Billy Bragg |
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Mon. June 22.1998 3:00 AM EDT |
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Bragg, Wilco Breathe Life Into Woody Guthrie Lyrics For Mermaid AvenueAlbum by folkie and No Depression band brings music to American folk hero's words. by Contributing Editor Colin Devenish |
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Billy Bragg (pictured) played guitar behind ex-10,000 Maniacs singerNatalie Merchant on the song "Bird and Ships" from the Guthrie project. ( ) |
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British folk singer Billy Bragg was facing a big challenge, perhaps the
biggest of his career. He was preparing to collaborate with modern folk-rockers Wilco on Mermaid Avenue, an album that would feature recently unearthed lyrics
Bragg was tapped by the Guthrie estate to provide new melodies for the songs with the musical assistance of Wilco. An honor for any musician, the idea of trying to find the right sound for a legend's lyrics was daunting, to say the least. But as it turned out, the task wasn't as daunting as Bragg had feared. "It didn't take much doing," said Bragg, 40, speaking from New York. "As a metaphor, it was like getting in an old car, finding the keys, turning the keys in the ignition and finding it start for the first time. They're such strongly constructed songs. You can pick the most simple melody and it fits." Guthrie, who died from Huntington's disease in 1967, insured his position in the pantheon of American folk music with such gems of social commentary as "This Land Is Your Land" and "Pastures of Plenty." His influence on folk songwriting -- and particularly on the early work of folk-rock legend Bob Dylan -- is widely acknowledged. The project was born when Guthrie's daughter, Nora Guthrie, discovered her father's lyrics stored away. She poured through hundreds of pages of songs from the Woody Guthrie archives, which were left by the folk artist without accompanying music. Soon she began to coordinate the project, which grew into the 15-song Mermaid Avenue, named for the Coney Island, N.Y., street where the Guthries lived when she was a girl. "It was one of those things where I kept finding great [songs] that I'd never seen before," 50-year-old Nora said. "And no one else that I knew of in my family had either. It was driving me crazy. If I didn't [approach Bragg], it would have driven me crazy to have all this stuff and not have the songs." Nora picked Bragg to spearhead the Mermaid Avenue project in 1995, after seeing the outspoken, left-wing folkie perform in a way that evoked memories of her famous father. "I just thought he was perfect for it in so many ways," she said. "He reminded me of my dad, how he kinda mixes his art and his life and his politics. When you see him perform, you feel like you know the whole guy. I always felt that about my dad, that everything he was was in his songs." Slated for release on Tuesday, the album features songs such as the raucous "Hoodoo Voodoo" (RealAudio excerpt) and the salty "Walt Whitman's Niece" (RealAudio excerpt). The tunes seem certain to shock fans who think of Guthrie as a harmless Okie-cum-folkie, while tracks such as "At My Window, Sad and Lonely" and "One By One" showcase the more melancholy side of the songwriter. Wilco guitarist and singer Jeff Tweedy said that shaping songs such as "Hoodoo Voodoo" around pre-written lyrics presented him with new challenges and opened him up to different possibilities in his own songwriting. "I'd worked a little bit like that before in the past, but this was really great," Tweedy, 30, said. "I really thought it would be harder than it was. The difference between taking a poem that I've written and [taking Guthrie's lyrics] is that [his words] are precious. You're not going to change them." Referring to the throat-searing vocals of "Hoodoo Voodoo," Tweedy said, "I can probably only sing it 12 times in my life though. After that, my voice will be trashed ... I wish I sounded more like Otis Redding ... But I don't." Former 10,000 Maniacs singer Natalie Merchant joined Wilco and Bragg on the album, singing backup vocals on "Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key" (RealAudio excerpt) and "She Came Along To Me." She also took the lead on "Birds and Ships," accompanied only by Bragg's acoustic guitar. Merchant's inclusion in the project made sense, Bragg said. "When Woody was writing, if you think of the recordings of the Weavers and the Almanac Singers, there was always a female voice in the ensembles somewhere. It wasn't always necessarily the lead voice, but it was always there ... also 'Birds and Ships' was written in a female voice." Bragg and Wilco recorded 40 songs in all with a second album in mind in the hopes Mermaid Avenue and what follows will go a long ways toward humanizing Guthrie and encouraging fans to take a second look at the songwriter, Bragg said. "He's become an icon, and he was never that," he said. "He's an iconoclast if anything. Only 10 percent of songs he ever wrote have ever been heard. Until those songs are heard, you can argue Woody Guthrie isn't dead. He's still got records to make. "This isn't the last Woody Guthrie record. It's just the first one in 50 years." |
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