Tonight on “The Tonight Show” Neil Young recorded Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” live in Jack White’s 1947 Voice-O-Graph recording booth.
Young also performed Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby” on piano while inside the booth.
Neil Young and Jack White talk to Jimmy Fallon about A Letter Home:
Jack White talks to Jimmy Fallon about the Voice-O-Graph:
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
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In a way, Neil Young’s latest release, A Letter Home, and all the hoopla about recording with the primitive Voice-O-Graph machine is itself quite absurd.
But even so, this takes it to a new level.
From Willard’s Wormhole:
String Theory (2014)
Neil & Jack, On The Road Again
The second in a series of Limited Edition releases from Jack White’s Third Man Records is this audiophile Deluxe Edition of Neil Young’s greatest hits, as played into an empty CMI standard #211 Cylinder-size tin can, held aloft by Neil…
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
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09 If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot Cover)
10 Since I Met You Baby (Ivory Joe Hunter Cover)
11 My Hometown (Bruce Springsteen Cover)
12 I Wonder If I Care as Much (Don Everly Cover)
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.]
– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Here’s Warner Bros. press release on the upcoming “Limited Edition Deluxe Box Set” of Neil Young’s A Letter Home, which is priced at $109.98 and includes two songs not on the “standard edition” that will sell for $13.99.
April 24, 2014 – (Burbank, CA.) – Neil Young will release a CD, digital album and a Limited Edition Deluxe Box Set of his recent vinyl album A Letter Home on Reprise Records on May 27th. The box set is a beautifully packaged expanded version of the vinyl edition first released on April 18th by Jack White’s Third Man Records. The Limited Edition Deluxe Box Set will also contain a Download card for the hi-res Audiophile version of the album. Click here to pre-order A Letter Home. Click here to view the album cover art. Click here to view the Limited Edition Deluxe Box Set package.
Young recorded the collection of covers with White on a refurbished 1947 Voice-O-Graph recording booth at Third Man’s Nashville headquarters. Imagine a very simple recording studio not much larger than a phone booth and you’ll get the idea. He describes the album as “an unheard collection of rediscovered songs from the past recorded on ancient electro-mechanical technology captures and unleashes the essence of something that could have been gone forever.” Recorded live to track to one-track, mono, the album has an inherent warm, primitive feel of a vintage Folkways recording,
As for the track-listing, Young chose songs that have personal meaning for him, such as British folk artist Bert Jansch’s “Needle of Death” (which inspired Young to write 1972’s “Needle and the Damage Done”), Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country,” Willie Nelson’s “Crazy,” Don Everly’s “I Wonder If I Care as Much,” Bruce Springsteen’s “My Home Town,” and many others. Click here to watch a video for “Needle of Death”
The album begins with Neil recording a spoken letter to his late mother, informing her of his personal and present state of affairs which sets the tone and atmosphere for the duration of the album. He does this once again at the beginning of Side 2 in a way which could explain why he’s selected these particular songs to record. In essence, this presentation is, as its title implies, A Letter Home from Neil. This is a deeply personal and expressive listening experience which is as real and raw emotionally as it is sonically and yet light of touch in its form and flow.
Reprise will release the complete box set, which includes a special “direct feed from the booth” audiophile vinyl version and a DVD that captured the original electro-mechanical process, along with comments from the producers and recording engineers. It includes:
Standard audio LP pressed on 180-gram black vinyl
Audiophile LP pressed on 180-gram black vinyl
Standard audio CD
DVD with footage from the recording
12″ x 12″, 32-page full color booklet
Download card for hi-res Audiophile version of album
Seven 6″ vinyl discs pressed on clear vinyl. The 7th disc of this set features a version of Dylan’s
“Blowin’ In The Wind” backed with an alternate take / arrangement of “Crazy”
The track-listing for A Letter Home is as follows:
A Letter Home intro
Changes (Phil Ochs)
Girl from the North Country (Bob Dylan)
Needle of Death (Bert Jansch)
Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
Crazy (Willie Nelson)
Reason to Believe (Tim Hardin)
On the Road Again (Willie Nelson)
If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)
Since I Met You Baby (Ivory Joe Hunter)
My Hometown (Bruce Springsteen)
I Wonder If I Care as Much (Don Everly)
# # #
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Earlier today Neil Young officially released the “Needle of Death” video that has appeared sporadically on YouTube since it was shown at a the Celebration of Bert Jansch at The Royal Festival Hall on December 3, 2013.
