08
04. Hot Rod Hotel 3:17
05. I Was Born 1:50
06. Secret Of The Sea 2:42
07. Stetson Kennedy 2:40
08. Remember The Mountain Bed 6:26
09. Blood Of The Lamb 4:16
10. Aginst Th' Law 3:03
11. All You Fascists 2:43
12. Joe DiMaggio Done It Again 2:31
13. Meanest Man 3:46
14. Black Wind Blowing 3:00
15. Someday Some Morning 2:51
Track List: Disc #3/3
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01. Bugeye Jim 3:17
02. When The Roses Bloom Again 4:10
03. Gotta Work 2:16
04. My Thirty Thousand 2:39
05. Ought To Be Satisfied Now 3:34
06. Listening To The Wind That 5:07
Blows
07. Go Down To The Water 4:35
08. Chain Of Broken Hearts 3:30
09. Jailcell Blues 2:27
10. Don't You Marry 3:18
11. Give Me A Nail 1:42
12. The Jolly Banker 3:30
13. Union Prayer 4:11
14. Be Kind To The Boy On The Road 3:46
15. Ain'ta Gonna Grieve 4:51
16. Tea Bag Blues 4:03
17. I'm Out To Get 3:58
Release Notes:
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When American folk legend Woody Guthrie died in 1967, at the age of 55, among
his stored belongings were thousands of complete song lyrics for which he had
not written out music or made recordings. Many of them had been written in the
1940s and Æ50s, in the Guthrie family home on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island,
Brooklyn. The lyrics remained in boxes for decades, but once his daughter Nora
found them in the 1990s, she knew they had to be shared. She approached English
singer-songwriter and activist Billy Bragg to select some to set to music. The
Chicago rock band Wilco came aboard soon after, with Jeff Tweedy writing
musicùalong with his late bandmate Jay Bennett on some songsùand the band
recording with both Tweedy and Bragg on vocals. Natalie Merchant joined the
group to sing a duet with Bragg and two solo songs, and guitarist/singer Corey
Harris, who wrote two songs and co-wrote one, performed on many tracks. In 1998,
the first batch of songs was released to critical acclaim as Mermaid Avenue,
receiving a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Mermaid Avenue
Vol. II followed in 2000.
On Record Store Day, April 21, 2012, Nonesuch releases Mermaid Avenue: The
Complete Sessions, which includes: Mermaid Avenue; Mermaid Avenue Vol. II
(re-mastered); Mermaid Avenue Vol. III, comprising 17 previously unreleased
recordings made during the Mermaid Avenue sessions; director Kim HopkinsÆ 1999
film Man in the Sand, which documents those sessions; and a 48-page booklet with
new liner notes by Nora Guthrie, full lyrics, archival photographs, and
facsimiles of lyric sheets and sketches by Woody Guthrie.
In her liner note, Nora Guthrie describes her response to finding these lyrics,
which were much more personal and journal-esque than the earlier works for which
Woody was best known: ôI had just discovered that my father had written more
song lyrics than any of us could ever imagine. (Over 3,000 when I finally did
the count.) I had just discovered that he had a bad crush on Ingrid Bergman and
dreamed of getting her pregnant, that he felt sorry for Hans Eisler, that he was
a proud lush and a comfortable luster, that he believed in flying saucers, that
he was homesick for California, that he even knew who Joe DiMaggio was let alone
wrote a song about him, or that he once made out with a girl in a tree hollow
when, as a kid, he bragged, æThere ainÆt nobody that can sing like me.Æö
The New York Times said of the first volume, ô[Tweedy and Bragg] are the perfect
pair to conclude that Guthrie, far from a predictable Popular Front totem, was a
prophetic rock-and-roller with a whole lot to say. All he needed was a band and
a little freedomàIt says a great deal for [Bragg] that he recognized that his
leftism only half-equipped him to bring it off. Woody Guthrie was as American as
it gets, and [Chicagoûbased] Wilco provided that element as few other
contemporaries could have. WilcoÆs signature, a spacious stylistic sweep from
blues to bluegrass, brings all this music to a life noàBrits or Nashville pros
could have approached.ö
Bragg told NPR in 1998, ôThe words are so powerful, theyÆre so evocative to many
peopleàThatÆs the strength of Woody, itÆs the simplicity.ö Tweedy added, ôIÆd
have a really good feeling about things if [the album] did lead a certain number
of people back to discover Woody Guthrie.ö