Neil Young’s most recent album release will get the “deluxe box set” treatment in May.
A Letter Home, a collection of cover songs, will be issued as a CD, digital album and as a limited-edition set on Reprise Records on May 27. The box set is an expanded version of the vinyl edition of the album released earlier this month on Record Store Day by Jack White’s Third Man Records.
Below, you can check out a video of Young performing the album track “Needle of Death.”
Young recorded the collection with White on a refurbished 1947 Voice-O-Graph recording booth at Third Man's Nashville headquarters. Imagine a very simple recording studio not much larger than a phone booth and you'll get the idea.
Young describes the album as “an unheard collection of rediscovered songs from the past recorded on ancient electro-mechanical technology that captures and unleashes the essence of something that could have been gone forever.”
For the album, Young chose songs that have personal meaning for him, such as British folk artist Bert Jansch's "Needle of Death" (which inspired Young to write 1972's "Needle and the Damage Done"), Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country," Willie Nelson's "Crazy," Don Everly's "I Wonder If I Care as Much," Bruce Springsteen's "My Home Town" and many others.
Reprise will release the complete box set, which includes a special "direct feed from the booth" audiophile vinyl version and a DVD that captured the original electro-mechanical process, along with comments from the producers and recording engineers. The set includes:
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Standard audio LP pressed on 180-gram black vinyl
Audiophile LP pressed on 180-gram black vinyl
Standard audio CD
DVD with footage from the recording
12" x 12", 32-page full color booklet
A download card for the hi-res audiophile version of the album.
Seven six-inch vinyl discs pressed on clear vinyl. The seventh disc of this set features a version of Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" backed with an alternate take of "Crazy."
Christopher Scapelliti is editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine, the world’s longest-running guitar magazine, founded in 1967. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. He is the co-author of Guitar Aficionado: The Collections: The Most Famous, Rare, and Valuable Guitars in the World, a founding editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine, and a former editor with Guitar World, Guitar for the Practicing Musician and Maximum Guitar. Apart from guitars, he maintains a collection of more than 30 vintage analog synthesizers.
