Billy Bragg & Wilco
Album: Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions
Label: Nonesuch
Tracks: 47
Website: http://www.nonesuch.com

By now, most of you will be familiar with the history of this project. Basically, back in the late 1990s, Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora granted to Billy Bragg access to a stash of unreleased Guthrie lyrics, which had lain dormant amongst his belongings since his death in 1967. She invited Bragg to set some of them to music, during the process of which the alt-country outfit Wilco, principally Jeff Tweedy, came on board to help out and, together with some assistance from Corey Harris and Natalie Merchant, the Mermaid Avenue sessions took place.

The original mission directive was to sift through the vast stash of lyrics, and in effect cherrypick the most suitable for recording and presenting to the world, and so in 1998 what might be regarded as the best of the bunch was released, containing 15 songs that presented a portrait of Guthrie that was more revealing of the man and his concerns than had been suspected from the music that had been hitherto available. That first Mermaid Avenue record also did the careers of Bragg and Tweedy a lot of good, both raising their profiles and providing them with new material to grace their acts. Some of the songs almost seemed tailor-made for them, indeed, and the album contained a high proportion of standout material. Of the two protagonists, Billy perhaps came off the better on that set, but there wasn't a duff song on it, and so successful was that record that a volume 2, containing a further 15 tracks from the same sessions, followed fairly swiftly in 2000.

Perhaps inevitably, some of the material on that second volume didn't strike the same rich vein of gold, and the standard was more wayward, but there was still a good proportion of decent material and this time the critical consensus seemed weighted more towards Tweedy as the more successful interpreter of the Guthrie lyrics by a slight margin. I won't expend valuable words reviewing the contents of those two volumes, since most of you will already own one or both, but suffice to say that they're presented on this set in complete, and remastered, versions, as part of a deluxe edition ostensibly to celebrate Guthrie's centenary. (This edition also contains a DVD of Man In The Sand, Kim Hopkins' 1999 documentary of the sessions, and a lavish booklet which includes an essay by Nora herself - but sadly neither of these items were made available for review.)

The major interest for fans of the original two volumes, however, will be the presence of Disc 3, which collects together the remaining tracks recorded at the original sessions - 17 tracks, of whose existence I for one had been previously unaware. In stature, they're for the most part rather more than just leftovers or outtakes, and contain some really good stuff both in terms of performance and standard of material, with only a couple of comparatively dubious items. And some items fade rather disconcertingly, ostensibly betraying their origins as fragments rather than complete finished lyrics. While sure, there's nothing quite approaching the standard of volume 1 on this third disc, but we're not scraping the barrel at all, and it's salutary to be reminded that there remains a staggering amount of material in the archive yet to be tapped (some of which, mostly that dating from Guthrie's years in LA, has been visited by Jay Farrar for the New Multitudes project, of which more in another review…). The main thing is that together the three volumes of Mermaid Avenue session recordings together present a more comprehensive, rounded portrait of Guthrie the man and his wide-ranging concerns than had hitherto been recognised. After all, the famous dustbowl balladeer had views on everything from flying saucers to Ingrid Bergman, as we had discovered from volumes 1 and 2…

Although it's been acknowledged that Bragg and Tweedy proved themselves pretty much ideal interpreters for the newly-discovered material, the critical jury's always been out on whether either of them conveys more authentically than the other the essence of Woody Guthrie. Certainly Bragg's emblematic presence is perceived as more in keeping with Guthrie's popular image, but the hard fact is that he could (can) never sound authentically American, whereas Tweedy's accent is self-evidently more naturally credible. But then again, Guthrie's own stage persona encompassed contradictions such as his adoption of a "faked" rural accent - so maybe Bragg's character is not so inaccurate after all. And he's a more versatile singer than Tweedy, for he can do gritty or tender, exposed or savvy, rousing or contemplative. He comes off particularly well in the folkier items on the third disc - Go Down To The Water, Bugeye Jim and Jailcell Blues for instance, and Ought To Be Satisfied Now is a dark classic, while in contrast The Jolly Banker is an insidiously catchy little ditty which could've been written yesterday and the surprisingly brief singalong Give Me A Nail is done in the style of the 60s folk-rock protest movement, like a lost Byrds/electric-Dylan number. However, Tweedy comes into his own on the rootsy Chain Of Broken Hearts. I was a mite puzzled at the inclusion of When The Roses Bloom Again, which I came across on a record by Laura Cantrell a while back - it was credited to Will J. Cobb, if I remember aright… - but the version recorded here sounds just fine (maybe the booklet explains its inclusion?)…

Anyway, I still feel able to recommend this box, even (on balance) also to folks who have either or both of the original Mermaid Avenue albums, not least for the role it now can be seen to play cumulatively in the major expansion of our knowledge of Guthrie and his writings. As for his songs, although many are definitively of their era, just as many prove timeless indeed; these three discs leave us eager to explore the staggering amount of treasure trove left in them thar archives.

David Kidman