Posts Tagged ‘A Letter Home’
Written by Shar on 19 April 2014
Surprise is right!
Neil Young just pulled a Beyoncé, writes COS (Consequence of Sound).
The legendary singer-songwriter has released his new covers album, A Letter Home. The vinyl record, spanning 10 tracks, is now available for purchase through Third Man Records.
The album was recorded at Jack White’s Third Man Records HQ in Nashville, inside a 1940s-era Voice-o-Graph recording booth. White himself is featured on two tracks.
The album includes covers of songs by equally illustrious singer-songwriters, including Bruce Springsteen (“My Hometown”), Bob Dylan (“Girl From The North Country”), and Willie Nelson (“On The Road Again”), among others.
The ordering page includes images of the cover art and the back cover art, which lists Jack White, who appears on the album, and Neil Young as “Reproducers.”
Young described the Voice-O-Graph as “A phone booth. It’s all acoustic with a harmonica inside a closed space, with one mic to vinyl.” It results in a “lo-fi analog record”, which Young described as “retro-tech.” However, in keeping with the spirit of his new music service Pono, it’ll feature a high-resolution sound. As he explained, “You can make a lo-fi, analog record, direct to vinyl, transfer it to 192, and you have a high res copy of a lo-fi vinyl record.”
A Letter Home Tracklist: 01. “Changes” (Phil Ochs) 02. “Girl From The North Country” (Bob Dylan) 03. “Needle of Death” (Bert Jansch) 04. “Early Morning Rain” (Gordon Lightfoot) 05. “Reason To Believe” (Tim Hardin) 06. “On The Road Again” (Willie Nelson) 07. “If You Could Only Read My Mind” (Gordon Lightfoot) 08. “Since I Met You Baby” (Ivory Joe Hunter) 09. “My Hometown” (Bruce Springsteen) 10. “I Wonder If I Care As Much” (Everly Brothers)
Source: http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/04/surprise-neil-young-releases-new-album-a-letter-home-featuring-jack-white/
Tags: A Letter Home, cover songs, Jack White, Recording Booth, Third Man Records, Voice-o-Graph
Posted in Album Info, News / Article | Comments Off on Neil Young releases “A Letter Home”
Written by Shar on 15 March 2014
“Sometimes what I love is not what other people love, but that’s okay. It doesn’t matter. That’s why I’m still here.” ~N.Y.
In an interview with Spin Neil Young says he is penning a Sci-fi story.
After listening to Neil’s keynote address at SXSW on March 11, 2014, SPIN sat down with Young in a suite at an out-of-the-way hotel in Austin to talk music, sound, saturation, retro-tech, new albums, and writing.
And then I’m writing another book right now, which is a science fiction book. I’m well into it, maybe 100 pages.
When do you like to write? I write on airplanes and in hotels. It keeps me off the street.
What’s the science-fiction book about?
Hmmm.
Do we have to wait? It’s great. I think it’s better to wait. It’s crazy to talk about. Too fucking weird. But it’s great, I love it. I love writing sci-fi. I’m enjoying the hell out of it.
Wow!
Read the entire interview at: http://www.spin.com/#articles/neil-young-pono-music-new-album-a-letter-home-sxsw-2014-interview/
Shar out!
Tags: A Letter Home, Jack White, pono, Ponomusic, retro-tech, South by Southwest Festival, Spin, SWSW
Posted in Book Info, Interviews, News / Article, Pono | Comments Off on Beam me up! Young writing sci-fi?
Written by Shar on 14 March 2014
Neil Young tells Billboard we can expect to hear “A Letter Home,” the album he recorded at Jack White’s Third Man studio in Nashville, “very soon,” most likely this spring.
The idea for “A Letter Home” appeared to be hatched by a version of Bert Jansch’s “The Needle of Death,” which Young recorded for Record Store Day 2013 in White’s 1947 Voice-o-Graph booth. “They’re songs that I love, songs that changed my life, songs that made it so that I understood what someone else was saying to me, songs by greater writers.”
Also, if Young has his way, he’ll also do something symphonic in the near future.
“I’d like to make a record with a full-blown orchestra, live — a mono recording with one mic,” he explains. “I want to do something like that where we really record what happened, with one point of view and the musicians moved closer and farther away, the way it was done in the past. To me that’s a challenge and it’s a sound that’s unbelievable, and you can’t get it any other way. So I’m into doing that.”
Young is also in “the final editing stages” for his second book, “Special Deluxe,” a follow-up to his 2012 memoir “Waging Heavy Peace.” This book, Young says, will be out this year and “focuses on my life as regards to my transportation, as regards to my love for cars. So it’s a history through automobiles, and it’s a history of automobiles and it’s a history of the environmental impact of automobiles. And it’s a projection into the future of automobiles. It has it’s own agenda that develops over the book.”
