Each week Release Day Picks profiles new LPs and EPs Team JamBase will be checking out on release day Friday. This week we highlight new albums by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Billy Strings & Terry Barber, Goose, Dezron Douglas, Neal Francis, Adrian Quesada, Amos Lee, Jimi Hendrix Experience and Dave Matthews Band. Read on for more insight into the records we have all queued up to spin.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – World Record
Neil Young & Crazy Horse ride again with today’s release of World Record, the veteran rocker’s latest album issued by Reprise Records. Co-produced by Neil Young and Rick Rubin, the 10-song LP was recorded at Rubin’s Shangri-La recording facility in Malibu. The album, which serves as the follow-up to 2021’s Barn features Young on guitar alongside Crazy Horse drummer Ralph Molina, guitarist Nils Lofgren and bassist Billy Talbot The four musicians tracked the album live “in order to wrangle the Horse’s long-running spirit of spontaneous, collaborative, and electrifying performance” as per press materials. Rubin then guided the process in which World Record was mixed to analog tape at Shangri-La.
“The music on this album of course is very special to me,” Neil wrote in a message on his Neil Young Archives website back in July revealing the album was finished. “Now, with this recording, something special is happening and we know we have a good one. It’s too early to say anymore because in this world things come and go so fast. But real magic lasts and we think we have it.”
“We know we have something special,” noted Young who added, “Music lives. It’s the same band, Crazy Horse, but the music is unlike Barn.”
Billy Strings & Terry Barber – ME/AND/DAD
Billy Strings and his fellow guitar-picking father, Terry Barber, collaborated on the newly released studio album, ME/AND/DAD. Barber, who isn’t Strings’ biological father, is married to Billy’s mother, Debra Barber, and they together raised Billy. Barber, himself an accomplished guitarist and vocalist, taught Strings to play and sing from an early age. For their first album together, the pair and an all-star backing band focused on songs Billy and Terry perform together often. ME/AND/DAD was recorded at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios and co-produced by Strings and Gary Paczosa. Strings and Barber are backed by an ensemble consisting of bassist Mike Bub, mandolinist Ronnie McCoury, banjoist Rob McCoury and fiddler Michael Cleveland. Featured guests include Jerry Douglas and Jason Carter as well as Debra Barber who sings on “I Heard My Mother Weeping.”
“As long as I can remember, I wanted to make a record with my dad,” Billy Strings said of the project. “I’ve been burning up and down the highways the last 12 years, and as time slips away, you start thinking, ‘I need to make time.’ It’s been a bucket list thing for me, something I’ve been afraid I wouldn’t find the time to do. And that scared me; not doing this record scared me.”
Goose – Undecided
Goose surprised fans today by releasing a four-song EP with no advance notice. Undecided is out now digitally via No Coincidence Records with a limited-edition vinyl coming on January 13. The collection features four longtime live staples that the quartet reworked in the studio. Undecided was recorded with producer/engineer D. James Goodwin at The ISOKON in Woodstock, New York during the same 2021 sessions that birthed Goose’s 2022 full-length LP, Dripfield.
EP tracks “All I Need,” “Tumble” and “Undecided” (previously known as “Bob Don”) were penned by guitarist Rick Mitarotonda while he was a teenager. “I wrote [‘Bob Don’] when I was 14, and, actually, it was originally titled ‘Undecided.’ We started calling it ‘Bob Don’ because we thought it was funny,” explained Mitarotonda of the “new” title. A fresh studio take on multi-instrumentalist Peter Anspach‘s “Elizabeth” is also featured on Undecided.
“These four songs have been around for a long time, and they’ve never been recorded,” added Mitarotonda. “We’ve performed different versions over the years and we wanted to capture them in a new and exciting way.”
Dezron Douglas – Atalaya
Bassist Dezron Douglas, who is a member of the Trey Anastasio Band that is currently on tour with Goose, today released his solo album, Atalaya. Produced by Dezron Douglas, the bulk of the album was captured at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, Connecticut on August 25 and 26, 2021. The bassist, whose along with TAB has worked with Pharoah Sanders, Makaya McCraven, Brandee Younger, and Ravi Coltrane, is backed on Atalaya by a group made up of keyboardist George Burton, drummer Joe Dyson Jr. and saxophonist Emilio Modeste. Additionally, Melvis Santa contributed vocals and percussion to the song “Wheeping Birch.” The 10-track album follows Douglas’ 2020 duo album, Force Majeure, with harpist Brandee Younger. Regarding Atalaya, Douglas wrote in the album’s liner notes:
“Mysticism, Magic, Faith, Love, Power, Discernment! These are words that embody the creative process of Music.”
Neal Francis – Sentimental Garbage
Neal Francis is back with a new EP, Sentimental Garbage, which is out today through ATO Records. The working title for his 2021 LP, In Plain Sight, Sentimental Garbage contains songs from the In Plain Sight sessions at Neal’s DIY studio The Parsonage in Chicago’s St. Peter’s Church. Longtime collaborator Sergio Rios produced the EP in Los Angeles.
“Sentimental Garbage was the working title of our last LP,” Francis revealed, “which includes the track of the same name,” he continued. “We ended up calling that record In Plain Sight while removing the title track from the sequence. I knew this was my last chance to slap Sentimental Garbage on a record jacket, the thought of which always brought me great joy. It also works because this record is compiled of bittersweet scraps. I guess we could have also titled the record Burnt Ends.”
