Sold Date: September 10, 2024
Start Date: September 9, 2024
Final Price: $179.99 (USD)
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BILLY BRAGG & WILCO Mermaid Avenue hails from 2013 and is a SEALED U.S. 2 LP 180 gram set (dinged corner front top right and creased back left ).  When American folk legend Woody Guthrie died in 1967, at the age of 55, among his stored belongings were thousands of complete song lyrics for which he had not written out music or made recordings. Many of them had been written in the 1940s and ’50s, in the Guthrie family home on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, Brooklyn. The lyrics remained in boxes for decades, but once his daughter Nora found them in the 1990s, she knew they had to be shared. 

She approached English singer-songwriter and activist Billy Bragg to select some to set to music. The Chicago rock band Wilco came aboard soon after, with Jeff Tweedy writing music - along with his late bandmate Jay Bennett on some songs - and the band recording with both Tweedy and Bragg on vocals. Natalie Merchant joined the group to sing a duet with Bragg and two solo songs, and guitarist/singer Corey Harris, who wrote two songs and co-wrote one, performed on many tracks. 

In 1998, the first batch of songs, heard here, was released to critical acclaim as Mermaid Avenue, receiving a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album. The second volume followed in 2000 and a third volume, issued in conjunction with the Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions set and comprised of 17 previously unreleased recordings from the original sessions, was unveiled in 2012.

The original vinyl pressing of Billy Bragg And Wilco's Mermaid Avenue, Vol. I has long been out of print and hard to find. This limited edition reissue brings the record back to vinyl on two 180 gram LPs housed in a gatefold double-pocket wrapped jacket, with original artwork.

LP1

1.  Walt Whitman's Niece

2.  California Stars  

3.  Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key

4.  Birds And Ships feat. Natalie Merchant

5.  Hoodoo Voodoo  

6.  She Came Along To Me

7.  At My Window Sad And Lonely

LP2

1.  Ingrid Bergman

2.  Christ For President

3.  I Guess I Planted

4.  One By One

5.  Eisler On The Go

6.  Hesitating Beauty

7.  Another Man's Done Gone

8.  The Unwelcome Guest