10.04.2024
ELVIS COSTELLO SHARES UNRELEASED LIVE PERFORMANCE OF WAYLON JENNINGS CLASSIC “ONLY DADDY THAT’LL WALK THE LINE” RECORDED AT LONDON’S ROYAL ALBERT HALL IN 1987
NEVER-BEFORE-RELEASED CONCERT INCLUDED ON FORTHCOMING KING OF AMERICA &
OTHER REALMS OUT NOVEMBER 1 VIA UMe
NEW SIX-DISC BOX SET TRACES THE SONGWRITER’S MUSICAL ODYSSEY THROUGH
AMERICA, FROM HOLLYWOOD TO THE SOUTH AND BEYOND, AND LONGTIME CREATIVE
PARTNERSHIP WITH T BONE BURNETT
DEFINITIVE COLLECTION BOASTS NEW 2024 REMASTER OF CLASSIC 1986 ALBUM,
KING OF AMERICA; NEWLY DISCOVERED “RED BUS DEMOS” AND A COLLECTION OF
SONGS AND COLLABORATIONS FROM COSTELLO’S RECORDING ADVENTURES ACROSS THE U.S., INCLUDING UNRELEASED DEMOS, OUTTAKES AND LIVE RECORDINGS
In early 1987 Elvis Costello played a six-night, sold-out stand at the Royal
Albert Hall in London; three shows with the Attractions and three
devoted to his 1986 album, King Of America, and other realms, with a
band billed as The Confederates (the dictionary definition for ally or
accomplice and nothing to do with America’s Civil War), featuring
guitarist James Burton and bassist Jerry Scheff from Elvis Presley’s
legendary TCB Band, drummer Jim Keltner, keyboardist Benmont Tench of
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and T-Bone Wolk, who added accordion and
mandolin to the ensemble. The electrifying never-before-released concert
is included on the six-disc box set King Of America & Other Realms,
releasing November 1 via UMe, and is being previewed today with
Costello’s performance of “Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line,” written by
Jimmy Bryant and made famous by Waylon Jennings.
The third disc of the set, Kings Of America Live At The Royal Albert
Hall, recorded on January 27, 1987 and newly mixed from the multitrack
tapes, features live renditions of several King Of America titles along
with Costello’s take on a host of great American songwriter’s songs
including Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham’s “It Tears Me Up,” Arthur
Alexander’s “Sally Sue Brown,” Allen Toussaint’s “Riverboat,” Sonny Boy
Williamson’s “Your Funeral And My Trial,” Mose Allison’s “Your Mind Is
On Vacation,” Ray Charles’ “What Would I Do Without You,” Jesse
Winchester’s “Payday,” Dave Bartholomew’s “That’s How You Got Killed
Before” and Buddy Holly’s “True Love Ways.”
Elvis Costello’s King Of America & Other Realms celebrates and explores
the songwriter’s lifelong love, fascination, and influence of American
music, spanning his many albums and inspired collaborations with some of
the most celebrated musicians, songwriters and producers in this music,
including his longtime creative partnership with T Bone Burnett.
Compiled by Elvis Costello, the six-disc Super Deluxe Edition box set,
King Of America & Other Realms, releasing November 1 via UMe, traces
Costello’s musical travels from Hollywood, Calif. – where the King Of
America album was recorded – to a brand-new take on that album’s opener,
“Brilliant Mistake,” recorded in Cape Fear, N.C. in early 2024, via
Costello’s recording adventures in New Orleans, Oxford and Clarksdale,
Miss., Nashville and Memphis, Tenn. This one-of-a-kind 97-track musical
journey is guided by Costello in a newly self-penned 35-page essay
beautifully illustrated with numerous rare and never-before-seen photos
in a 57-page booklet. The discs are housed in a handsome 12” x 11.5”
package. A startlingly beautiful cover shot by Terence Donovan reveals
the majesty and absurdity of a king in his velvet and bejeweled crown
and embroidered denim jacket.
