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"We thought, 'Let's see if anyone likes it first, and if they like it, we'll put out another one," Nora Guthrie says of Mermaid Avenue, the critically-lauded, Grammy-nominated 1998 album on which Wilco and Billy Bragg set music to fifteen unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics. Turns out nearly 200,000 anyones did like the album, and the same crew are about to drop another helping of Guthrie lyrics filtered through their musical channels in the form of the tentatively titled Mermaid Avenue Volume II, currently scheduled for release in June on Elektra Records.
As the gatekeeper of the Woody Guthrie Archives, and by proxy the
driving force behind a recent rediscovery of America's greatest
lyricist, Woody's daughter Nora is largely responsible for these
albums. And with the latest album she promises something that
resembles its predecessor only in name. "This is more cutting edge
musically," she says of the album. "Woody's words were at the front
of Mermaid I, but this is a louder sound. I feel like they
might have liked a lot of the songs as artists on the first album,
but we were kind of tiptoeing through it a little bit. This one
really cuts loose."
Some of the tracks that will make the cut for Mermaid Avenue
Volume II are leftovers from the original Bragg/Wilco sessions
in Dublin, Ireland. But Guthrie claims Wilco's relationship with
her father's lyrics has grown since the project's inception and the
band assembled in Chicago to hammer out a few additional cuts.
"[Mermaid Avenue Volume II] is a more balanced affair.
Jeff [Tweedy] and Jay [Bennett] came back and said, 'We really want
to get our teeth into this material now.'"
Wilco's Bennett sees the new album as possibly being a little
darker, but not entirely different. "Taken as a collection, this
subset of the complete Guthrie work that we've done may be a tad
more, I hesitate to say 'rock' or 'pop' -- heavier maybe," he says.
"Some of the most minor key, dark stuff is on there and some of the
angriest stuff we've done is on there. But by the time we finished
the first one, we had a notion that we were going to make a second
one and we already had some tracks leftover. And we ran into some
conflicts in sequencing the record, picking what tracks were going
to be on it. And one of the ways we were able to reconcile it
between us and Billy was to say, 'I think there's going to be a
second one. So if this killer track gets left off just because we
have too much good stuff, it's going to see the light of day in two
years.'"
Woody Guthrie's imagination knew no bounds and some of the new
batch of songs reflect his wide-eyed interest in most anything.
"The topics are so diverse," Nora says. "There's a Joe DiMaggio
tune. There's one called 'My Flying Saucer' that my dad wrote in
the beginning of the Sputnik age. 'The Meanest Man' is a really
nasty one; it's so opposite of 'Pastures of Plenty.' Billy really
gets the chance to howl on that one. There's a beautiful love song,
and there's this screaming heavy-metal song that's basically a
'screw you' to fascists."
"It has yet to stop producing surprising things," Bennett says of
Guthrie's archival material. "[Woody]'s done creating, but the
stock of stuff left behind is still yielding fresh material."
Guthrie says that the range of material has made for difficult
meetings with regards to the prospective cover art. "I'm hoping we
use this picture of a cat that my dad took on Mermaid Avenue with
our house in the background. How else are you going to tie flying
saucers, Joe DiMaggio, a love song and an anti-fascist song
together," she says laughing. "You might as well put a cat on the
cover."
In the weeks before the album's release (with or without the cat),
Wilco are busying themselves with work on their next album, which
probably won't see release until next year. Bennett claims that
work on the album will take place around a summer tour as well as a
possible fall tour with Bragg. "It's just day six," he says of the
new sessions. "But it'll be great, that's all I really know."
As for Nora Guthrie, Mermaid Avenue Volume II isn't the
only thing on her plate right now. She's also been involved in
Til We Outnumber Them, a live album recorded at a 1996
tribute to her father featuring Bragg, Ani DiFranco, Ramblin' Jack
Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Dave Pirner, Tim Robbins and Bruce
Springsteen to be released on DiFranco's Righteous Babe label in
April. She and bassist Rob Wasserman are also taking some of Woody
Guthrie's diary entries that are written in rhyme and meter and
recording them as improvised musical pieces with various guests.
Spearhead's Michael Franti has already contributed a track, and
DiFranco is committed for another. "It's a very funky and New Yorky
kind of project," Guthrie says. "I tease the musicians that they
won't be working on this for a year and a half. You're in the
studio, you jam and you walk out. It's more like recording with
Miles Davis."
Guthrie doesn't expect a third Mermaid Avenue entry, but
thinks some additional Woody/Wilco collaborations might trickle out
on the band's albums or on compilations or soundtracks. "If Nora
would let us do that, I would love it," Bennett says of the chance
to continue making music from Guthrie's vaults.
"I love working with the artists," Guthrie says of the future of
Woody-related projects. "I love discovering how all of this
material can fit into life out there. Some of the material just
screams, 'Sing me! Sing me!'"
ANDREW DANSBY
(April 1, 2000)