Whiskeytown "Strangers Almanac" Deluxe Edition Info

[Jahfin]

http://nodepression.net/blogs/news/index.html

Deluxe reissue of Whiskeytown album due in March

Longtime subscriber Dean Dauphinais asked, and we thought the rest of you might be interested as well, so here are some details about the Deluxe Edition reissue of Whiskeytown's 1997 album Strangers Alamanac, due out March 4 via Universal.

Disc One of the two-disc set will feature the original album plus five tracks recorded live on Los Angeles radio station KCRW on September 10, 1997. Three of those tracks are album cuts ("Houses On The Hill", "Turn Around", "Somebody Remembers The Rose") and two were not on the album ("Nurse With The Pills", "I Don't Care What You Think About Me").

The 20 tracks on disc two include outtakes and alternate tracks from the Strangers Almanac recording sessions and demo sessions. A few of them were issued separate from Strangers Almanac at the time: "Theme For A Trucker", "My Heart Is Broken", and alternate versions of "The Strip" (a.k.a. "Dancing With The Women At The Bar") and "Houses On The Hill" comprised a double 7-inch gatefold release by Bloodshot Records in early 1997, and "Ticket Time" and Alejandro Escovedo's "The Rain Won't Help You When It's Over" were on a limited-edition bonus EP packaged with initial pressings of the Strangers Almanac CD.

Aside from "The Rain Won't Help You", other cover songs on Disc Two include Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams", Gram Parsons' "Luxury Liner", and a Ryan Adams solo version of Johnny Cash's "I Still Miss Someone".

Previously unreleased outtakes from the Strangers sessions featured on Disc Two include "Kiss & Make-Up", "Indiana Gown", "Barn's On Fire", "Whispers" (a.k.a. "Streets Of Sirens"), "Breathe", and "10 Seconds Till The End Of The World".

Disc Two also includes alternate studio versions of Strangers tracks "Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight", "16 Days", "Somebody Remembers The Rose", "Avenues", and "Turn Around".

[The Hammer of the Gods]

This may need to be on reserve for me for a while. I still need to get Pneumonia to round out their collection, etc.

[Jahfin]

This may need to be on reserve for me for a while. I still need to get Pneumonia to round out their collection, etc.

A lot of this material has been available for years in bootleg form but it will be nice to finally have some cleaned up versions of it. There's enough extra unofficial Whiskeytown stuff out there to release a box. Lost Highway has even threatened to in the past but one has never materialized. Perhaps after they finally release the long awaited Ryan Adams box, which is due this year.

[Jahfin]

More on the deluxe edition of Strangers Almanac in this press release:

Acclaimed Whiskeytown Album STRANGERS ALMANAC, Featuring Ryan Adams, Adds Previously Unreleased Demos and Other Recordings for Two-CD Deluxe Edition

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Jan. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Whiskeytown, the highly

acclaimed band of the alt-country/No Depression scene, who launched the

careers of four-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter-guitarist Ryan

Adams as well as that of fiddler-singer-songwriter Caitlin Cary and

singer-songwriter-guitarist Phil Wandscher will have its 1997 major label

debut, STRANGERS ALMANAC re-released in a deluxe, 2-CD edition on March 4,

2008 on Mood Food/Outpost/Geffen/Ume.

Disc one is the original album plus five previously unreleased live

public radio performances. 17 of the 19 recordings on the second disc were

previously unreleased recordings and are from the pre-production sessions

for STRANGERS ALMANAC (commonly referred to as the BARN'S ON FIRE

SESSIONS). Intimate acoustic demos of "16 Days," "Avenues" and "Excuse Me

While I Break My Own Heart," are included plus several original songs

making their premieres in the Whiskeytown catalog: "Kiss & Make-Up,"

"Indian Gown," "Barn's On Fire," "Streets Of Sirens," "Breathe," "Nurse

With The Pills" and "10 Seconds." Also included are covers of Fleetwood

Mac's "Dreams," Gram Parsons' "Luxury Liner," Johnny Cash's "I Still Miss

Someone" and an early version of the True Believers' "The Rain Won't Help

You When It's Over." For fans of Whiskeytown, the added tracks on this

DELUXE EDITION are a long-lost treasure.

