Wesley Stace to release "Wesley Stace’s John Wesley Harding" on Yep Roc.
Wesley Stace to release new album
Wesley Stace’s John Wesley Harding
24th February 2017
Wesley Stace, until recently John Wesley Harding, is a one-off. He is almost certainly the only person to have been nominated for a Guardian First Book Award (for his novel, Misfortune) and to have sung duets with both Bruce Springsteen and Lou Reed; to have written an international bestseller and to have his own monthly NYC show, Cabinet of Wonders – described by The New Yorker as “A vaudeville night that combines music and literature, resulting in one of the finest nights of entertainment this city has to offer”, and which has hosted everyone from Salman Rushdie to Aaron Neville; to have taught at Princeton University, and to have co-written a recent indie classic – Eleanor Friedberger’s Personal Record; to have a song on the High Fidelity soundtrack, and to have written extensively for the TLS and the Wall Street Journal. Wesley Stace is from Hastings but hasn’t lived there in a while. Wesley Stace’s John Wesley Harding is his 20th record, more or less.
Listen to the first single “Let’s Evaporate” (feat. The Jayhawks)
Recorded with The Jayhawks – Gary Louris, Marc Perlman, Tim O’Reagan, and Karen Grotberg – at Flowers Studio in Minneapolis, the album was co-produced by Stace and Gary Louris. The record features 12 tracks chosen for these sessions by Stace, who says, “I always have a lot of songs, so I listened to every unused song I had, many of them quite recent, and picked 11 that I thought The Jayhawks (or The Wezhawks, as we started to call it) would sound great on. I also included a cover, “Don’t Turn Me Loose,” which is where the idea of our making a record together had originated: I saw them live and thought they’d sound great playing that song, and then I thought: and I should be singing it! And they liked the idea. And we did these twelve songs, and that’s it. Everything we recorded is on the record. No outtakes.”
Wesley Stace’s John Wesley Harding will be released on February 24, 2017 via Yep Roc Records
Tracklisting
1. I Don’t Wana Rock ‘n Roll
2. You’re a Song
3. Better Tell No One Your Dreams
4. How To Fall
5. For Me and You
6. Hastings Pier
7. Audience of One
8. Don’t Turn Me Loose
9. The Wilderness Years
10. What You Want Belongs to You
11. Remember Me
12. Let’s Evaporate