NHT has already posted about Mermaid Avenue, the ESSENTIAL collaboration between Wilco and Billy Bragg. Now there’s a new twist on an old theme: Wilco covering a song Woody Guthrie actually recorded. 100% of proceeds from suggested donations of $2 per download will go directly to the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives. Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter and head of the foundation, asked the band to record the perfect comment on these troubled times:
Now since it’s a benefit thing NHT is only posting half the track. If you want the whole deal (including the tastiest of lap steel solos by Nels Cline) you need to go to Wilcoworld.net where’s there’s a guilt inducing donation button right under the download button. If you want to get your philanthropic on go here to kick down some corn.
In other Wilco news, looks like the new records all done. Wilco (The Album) is due June 30 on Nonesuch Records. Here’s the tracklist:
Wilco (the song)
Deeper Down
One Wing
Bull Black Nova
You And I
You Never Know
Country Disappeared
Solitaire
I’ll Fight
Sonny Feeling
Everlasting Everything
Another live concert film “Ashes of American Flags” was officially released on Saturday, April 18 as part of Record Store Day. The film will be available via DVD and iTunes on April 28. The DVD is now available for pre-order via the Wilco store.
Finally got around to seeing “Man In The Sand” and was riveted throughout. Billy Bragg did a marvelous job creating music to a handful of the thousands of unrecorded songs Woody Guthrie left behind after his death. Seeing Bragg’s journey from Guthrie’s hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma to the shore off Coney Island, the last place Woody called home, added a whole new perspective to what was already one of my all time favorite albums. Rumors of tension between Jeff Tweedy and Bragg about song selection among other things have long circulated but the only allusion to it in the film that I could see was this less than thinly veiled quote from Tweedy: “In the conversations that we’ve had that have not been arguments, but just discussions, Billy starts talking about the big picture. And these are things that I haven’t thought about at all. My only response to him is, ‘You know what, I bet Woody would just pick the songs that didn’t suck.’”
