Emmylou Harris Wrecking Ball Demos/Outtakes Woodland Studio, East Nashville TN January 1995 01 All My Tears 02 Goodbye 03 Every Grain of Sand 04 Orphan Girl 05 May This Be Love 06 Waltz Across Texas 07 Never Be Gold * 08 Sweet Old World 09 Deeper Well 10 Still Water 11 How Will I Ever Be Simple Again 12 Wrecking Ball studio -> ? -> TDK SA-X cassette -> Cool Edit Pro -> Wav -> FLAC * song title unknown, guessed from lyrics Low gen tape. Fidelity is very good; however, many of the tracks have a fair amount of hiss Three of the songs do not appear on the Wrecking Ball album. ===================== They seem to be rough mixes of the songs after the Nashville Woodland studios sessions, made to document and summarise the sessions ahead of the Kingsway studios sessions. Lanois has said that he likes to make a rough mix at the end of a day of recording (often to cassette in the old days!). According to interviews, a lot of the record was recorded live and then further elements were overdubbed. Most of these recordings sound very live, with minimal overdubs (for example in Goodbye Larry Mullen plays both hand drum and drum kit, etc.). The personnel is likely to be Lanois, Emmylou, Malcolm Burn, Tony Hall (who plays in many of the final versions of these songs) and U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr (he plays drums on the finished versions of most of these songs. Lanois says audibly, "bridge, Larry" on May this be love and the drums often sound a lot (if not exactly) like the final ones). Intriguingly, Lanois counts in one of the songs in French. Maybe Tony Hall, being from New Orleans and Malcolm Burn being Canadian they speak French? As guests, at least Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle seem to be there (Lucinda's finger-picked guitar, which Lanois refers to in the "Building the Wrecking Ball" audio interview, can be clearly heard). Steve Earle's acoustic also appears to be there during Goodbye. It also includes three songs that were not on the final version of the CD: Still Water: from Daniel Lanois' Acadie Record, this is a new version, a nice re-reading with great dobro guitar from Lanois. Surprisingly, some elements from this version seem to have been used in the official version of "Deeper Well" (more on this below). "How will I ever be simple again?" is a Richard Thompson song. The lyrics are quite beautiful (you can find them as well as the chords at www.olga.net), the war-related imagery and the sparse drums/mandolin main setting remind me in some ways of Where will I be? I think it is good enough to have been on the record About "Never be gold" I haven't found anything. It seems too much like traditional country to be a Lanois or Emmylou Harris original, but I don't know... I find it a bit weaker than the rest of the tracks, but still ok, with good Emmylou vocals and Lanois guitar. Compared to the Wrecking Ball versions, most of the songs are still lacking backing vocals (from Neil Young, Daryl Johnson, etc.), and other elements (Goodbye lacks Danny's additional electric guitar, All my tears the bass keyboard, etc.), but are probably the same basic tracks as the final versions. One where the record version is almost certainly a completely different take is Deeper well, because of the different tempo. Also, Waltz across Texas has slightly different lyrics and what sounds like a different vocal take. The post-production effects used in the mix (for example for drums) are also in some cases noticeably different. These remaining elements were mostly added to these tracks in overdub sessions at Kingsway Studios, New Orleans, with Brian Blade, Daryl Johnson, and all the remaining guests. It was there as well that most likely the additional songs (Where will I be?, Going back to Harlan, most of the finished version of Deeper Well and Blackhawk) were recorded... These rough mixes allow a great insight into the recording process and the evolution of the songs. Deeper Well, for example, went from the very fast bluegrassy acoustic demo of which there is a snippet in the "Building the Wrecking Ball" audio documentary, to the version presented here (almost only drums and weird sound effects, still pretty fast) to the slower version from the finished CD we know and love. If you listen to the version of "Still Water" presented here, you can hear some elements that ended up in the "Wrecking Ball" version of Deeper Well (specifically the drums, the bass riffs and the echo piano). There seems to be an established Lanois technique of using unused tracks as the basis for new tracks (in the same sense that a discarded drum track for the Neville Brothers' song Voodoo ended up being used in "The maker" ).