Founded in Raleigh, NC, in 1994, Whiskeytown made its indie debut with

FAITHLESS STREET. Upon hearing this release the band was signed to Outpost,

a Geffen Records label. The liner notes featured in the STRANGERS ALMANAC -

DELUXE EDITION package tells the tale of what when Whiskeytown entered a

Nashville studio. The band, led by 22-year-old Adams, was in turmoil: There

was a new rhythm section (bassist Jeff Rice and drummer Steven Terry joined

Adams, Cary and Wandscher), Cary was in a relationship with the former

drummer Eric "Skillet" Gilmore, Adams had been offered his own solo deal

and they had no guitars because they had been misplaced during the trip to

Nashville. The acoustic guitar heard on STRANGERS ALMANAC was bought in a

pawnshop. Despite all the misfortunes the band sensed something special and

continued on.

Producer Jim Scott tempered some of Whiskeytown's spirit of reckless

abandon while still allowing the band's earthy emotion and beautiful

raggedness to shine through on tracks such as "Yesterday's News," "16

Days," "Inn Town," "Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight,"

"Everything I Do" and "Dancing With The Women At The Bar."

After one more album, Whiskeytown disbanded. Adams went on to a highly

successful solo career and Cary and Wandscher to other worthy musical

ventures. Now STRANGERS ALMANAC - DELUXE EDITION reveals why Whiskeytown is

still invoked as one of alt-country's all-time best.

[Jahfin]

Even more info here courtesy of the Aquarium Drunkard website:

http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2008/01/27...almanac-reissue

[Jahfin]

On the Wrong Side of Ryan Adams' Whiskeytown

By Jesse Hughey

Before Ryan Adams recorded every half-baked song idea he ever had, before he scored the model-actress girlfriends, before A.A., he was a mean, drunken son of a bitch.

He was also a hell of a lot more interesting.

March 4 will herald the release of a two-disc deluxe version of his former band Whiskeytown's sophomore album, Strangers Almanac. It will include the original album plus live songs, B-sides, covers and demos. Whiskeytown's performance at Trees on January 23, 1998, was a perfect example of just how powerful the band sounded during that era. It also showed what a self-destructive and vicious asshole Adams was.

You can read the rest of the article here.

[The Hammer of the Gods]

Hahahahaha that's an awesome article. Sounds like a rowdy fuckin' good time.

[Jahfin]

My favorite year: 1997 and Whiskeytown

In terms of artistic merit, the Triangle's present-day talent pool is as varied and deep as it's ever been. But in terms of mainstream buzz, our peak year was 1997 -- the closest the Triangle ever came to fulfilling the post-Nirvana "next Seattle" predictions that descended on Chapel Hill in the early '90s.

Squirrel Nut Zippers and Ben Folds Five both had hit singles and were on their way to platinum in 1997, which seemed improbable. Corrosion of Conformity would score a Grammy nomination late that year, which seemed impossible. And for a few heady summer months, Whiskeytown seemed on the verge of topping everybody else with its big-league debut, "Strangers Almanac," which has just been reissued in a lavish two-disc "Deluxe Edition" with a ton of bonus tracks and liner notes by No Depression co-editor Peter Blackstock.

Back in its day, I really expected "Strangers" to be gigantic, which didn't happen (although it has sold a respectable 141,000 copies to date). But even though it didn't break through, "Strangers" remains one of my favorite local records of all time. Of all the albums Ryan Adams has made, this is the one I love best, in part because it's so much of a piece with Raleigh; gotta love any record that namechecks the Comet Lounge, the bar where Adams used to sit and write songs on bar napkins (and where I interviewed him more than once back in the day). Listening to the reissued version of "Strangers," which includes the original album plus outtakes and demo versions of songs I've treasured on well-worn cassette tapes for years, it still sounds fabulous.

