Billy Bragg and Wilco’s celebrated “Mermaid Avenue” project is being revisited in an expanded new collection.
Due on December 11th via Craft Recordings, “Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions” brings together all three instalments of the series alongside 16 previously unreleased recordings, including alternate takes, demos and live performances drawn from the original sessions.
The collection will be available as a 7LP + 7″ vinyl box set, a 4CD edition and digitally. Among the newly unveiled material is “Aginst Th’ Law (Alternate Version)”, available now, while the vinyl box also includes a single-sided 7″ featuring a recently discovered 1951 home recording of Woody Guthrie performing “Hesitating Beauty”.
Originally released between 1998 and 2012, the “Mermaid Avenue” albums found Bragg and Wilco setting music to previously unrecorded lyrics from Guthrie’s archive, producing songs including “California Stars”, “Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key”, “Airline To Heaven”, “Remember The Mountain Bed” and “When The Roses Bloom Again”.
The new edition adds an entire disc of Alternates & Demos, featuring previously unheard versions of songs including “All You Fascists”, “She Came Along To Me”, “I Guess I Planted” and “Aginst Th’ Law”, as well as demos of “Joe DiMaggio Done It Again”, “Hot Rod Hotel”, “Birds And Ships” and “The Unwelcome Guest”.
Reflecting on the project, Bragg said: “It’s been over thirty years since Nora first asked me to look at some unpublished lyrics of her father’s. I had no idea then that the project that she, I and Wilco undertook would lead to a complete reassessment of the legacy of Woody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.”
The announcement follows a reunion performance at Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival earlier this year, where Bragg, Wilco, Nora Guthrie and special guests revisited material from across the “Mermaid Avenue” catalogue.
