Billy Bragg and Wilco
Elektra 62204-2
1. Walt Whitman’s Niece 3:53
Words: Woody Guthrie 1947 / Music: Billy Bragg 1997
Jay Bennett: Piano, clavinet, Farfisa organ, drums
Billy Bragg: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Ken Coomer: drums and percussion
John Stirratt: acoustic bass
Jeff Tweedy: electric guitar, harmonica
Wilco plus Jonathan “JP” Parker: answering vocals
2. California Stars 4:57
Words: Woody Guthrie [No Date] / Music: Jay Bennett/Jeff Tweedy 1997
Jay Bennett: piano, backing vocal
Billy Bragg: acoustic guitar
Ken Coomer: drums and percussion
Corey Harris: lap steel guitar
Eliza Carthy: violin
John Stirratt: electric bass, backing vocal
Jeff Tweedy: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
3. Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key 4:06
Words: Woody Guthrie 1946 / Music: Billy Bragg 1997
Jay Bennett: Hammond B3, bazouki
Billy Bragg: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Eliza Carthy: violin
Ken Coomer: drums and percussion
Natalie Merchant: backing vocal
Elizabeth Steen: accordion
John Stirratt: electric bass
Peter Yanowitz: chorus drums
4. Birds and Ships 2:13
Words: Woody Guthrie [no date] / Music: Billy Bragg 1997
Billy Bragg: acoustic guitar
Natalie Merchant: vocals
5. Hoodoo Voodoo 3:12
Words: Woody Guthrie [no date] / Music: Wilco/Bragg/Harris
Jay Bennett: organ, Farfisa bass pedals
Billy Bragg: electric guitar
Ken Coomer: drums
Corey Harris: electric guitar
John Stirratt: electric bass, piano [bass]
Jeff Tweedy: vocal
6. She Came Along To Me 3:26
Words: Woody Guthrie 1942 / Music: Billy Bragg/Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett 1998
Jay Bennett: electric bass, slide guitar, acoustic guitar, harmony vocal
Billy Bragg: lead vocal
Ken Coomer: drums, percussion
Bob Egan: slide guitar
John Stirratt: Hammond B3, acoustic guitar
Jeff Tweedy: acoustic guitar, harmonica
7. At My Window Sad and Lonely 3:27
Words: Woody Guthrie 1939 / Music: Jeff Tweedy 1997
Jay Bennett: Hammond B3, dulcimer, backing vocal
Billy Bragg: bazouki, backing vocal
Ken Coomer: drums
John Stirratt: electric bass, backing vocal
Jeff Tweedy: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
8. Ingrid Bergman 1:50
Words: Woody Guthrie 1950 / Music: Billy Bragg 1996
Billy Bragg: acoustic guitar and vocal
9. Christ For President 2:39
Words: Woody Guthrie [no date] Music: Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett 1997
Jeff Bennett: banjo, piano, clavinet
Billy Bragg: National guitar
Ken Coomer: drums and percussion
John Stirratt: acoustic bass, bass pedals
Jeff Tweedy: acoustic guitar, vocal
10. I Guess I Planted 3:32
Words: Woody Guthrie [no date] / Music: Billy Bragg 1997
Jay Bennett: piano, Hammond B3
Billy Bragg: acoustic piano, lead vocal
Ken Coomer: drums
John Stirratt: electric bass
Jeff Tweedy: electric guitar
Everybody and Corey Harris: backing vocals and handclaps
11. One By One 3:22
Words: Woody Guthrie 1939 / Music: Jeff Tweedy 1997
Jay Bennett: piano, organ
Ken Coomer: drums
Bob Egan: pedal steel
John Stirratt: electric bass
Jeff Tweedy: acoustic guitar, vocal
12. Eisler On The Go 2:56
Words: Woody Guthrie / Music: Billy Bragg 1997
Jay Bennett: piano, melodica, percussion
Billy Bragg: National guitar, banjo, vocal
Ken Coomer: percussion
13. Hesitating Beauty 3:04
Words: Woody Guthrie 1949 / Music: Jeff Tweedy 1997
Jay Bennett: piano, electric guitar, backing vocal
Billy Bragg: electric guitar
Ken Coomer: drums
John Stirratt: electric bass
Jeff Tweedy: lead vocal
14. Another Man’s Done Gone 1:34
Words: Woody Guthrie [no date] / Music: Billy Bragg 1998
Jay Bennett: grand piano
Jeff Tweedy: vocal
15. The Unwelcome Guest 5:09
Words: Woody Guthrie 1940 / Music: Billy Bragg 1996
Jay Bennett: grand piano, melodica
Billy Bragg: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Ken Coomer: drums
Bob Egan: pedal steel
John Stirratt: electric bass
Jeff Tweedy: acoustic guitar, harmonica, harmony vocal
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Produced by Wilco and Billy Bragg with Grant Showbiz
Engineered by Jerry Boys
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Mermaid Avenue, is the name of the street in Coney Island, Brooklyn, that was home to Woody Guthrie and his wife, Marjorie and their kids in the years that followed World War II. Here he daydreamed about making love to Ingrid Bergman on the slopes of an Italian volcano and wondered to himself what he would do if, like fellow left-wing songwriter Hanns Eisler, and here he wrote songs, hundreds of them. Nonsense songs for his kids like Hoodoo Voodoo, visions of his own Oklahoma childhood like Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key, mid-century love songs like Hesitating Beauty and works of personal self-exploration like Another Man’s Done Gone that make him prime candidate as the first in a long line of singer-songwriters.