Click through to see a big ol' feature from July 1997 about Whiskeytown and the local alternative-country scene -- a story that was, yes, just a bit overblown. What can I say, I guess you just had to be there.

You can read the rest of the article here.

[dragster]

A lot of this material has been available for years in bootleg form but it will be nice to finally have some cleaned up versions of it. There's enough extra unofficial Whiskeytown stuff out there to release a box. Lost Highway has even threatened to in the past but one has never materialized. Perhaps after they finally release the long awaited Ryan Adams box, which is due this year.

Thanx for the enlightenment...I thought that was boot stuff!

[The Hammer of the Gods]

Fuck it, I may just get this version soon.

By the way, I FINALLY succumbed and downloaded the Side 4 disc to Gold, seeing as no versions of the album carry that disc anymore (They may be included in the box set, which I'm sure I'll get anyway) and I must say, I like it a LOT. In fact, he probably could've taken just about any track off the last half of the album proper and replaced it with anything off the bonus disc. I like the album as is, but I would like it even better if those songs were included.

By the way, I'm getting Pneumonia tomorrow.

[Jahfin]

Fuck it, I may just get this version soon.

Mine should be arriving most any day now along with the Deluxe Edition of Skynyrd's Street Survivors.

By the way, I FINALLY succumbed and downloaded the Side 4 disc to Gold, seeing as no versions of the album carry that disc anymore (They may be included in the box set, which I'm sure I'll get anyway) and I must say, I like it a LOT. In fact, he probably could've taken just about any track off the last half of the album proper and replaced it with anything off the bonus disc. I like the album as is, but I would like it even better if those songs were included.

I like everything on the bonus disc as well except for The Bar Is A Beautiful Place which I felt came off much better live.

By the way, I'm getting Pneumonia tomorrow.

I think you'll love it. A lot of folks consider it Ryan's first solo album in much the same way All Shook Down is considered Westerberg's first solo record. It's still Whiskeytown but it very much has Ryan (and producer Ethan Johns') stamp all over it.

[Jahfin]

Whiskeytown's Strangers Almanac gets double-disc reissue treatment

Talking with Ryan Adams, Caitlin Cary and Phil Wandscher

by Grayson Currin

In the early spring months of 1997, Ryan Adams and Phil Wandscher—22 and 26, respectively—had an appointment in Los Angeles. A week earlier, they had finished the bulk of the second album by their band, Whiskeytown, an unstable Raleigh quintet that had sparked a mighty buzz the year before with its independent label debut, Faithless Street.

Adams and Wandscher, who had been each other's foil since the band was formed, were bound for Ocean Way Studios—a premier room used by Miles Davis, Michael Jackson, Herbie Hancock and Joni Mitchell—to rendezvous with Jim Scott, the producer who had recorded the band's follow-up in Nashville. They boarded a plane at RDU.

Click on the link below for the rest of the article and a host of online extras including:

Full-length interviews with Ryan Adams and Caitlin Cary

Indy photographer Jeremy M. Lange's slide show of exclusive Whiskeytown Polaroids from Caitlin Cary featuring music by the band

The Indy's 1997 Strangers Almanac coverage and the 1997 No Depression cover story

Musicians, journalists and fans comment on Strangers Almanac 11 years after its release

Plus

Our review of the reissue

What happened to The Comet?

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A198799

[dragster]

Musicians, journalists and fans comment on Strangers Almanac 11 years after its release

Wow!!

[Jahfin]

Review of Strangers Almanac Deluxe Edition from Flagpole Magazine

[Jahfin]

Whiskeytown alum Mike Daly in a metal mood

Whiskeytown went through enough members that it's tough to track them as their creative lives evolve. But occasionally we have to try. And sometimes even we are surprised.

Original steel guitarist Mike Daly has resurfaced as an author. His new book is titled Time Flies When You're In A Coma: The Wisdom Of The Metal Gods, and will be published in December by the Plume imprint.

To read the rest of the article click here.