Steve Earle TRANSCENDENTAL BLUES Vinyl 2 LP Gatefold Record NEW

$

24

Steve Earle is all over the map on his new album, and not just Tennessee or even the South. Transcendental Blues is an intermittently twangy, often trippy and, yes, generally transcendent outing. The perspicacious Earle references Indian music on the title track, a droning, modal blues for the ages, and assays a Celtic-bluegrass hybrid on “The Galway Girl,” cementing a kind of stylistic mother-and-child reunion that sounds both natural and novel. Earle travels along the temporal dimension to the Sixties for the harp-happy Dylanesque romp “Steve’s Last Ramble,” and the garage-rocking “All of My Life” evincing a masterful understanding of an unwritten rule of the latter genre: The worse it’s played, the better it sounds. Keep digging into Transcendental Blues and you’ll hit straight-up bluegrass (“Until the Day I Die”), a Springsteen-by-way-of-the-Byrds confessional (“I Don’t Want to Lose You Yet”) and a sobering acoustic meditation on a death-row prisoner’s final hours (“Over Yonder [Jonathan’s Song]”). There’s even some basic uncut Steve Earle in a handful of restless (“Another Town”) and haunted (“Lonelier Than This”) numbers cut from rootsy, plain-spoken cloth. Still, Earle keeps his material hewed to a basic theme — the universality of the blues — and finds that home truth everywhere his muse takes him. In his own words, it all comes down to this: “Everybody wants to be somebody’s somethin’/Ain’t nobody wants to be blue.”  -  Rolling Stone

Tracklist

A1       Transcendental Blues 4:13

A2       Everyone's In Love With You            3:30

A3       Another Town 2:22

A4       I Can Wait      3:16

A5       The Boy Who Never Cried     3:46

B1       Steve's Last Ramble   3:38

B2       The Galway Girl         3:05

B3       Lonelier Than This     3:11

B4       Wherever I Go            1:57

B5       When I Fall     4:34

C1       I Don't Want To Lose You Yet          3:22

C2       Halo 'Round The Moon          2:13

C3       Until The Day I Die    3:22

C4       All My Life     3:27

C5       Over Yonder (Jonathan's Song)          3:52

Companies, etc.

Recorded At – Room & Board Recording

Recorded At – Totally Wired Studios

Licensed To – Warner Bros. Records Inc.

Phonographic Copyright (p) – Steve Earle

Copyright (c) – Steve Earle

Pressed By – Record Industry – 20307

Credits

A&R [Administration] – Debra Young (2), Elisa Sanders

Accordion – Sharon Shannon (tracks: B1, B2)

Acoustic Guitar – Steve Earle (tracks: A3, B1, B3 to C1, C5)

Arranged By [Strings] – Kristin Wilkinson (tracks: A5)

Art Direction, Design – Brad Talbott

Banjo – Darrell Scott (tracks: C3), Mary Shannon (tracks: B1, B2)

Bass – Dan Metz (tracks: A1), Kelley Looney (tracks: A2 to A5, B3, B4, C2, C5), Ray Kennedy (2) (tracks: B5, C4)

Bodhrán – Joyce Redmond (tracks: B2)

Bouzouki – Bill Wright (7) (tracks: B1, B2), David Steele (3) (tracks: A5)

Cello – John Catchings (tracks: A5)

Cover [Art & Illustration] – Tony Fitzpatrick (2)

Double Bass [Upright Bass] – Dennis Crouch (tracks: C3), James Blennerhassett (tracks: B1, B2)

Drums – Noel Bridgeman (tracks: B1, B2), Ron Vance (tracks: A1)

Drums, Percussion – Patrick Earle (tracks: B5, C4), Will Rigby (tracks: A2 to A5, B3, B4, C1, C2, C5)

Electric Guitar – David Steele (3) (tracks: A2 to A4, C1), Doug Lancio (tracks: B5), Ray Kennedy (2) (tracks: B3), Steve Earle (tracks: A2, B4)

Fiddle – Casey Driessen (tracks: C3), Liz Kane (tracks: B1, B2), Yvonne Kane (tracks: B1, B2)

Guitar – Jim Murray (8) (tracks: B2)

Guitar [Guitars] – Steve Earle (tracks: A1, C3, C4)

Guitar [Gut String Guitar] – Jim Murray (8) (tracks: B1)

Harmonica – Steve Earle (tracks: B5, C5)

Harmonium – Steve Earle (tracks: A1, A5, B1, C2, C4)

Lacquer Cut By – WG*

Layout – Ed Sherman (3)

Management – Danny Goldberg, Jesse Bauer

Mandola – David Steele (3) (tracks: C5)

Mandolin – Steve Earle (tracks: B2), Tim O'Brien (3) (tracks: C3)

Mastered By – Hank Williams (2)

Mixed By – Ray Kennedy (2), The Twangtrust

Mixed By [Assistant] – Patrick Earle

Organ – Benmont Tench (tracks: B4, C1)

Photography By – Adam W. Carlos, Michael Wilson (8), Sara Sharpe

Piano – Benmont Tench (tracks: B4)

Producer – The Twangtrust

Recorded By – Ciaran Byrne* (tracks: B1, B2), Paul Smith (33) (tracks: A1, B1, B2), Ray Kennedy (2) (tracks: A1 to A5)

Recorded By [Additional Recording] – Ray Kennedy (2) (tracks: A1 to A5, B3 to C5)

Recorded By [Assistant] – Keith McDonnell (tracks: B1, B2), Patrick Earle

Resonator Guitar – David Steele (3) (tracks: B3, C2), Steve Earle (tracks: C2)

Synthesizer [Mini-Moog] – Steve Earle (tracks: A1)

Tin Whistle – Dan Gillis (tracks: B2)

Twelve-String Guitar – Steve Earle (tracks: A4, A5)

Twelve-String Guitar [Electric] – David Steele (3) (tracks: B4)

Violin – David Angell (tracks: A5), David Davidson (tracks: A5)

Vocals – Darrell Scott (tracks: C3), Stacey Earle (tracks: B5), Steve Earle, Tim O'Brien (3) (tracks: C3), Tom Littlefield (tracks: A2, A4, C1)

Written-By – Steve Earle

Notes

2-LP set, 3 sides of music and an art etching on side 4.

Gatefold cover.

"Manufactured in The Netherlands" printed on labels of sides B and C.

"Printed in Canada" printed on the back of the cover.