Despite the fact that his recording career was more or less over by 1947, he carried on writing songs until he became too ill to hold a pencil. The last years of his life were spent in the Brooklyn State Hospital and when he died in 1967, the tunes that he had dreamt up for these hundreds of unrecorded songs, tunes he had carried in his head all his life, were lost forever.
Woody’s daughter Nora Guthrie approached me in the spring of 1995 with the idea of writing some new music to accompany these lost songs. She runs the Woody Guthrie archive in New York City and offered me access to over a thousand complete lyrics of her father’s that are in her care. Handwritten or typed, often bearing the date and place where they were written and sometimes accompanied by an insight into the process at work, they offer us a broader picture of a man who over the past sixty years has been vilified by the American right whilst simultaneously being canonized by the American left.
In her original letter to me, Nora talked of breaking the mould, of working with her father to give his words a new sound and a new context, the result is not a tribute album but a collaboration between Woody Guthrie and a new generation of songwriters who until now had only glimpsed him fleetingly, over the shoulder of Bob Dylan or somewhere in the distance of a Bruce Springsteen song.
Billy Bragg, London 1998.
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Performed by Billy Bragg and Wilco with guests Natalie Merchant and Corey Harris
Tracks 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15
Published by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. [BMI]/BMG Songs [ASCAP].
Tracks 2, 6, 9 Published by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc./Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp./Words-Ampersand Music [BMI]/Titanic Majesties Music [ASCAP]
Track 5 Published by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. [BMI]/Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp./Words-Ampersand Music [BMI]/BMG Songs/Koolhot Muzik [ASCAP]
Tracks 7, 11, 13 Published by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. [BMI]/BMG Songs [ASCAP]/Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp./Words-Ampersand Music [BMI]
Corey Harris appears courtesy of Alligator Records. WILCO appears courtesy of Reprise Records.
To Billy and Jeff and Jay and John and Ken and Bob and Natalie, Corey and Grant, I found these lines…
“The world is filled with people who are no longer needed – and who they try to make slaves of all of us – And they have their music and we have ours – Theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare – And without their musical and ideological miscarriages to compare our song of freedom to, we’d not have any opposite to compare music with – And like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle, we’d never know it’s speed, it’s power…” Woody Guthrie
Thank you for singing these songs. We have all put so much of ourselves into this. It’s kind of like a sci-fi vaccination, awakening 50 year old sleeping lyrics with everyone’s various kisses and loving touches. Thank you for bringing my father’s songs to life with your loving touches.
I love you all, Nora.
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Shainte to caterers Niall Carey and Mark Clapper who fed us so exquisitely in Dublin.
THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO OFFERED ENCOURAGEMENT AND INSIGHT ON THIS PROJECT: Nora Guthrie and her two children Anna and Cole, Harold Leventhal and his wife Natalie, Amy Danielian and George Arevalo at the Woody Guthrie Archive, Juliet Wills, Jeff Place, Jimmy Longhi, Guy Logsdon, Lori Taylor, Steve Martin, Phil Jacobs, Tony Margherita Management, Jonathan Pines, Jonathan “JP” Parker, Martin Carthy, Colin Irwin, Malcolm Taylor, Gary Smith, Peter Jenner and everyone at Sincere Management, Tiny Fennimore, Andy Stinson, Frank Riley, Josh Grier, Lia Sweet, Helene Axelrod, Matt Hickey and everyone at Reprise and Elektra.
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Billy Bragg info: P.O. Box 5107 London W4 5WB England www.billybragg.co-uk
Contact Wilco via the web at www.wilcoweb.com
For further information about Woody Guthrie please contact:
Woody Guthrie Publications
250 West 57th Street,
Suite 1218,
New York, NY 10107
Art Direction: Billy Bragg, Nora Guthrie and Alli
Design: Alli
All Coney Island Photography by Ken Schles
Wilco Photos (Stirratt, Bennett, Tweedy) by Tony Margherita
Ken Coomer (Wilco) and Billy Bragg photos by Pennie Smith
All images of Woody Guthrie courtesy of The Woody Guthrie Archive