Neal heralded Sentimental Garbage with “Very Fine, Pts. 1 & 2” which arrived along with a cover of the Shuggie Otis classic “Strawberry Letter 23.” Francis followed with “Don’t Want You To Know” and the EP also contains a Parsonage mix of In Plain Sight standout “Can’t Stop The Rain.”
Adrian Quesada – Jaguar Sound
Black Pumas’ guitarist and producer Adrian Quesada released his second solo album of 2022, Jaguar Sound, through ATO Records. Today’s release follows the June release of Quesada’s homage to Latin America’s Balada music, Boleros Psicodélicos. Quesada produced, wrote, engineered, mixed and largely performed the instrumentation across the 12 instrumental tracks that make up Jaugar Sound. Recorded in conjunction with Boleros Psicodélicos at his Electric Deluxe studio in Austin, Jaugar Sound was influenced by hip-hop, psychedelic soul and Italian film scores from the 1970s. Conceived during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Quesada recalled the evolution of the sessions for Jaguar Sound:
“I just rode my bike every single day and listened to The Alchemist. I’d come back home and crank out beats. Film scores and 1970s library music have always played a big part in my musical language as they paint a cinematic picture without words and that is very much something I draw influence from. It eventually got to the point where I wanted to bring them to life in my own way and turn them into songs. I started setting some aside that matched thematically, and I began recording live instrumentation. I find as I get older that sometimes I feel a responsibility to show the possibility to build bridges and coexist between different worlds. I want someone to discover something they normally wouldn’t entertain.”
Amos Lee – My Ideal
Acclaimed singer-songwriter Amos Lee released his tribute to hero and jazz great Chet Baker today. Following his 2022 LP Dreamland, My Ideal sees Lee harkening back to his jazz roots as well as his early career on legendary jazz label Blue Note Records while paying homage to Baker’s landmark 1954 LP, Chet Baker Sings.
“When you listen to Chet Baker, it sounds like he took a drag on a cigarette and the smoke just came out as a song, but it’s so much more than that,” Lee said. “The breath work, the pitch control, the poignancy, the gaiety; the deeper I got inside the music, the more I fell in love with everything about it…it was a revelatory experience. It didn’t just change the way I thought about these songs; it changed the way I thought about myself as a singer and as a songwriter. It changed everything.”
To record My Ideal, Amos enlisted a trio of jazz all-stars — David Streim (piano/trumpet), Madison Rast (bass) and Anwar Marshall (drums) — from his hometown of Philadelphia. Lee previewed the tribute collection with his version of the Baker classic “My Funny Valentine,” which Amos added his own spin on by subtitling it “For Oskar and Eli,” a nod to one of his favorite films, Let The Right One In.
Jimi Hendrix Experience – Los Angeles Forum: April 26, 1969
The Jimi Hendrix Experience Los Angeles Forum: April 26, 1969 arrived today via Legacy Recordings. Never before released in its entirety, longtime Hendrix producer/engineer Eddie Kramer remixed the original audio captured contemporaneously by Wally Heider and Bill Halverson. Kramer co-produced the record with Jimi’s sister and Experience Hendrix CEO Janie Hendrix and John McDermott.
In Spring 1969, The Jim Hendrix Experience — guitarist Jimi Hendrix, drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding — headlined a concert at a raucous, sold out Forum following Chicago Transit Authority (later renamed Chicago) and Cat Mother & The All Night Newsboys. The legendary guitarist and his band delivered a 10-song set that featured a mix of Hendrix classics as well as more obscure numbers.
Among those obscurities is the opener “Tax Free,” an instrumental cover from Swedish duo Hansson & Karlsson, with whom the trio shared bills with in Stockholm. Not yet the iconic reimagining it is today, the recording also boasts an early edition of Jimi’s take on “The Star Spangled Banner,” which he would immortalize four months later at Woodstock. Among some of the classic Hendrix tunes are “Foxey Lady,” “Red House,” “Purple Haze” and more. Jimi and company closed the concert by encapsulating Cream’s “Sunshine Of Your Love” within “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” showcasing the trio’s improvisational skill.
Dave Matthews Band – Live Trax Vol. 62: Blossom Music Center 6.25.10
Dave Matthews Band keeps the live archival releases flowing with Live Trax Vol. 62: Blossom Music Center 6.25.10. The live album documents the group’s June 25, 2010 tour stop at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. DMB’s lineup at the time featured founding members Dave Matthews (vocals, guitar), Boyd Tinsley (fiddle), Carter Beauford (drums) and Stefan Lessard (bass) along with Jeff Coffin (saxophone), Rashawn Ross (trumpet) and Tim Reynolds (guitar). The show came one month into a typically huge summer tour with a setlist consisting of four cuts from 2009’s Big Whiskey And The GrooGrux King mixed with career-spanning originals. A 19-minute “#41,” sizzling pairing of staples “Dancing Nancies” and “Warehouse” and a solo take on “Little Red Bird” from Dave complete with the story of the tune are among the highlights. Live Trax Vol. 62 is available now exclusively through DMB’s online store.
Compiled by Scott Bernstein, Nate Todd and Andy Kahn.