“Needle of Death,” a Jansch composition that influenced Young when he wrote “The Needle and the Damage Done,” appears on Young’s new album, A Letter Home.
The video shows Young recording the song at Jack White’s Third Man Records in the 1947 Voice-o-Graph booth. Jack White co-produced A Letter Home with Young, or as it says on the album’s back cover, “reproduced.”
When he finishes singing the song, Young steos out of the Voice-o-Graph booth and White says to him, “Sounded good,” to which Young replies, “It’s a heavy song, very heavy song.”
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So today I’ve got some clips from Neil Young’s show in Chicago, plus more from his Dallas shows. If you missed my Dallas show post, you can check it out here.
Neil Young at the Chicago Theater, Chicago IL., April 22, 2014.
“Reason To Believe”:
“Changes”:
“Harvest”
“Old Man”:
“A Man Needs A Maid”:
“Ohio”:
“Southern Man”:
“Mr. Soul”:
Another view of “Mr. Soul”:
“Someday”:
“Heart of Gold”:
“If You Could Read My Mind”:
Neil Young at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas TX on April 18, 2014 Dallas, TX.
“From Hank to Hendrix”:
Plus more from the April 17, 2014 show in Dallas at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.
“Mellow My Mind”:
“On The Way Home” & “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”:
“Love In Mind”:
“Are You Ready For the Country?”:
“Someday”:
“Changes”:
“Harvest”:
“A Man Needs A Maid”:
“If You Could Read My Mind”:
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I first reported in mid-January of this year that Neil Young’s next album would consist of all covers and that he was “collaborating” with Jack White.
I speculated that songs on the album would likely include Phil Ochs’ “Changes,” Bert Jansch’s “Needle of Death,” Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain,” Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby” and Tim Hardin’s “Reason To Believe.”
Today the album, A Letter Home, was released with none of the usual pre-release hoopla, and it includes all of those songs, plus Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country,” Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown,” a second song by Gordon Lightfoot, “If You Could Only Read My Mind,” plus songs by the Everly Brothers and Willie Nelson.
Jack White not only recorded the album on his 1947 Voice-o-Graph vinyl record recording booth at Third Man Records in Nashville, but he’s released the album on Third Man Records, is credited along with Young as the album’s co-producer (actually it says on the back cover “Reproduced by Jack White and Neil Young) and plays on two tracks.
“[It’s] a phone booth,” Young told Spin. “It’s all acoustic with a harmonica inside a closed space, with one mic to vinyl … It’s a funky old machine, it sounds like Jimmy Rogers or something.”
For Record Store Day tomorrow, the album will be available on vinyl in limited quantities at select record stores around the country.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Changes” (Phil Ochs)
02 “Girl From The North Country” (Bob Dylan)
03 “Needle of Death” (Bert Jansch)
04 “Early Morning Rain” (Gordon Lightfoot)
05 “Reason To Believe” (Tim Hardin)
06 “On The Road Again” (Willie Nelson)
07 “If You Could Only Read My Mind” (Gordon Lightfoot)
08 “Since I Met You Baby” (Ivory Joe Hunter)
09 “My Hometown” (Bruce Springsteen)
10 “I Wonder If I Care As Much” (Everly Brothers)
Here are live performances of some of the songs.
“Reason To Believe” at Farm Aid 2013:
“Changes” at Carnegie Hall 2014:
“Early Morning Rain” at Farm Aid 2013:
“Since I Met You Baby” at Farm Aid 2013:
“Needle of Death” at Carnegie Hall 2014:
“If You Could Read My Mind” at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, 2014:
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As of this afternoon Neil Young’s PonoMusic kickstarter campaign has grossed $5,805,033 from 17,010 donors.
PonoMusic is the third most funded Kickstarter campaign, according to a Warner Bros. press release.
“We are so excited about hitting this milestone, said PonoMusic CEO, John Hamm in the press release. “This campaign has exceeded our expectations from the start. By taking the nontraditional crowdfunding approach, we have been able to unveil PonoMusic our way – directly to our customers. The PonoMusic Kickstarter campaign now has over 16,000 active backers and we’ve received over 5,000 comments, questions, and suggestions on the site. This is incredibly valuable consumer feedback and we will be a much better company at launch because of the engagement from the PonoMusic community.”
“Pono is an ecosystem to play and store music,” Neil Young said in the press release. “This is not a format; the experience is not about recognizing a song, it’s about feeling it,” says Young, who came up with the idea over three years ago. He and his team have been chasing the dream of bringing the soul back into music ever since.”
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