Sold Date: November 17, 2018
Start Date: November 12, 2018
Final Price: £145.00 (GBP)
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Box set. With book 4 cds and vinyl.

Over four years in development, Evening Blue is the first book-set to chronicle and celebrate Chris Wood’s life in music from co-founding Traffic via his many collaborations with the likes of John Martyn, The Wailers’ Tyrone Downie, Free and many others to his own solo work.

The first edition, limited to 1,000 individually numbered copies.

Evening Blue has been curated in close collaboration with Steph Wood who administers her brother’s estate. Included are:

A first pressing of Chris’s never-released solo LP on 180gsm vinyl. The ¼” reels were compiled and sequenced by Chris with engineer Terry Barham at Island’s Fall Out Shelter studio in Hammersmith on Sunday, October 1st 1978. Long thought lost, the masters were discovered by chance in a barn in the West of England during the spring of 2013. While some titles are known, none of the selections have previously been heard.

Side Two: Jam In Butter | Moon Child Vulcan | Tone Blind Rhythm Deaf | Birth In A Day

It will be housed in a 200+ page hardback book which includes over 420 images, the majority of which have not been seen before. The text has been abridged and edited from Dan Ropek’s biography of Chris and, together with Ropek’s own interviews with the late Jim Capaldi and Paul Medcalf as well as many of Chris’s friends and musical colleagues throughout his life, Evening Blue includes exclusive interviews with: Steph Wood and Anna Capaldi-Gilbey; studio engineers Dick Cuthell, Terry Barham and Brian Humphries; musicians Mike Kellie, Steve Winwood, Poli Palmer and Gordon Jackson as well as Muscle Shoals Swampers Charles Rose and David Hood; photographers Brian Cooke, Richard Keith Wolff, Dina Regine, Barrie Wentzell, David Miller, Dan Cuny and Gered Mankowitz.

The CDs include music drawn from Chris’s entire career with his solo recordings taking centre-stage. Evening Blue also includes alternate takes and mixes as well as previously unheard compositions and never-before-heard home demos and other sketches.

Naturally, there is music from Traffic as well as recordings by Gordon Jackson, John Martyn, Dave Mason, Sky, Jim Capaldi, Bobby Whitlock, Airforce, Martha Velez, Shawn Phillips and others.

The set also features previously unheard collaborative work with The Wailers’ keyboard player, Tyrone Downie as well as Rebop Kwaku Baah, Remi Kabaka, Dr John and Jeanette Jacobs. Tracks from the only known-to-survive recordings by the short-lived Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog line-up are also included.

With only a couple of exceptions (where the original masters no longer exist) the selections have been re-mastered by Richard Whittaker in the UK from the original 1⁄4”, 1” or 2” analog tapes.

BBC Review

Mojo "Where flute and sax sparred with Latin Jamacian and African rhytms and anything was possible"

Record Collector gave it one of only three 5star reviews in issue 415 of the magazine

Uncut "This meticulous 6CD set marks the first thorough overview of Jess Roden’s career

The Blue Moment "There are surprises all over these CDs, some of them unearthed from unlabelled tape boxes that had lain undisturbed in obscure vaults for decades."

Note that I am on holiday till 1st October