Read story at: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/5930484/neil-youngs-agenda-jack-white-project-second-book-full-blown-orchestra-album
Tags: A Letter Home, Billboard, Full Orchestra Album, Jack White, Special Deluxe, Waging Heavy Peace
Posted in Album Info, Book Info, Interviews, News / Article | Comments Off on Neil Young’s Agenda: Jack White Project, Second Book, ‘Full-Blown Orchestra’ Album
Written by bnbrainer on 26 January 2014
Neil Young to launch music player at SXSW
January 23, 2014, Yahoo.
Neil Young will launch his new music player PONO at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music conference in Austin, Texas in March. Young was awarded the President’s Merit Award from the Producers and Engineers arm of the Recording Academy and said Pono would be launched at SXSW.
Pono is a high quality digital music player that will play the sound as it was recorded in the studio. It will become the hi-tech alternative to low quality MP3 players such as the iPod.
In his speech for the Academy, Young said: “Being impressed by something, and how cool it is, and how sharp it is, and how snappy it is, is one thing, and that translates into almost any media. But when you’re singing something very soulful from your heart, and the echo is perfect and everything’s great and you’re using maybe an acoustic chamber and everything sounds great. And then you listen to it and you love it, but you hear it somewhere else and it’s gone – that’s terrible.
“We don’t like that. Not many of us like that, we’re not happy about it. So we’re trying to change that, and we’re trying to make it better. We’re trying to make music sound technically better, and that’s what I want to do. So we have a player that plays whatever the musicians’ made digitally, and that’s going to come out.
“We’re announcing that at SXSW, we’re introducing it, it’s called Pono, and that’s my commercial, thank you very much.”
:: PONO website
:: PONO technicals: http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
:: Nyquist sampling theorem: Wikipedia |
New album: “A Letter Home”
Third Man Records phone booth
Young also set the record straight about rumours of a Jack White duets album. Young states: “False Rumours: Neil Young and Jack White are not doing a record of duets as has been erroneously posted on various outlets. We are certain those rumours have no basis in truth.”
In March, Young will release a new album, A Letter Home, which he describes as “one of the lowest-tech experiences I’ve ever had.” Apparently this is supposed to appear on Jack White’s THIRD MAN record label.
see BNB article:
Tags: A Letter Home, digital audio, Jack White, pono, SXSW, Third Man Records
Posted in News / Article | Comments Off on PONO to be released
Written by bnbrainer on 22 January 2014
Update:
Third Man Records unearths NEIL YOUNG’s A LETTER HOME
An unheard collection of rediscovered songs from the past recorded on ancient electro-mechanical technology captures and unleashes the essence of something that could have been gone forever. — Homer Grosvenor
http://thirdmanrecords.com/news
Neil Young’s Low-Tech New Album ‘A Letter Home’ Due in March.
“It’s one of the lowest-tech experiences I’ve ever had,” he tells Rolling Stone.
Your next record’s coming out in March?
Yeah, it’s one of the lowest-tech experiences I’ve ever had.
How come?
You’ll hear it. It’s called A Letter Home.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-youngs-low-tech-new-album-a-letter-home-due-in-march-20140122
Update (2):
Third Man Records phone booth
It seems likely that Young recorded the album on a 1947 Voice-o-Graph machine located at Third Man’s Nashville headquarters.
“There’s something that happens with one mic,” Young said Tuesday night as he accepted the President’s Merit Award from the Producers & Engineers Wing. “When everyone sings into one mic, when everybody plays into the same mic: I’ve just never been able to do that, with some rare instances like when I record in a recording booth from a 1940s state fair. I got that sound by closing myself into a telephone booth. And I notice, it sounds just like an old record. And I like the sound of old records! I’ve always loved that.”
Originally made in 1947, the Voice-o-Graph is the only public vinyl record recording booth of its kind left in the world. After refurbishing it, Third Man opened the booth on Record Store Day 2013 and now anyone can come in and record up to two minutes of audio that’s cut onto a six-inch phonograph disc. Young stopped by Third Man last year where he recorded a cover of Bert Jansch’s “The Needle of Death” on the Voice-o-Graph last year for a special tribute to the acoustic guitar master.
Read more: rollingstone.com/music/news/third-man-records-releasing-neil-youngs-a-letter-home-20140123
Tags: A Letter Home, new album, phone booth, Voice-o-Graph
Posted in Album Info, News / Article | 1 Comment »
Surprise is right!
memphish on 
Albert Stromann on 
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