Mermaid Avenue
Mermaid Avenue II
Billy Bragg and Wilco

"Mermaid Avenue is the name of the street in Coney Island, Brooklyn, that was home to Woody Guthrie and his wife, Marjorie and their kids in the years that followed World War II.
...

Despite the fact that his recording career was more or less over by 1947, he carried on writing songs until he became too ill to hold a pencil. The last years of his life were spent in the Brooklyn State Hospital and when he died in 1967, the tunes that he had dreamt up for these hundreds of unrecorded songs, tunes he had carried in his head all his life were lost forever.

The tunes may have been lost but the songs live. In 1995 Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora approached Billy Bragg on writing music to these lyrics. There are over 1,000 complete lyrics in the Woody Guthrie archive. Billy Bragg brought in Wilco to collaborate with him.

Mermaid Avenue was released in 1998 and Mermaid Avenue II in 2000. There are those that feel that Mermaid Avenue II is the lesser. I can't make that distinction. They both are full of magic. It is such an awesome thing to be hearing these *new* Woody Guthrie songs. Billy Bragg and Wilco bring Woody's words to life. An incredible collaboration.

Billy Bragg's web site has pages with lyrics, liner notes, and RealAudio bits.

Mermaid Avenue
Mermaid Avenue Vol. II

The Amazon links where you can read more reviews.

Mermaid Avenue
Mermaid Avenue Vol. II

I'm listening to Mermaid Avenue II. Derek lent me Mermaid Avenue sometime back and then took it away. I guess I'll just have to get my own copy. But Mermaid Avenue II is more than enough until I have them both.

Remember the Mountain Bed

Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds:
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves, face, breast, hips and thighs,
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes.

Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled woodvines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me.

Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky,
As your fingers played with grassy moss, and limber did you lie:
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there.

And that's just the beginning of an incredible love song. There is so much on this CD.

All you Fascists

I'm gonna tell all you fascists you may be surprised
The people in this world are getting organized
You're bound to lose, you fascists are bound to lose

Some things don't change. Timeless.