Nearly three decades after Billy Bragg and Wilco first set previously unheard Woody Guthrie lyrics to music, the complete Mermaid Avenue project returns in its most expansive edition yet. Arriving December 11 via Craft Recordings, Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions brings together all three volumes of the acclaimed collaboration alongside demos, alternate takes, live performances and a newly discovered Guthrie home recording.
Available as a 7-LP + 7" box set, 4-CD collection and expanded digital edition, The Complete Sessions adds 16 previously unreleased recordings from the original sessions. The vinyl edition is pressed on 180-gram vinyl and includes a single-sided 7" featuring a newly unearthed 1951 home recording of Guthrie singing “Hesitating Beauty.” Both physical editions feature new liner notes from author and journalist Bob Mehr.
The three original albums, Mermaid Avenue, Mermaid Avenue Vol. II and Mermaid Avenue Vol. III, will also be available individually on 180-gram 2-LP sets, including limited-edition color pressings through CraftRecordings.com, independent record stores and Barnes & Noble.
The previously unreleased “Aginst Th’ Law (Alternate Version)” and longtime favorite “California Stars” are available to stream now.
→ PRE-ORDER MERMAID AVENUE: THE COMPLETE SESSIONS
AN EXTRAORDINARY INVITATION
Mermaid Avenue began with thousands of words and no music.
While exploring her father’s archive, Nora Guthrie discovered a trove of unpublished Woody Guthrielyrics that went well beyond the familiar image of the Dust Bowl balladeer. She wanted those words heard, but she wasn’t looking for musicians to imitate Woody.
She turned first to Billy Bragg, whose own songwriting had long blurred the lines between the personal and political. Nora saw him as someone who could approach her father as a fellow songwriter rather than an untouchable icon. Bragg then brought in Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, who were quickly establishing themselves as one of American alternative rock’s most adventurous bands.
Instead of attempting to recreate music Guthrie might have written, Bragg and Wilco treated his lyrics as unfinished songs waiting for new collaborators. As Tweedy remembers, “What greater honor could you give a songwriter than to co-write with Woody Guthrie?”
FROM ONE WEEK TO NEARLY 50 SONGS
The sessions proved far more productive than anyone expected. What began as a week of pre-production in Chicago in December 1997 produced enough material for an album before Bragg and Wilco reconvened in Dublin.
Over four weeks, they recorded close to 50 tracks, often embracing Wilco’s spontaneous, first-take approach. That looseness allowed Guthrie’s words to move freely across folk, rock, country and pop rather than becoming tied to a single idea of what “Woody Guthrie music” should sound like.
The first Mermaid Avenue arrived in 1998, introducing “California Stars,” “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key,” “Birds and Ships,” “Hesitating Beauty” and more, with Natalie Merchant guesting on two tracks. The GRAMMY®-nominated album was followed by Vol. II in 2000, while another 17 recordings emerged as Vol. III in 2012.
OPENING THE ARCHIVE AGAIN
The new Complete Sessions goes back inside those remarkably prolific sessions with an entire disc devoted to alternatives and demos.
Previously unreleased alternate versions of “Aginst Th’ Law,” “All You Fascists,” “I Guess I Planted” and “She Came Along to Me” sit alongside demos and solo performances of “Hesitating Beauty,” “Joe DiMaggio Done It Again,” “Hot Rod Hotel,” “Birds and Ships” and more.
Then comes perhaps the collection’s most direct link back to the man who started it all: Woody Guthrie’s own 1951 home recording of “Hesitating Beauty.” After hearing multiple generations give new voices to his words, listeners finally get to hear Guthrie himself singing one of them.
LISTENING NOTES
“California Stars”
The song that escaped the project and became something bigger. Guthrie’s words and Wilco’s melody fit together so naturally, it’s hard to imagine they were written decades apart.
“Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key”
Billy Bragg and Natalie Merchant turn Guthrie’s recollections into something warm, funny and wistful. A perfect example of how Mermaid Avenue finds the person behind the folk icon.
“Hesitating Beauty”
Start with Wilco’s version, then jump ahead more than four decades to Guthrie’s newly discovered 1951 home tape. Hearing both brings the whole premise of Mermaid Avenue into focus.
“All You Fascists”
One of the project’s most direct collisions between Guthrie’s political writing and Bragg’s musical instincts. The new alternate version gives listeners another route into it.
“Remember the Mountain Bed”
For the quieter side of the project. Guthrie’s intimate writing and Wilco’s understated setting show just how far these lyrics could travel beyond the protest-song tradition.
28 YEARS LATER
This summer, the story came full circle when Bragg and Wilco reunited at the band’s Solid Sound Festival for their first full-length concert devoted to Mermaid Avenue. Natalie Merchant and members of the Guthrie family joined them, while Nora Guthrie told the crowd she had waited 28 years to stand onstage “with Billy on one arm, and Jeff on the other.”
“It’s been over thirty years since Nora first asked me to look at some unpublished lyrics of her father’s,” reflects Bragg. “I had no idea then that the project that she, I and Wilco undertook would lead to a complete reassessment of the legacy of Woody Guthrie.”
Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions opens the archive even wider. The three original volumes show what happened when Guthrie’s unpublished words met a new generation of songwriters; the demos, alternate takes and home recording let us hear more of how those songs traveled from one generation to the next.
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