Neil Young recorded his entire upcoming album, A Letter Home, in Jack White’s 1947 Voice-o-Graph vinyl record recording booth at Third Man Records in Nashville.
Young calls the the album “retro-tech,” and says the album “sounds like Jimmie Rogers or something.”
“Well, A Letter Home is going to be very confusing to people because it is retro-tech,” Young told Spin’s Garrett Kemps. “Retro-tech means recorded in a 1940s recording booth. A phone booth. It’s all acoustic with a harmonica inside a closed space, with one mic to vinyl. Directly to vinyl.”
Young told Rolling Stone the album is now “likely” to be released in the spring.
“It’s an amazing time capsule. From nothing, to nowhere,” Young told Rolling Stone’s Gavin Edwards. “No one knows why. It’s a good piece, a real nice piece. I look forward to people getting it, especially in light of what I’m doing now. It’s coming out pretty soon.”
Young said that Jack White plays on two of the tracks. The album is being released on White’s Third Man Records.
In December 2013, the Neil Young website Thrasher’s Wheat had these quotes from a source: “It is an album of covers. In it, as anticipated, he pays tribute to other renowned singer-songwriters. There are 12 tracks on it. There are no Neil Young originals…”
I’ve speculated that the album will include “Needle of Death,” as well as Phil Ochs “Changes” Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain,” Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby” and Tim Hardin’s “Reason To Believe,” songs that Young played at the 2013 Farm Aid concert.
On Neil Young’s and Third Man’s websites the album was described as “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……”
– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post –