King Of America & Other Realms is anchored by a new 2024 remaster from
the original master tapes of Costello’s 1986 career-defining, T Bone
Burnett-produced album, King Of America, and features solo demos from
1985, including never previously released demos cut at Red Bus Recording
Studios in London in the months prior to the King Of America sessions in
Hollywood and mixed from newly discovered multitrack tapes; a 17-song
Royal Albert Hall concert from 1987 in London, mixed from multitrack
tapes; and a three-disc compendium of recordings and collaborations from
across the last four decades, including previously unreleased demos,
outtakes and live recordings. The collection was produced by Elvis
Costello and Steve Berkowitz.
In addition to the Super Deluxe Edition box set, King Of America & Other
Realms will also be available on 2CD with the new 2024 remaster of the
album on CD1 and highlights from the box set on CD2, including studio
recordings, demos and live recordings. The new remaster of King Of
America will be available separately on both 140-gram black vinyl as
well as limited edition 140-gram gold nugget color vinyl, exclusively
via ElvisCostello.com, uDiscover Music and Sound of Vinyl.
Titled Le Roi Sans Sabots, the second disc of King Of America & Other
Realms collects Costello’s solo demos from 1985, including performances
recently unearthed from two reels of demo recordings, cut at London’s
Red Bus Recording Studios in the months prior to the King Of America
sessions in Hollywood. “Brilliant Mistake” and “Blue Chair” are
presented with radically different lyrics, shedding new light on the
intention of key songs from the King Of America album. “Deportee” –
later brutalized and distorted on “Goodbye Cruel World” – is heard in a
direct and emotional vocal performance with acoustic guitar. Meanwhile,
an early sketch of “Next Time Round” shows that it was actually written
for King Of America but not recorded again until the album, Blood &
Chocolate, released eight months later in September 1986. Also included
is an outtake of “Shoes Without Heels,” a contender for King Of America
that ultimately didn’t make the album; a different recording of the song
would eventually be released on the 1987 rarities and unreleased tracks
collection, Out Of Our Idiot.
The disc is bookended by the opening and closing title themes by The
Coward Brothers, the pseudonymous side project that Costello and T Bone
Burnett adopted for a series of tours in ’84 and ’85. The Red Bus Demos
are sequenced together with previously released solo sessions recorded
at Hollywood’s Ocean Way Studios. “If you are familiar with the songs of
King Of America and then listen to the collection of sketches and solo
performances on ‘Le Roi Sans Sabots’ you may see a different picture,”
Costello writes in the accompanying essay, adding, “Assembling ‘Le Roi
Sans Sabots’ has been a little like developing an old negative to
discover a photograph, close to a very familiar image but crucially
different in composition and implication. It seems that sometime after
these initial solo sessions, I resolved to balance the break-up theme
with lyrics with a more satirical note.” Also included are early drafts
of “Jack Of All Parades,” and “Sleep Of The Just” along with solo
versions of “Poisoned Rose,” “Indoor Fireworks,” “I’ll Wear It Proudly,”
“Suffering Face,” and the piano ballad, “Having It All – written for a
scene at the Eiffel Tower in the movie “Absolute Beginners.”
King Of America would mark the second in a long line of Costello’s
albums to be recorded in the U.S. over the ensuing four decades and that
singularly eclectic, musical American odyssey is chronicled in great
detail on the 48-track 3-disc digest of studio recordings – spanning the
studio albums Spike (1989, Hollywood and New Orleans), The Delivery Man
(2004, Oxford, Miss.), The River In Reverse (2006, Hollywood and New
Orleans), Momofuku (2008, Los Angeles), Secret, Profane & Sugarcane
(2009, Nashville), National Ransom (2010, Los Angeles and Nashville) and
Look Now (2018, Hollywood, New York City) – woven together with a slew
of previously unreleased demos, outtakes and live recordings.
Some of Costello’s many collaborations with American musicians are
represented throughout the three discs, labeled Il Principe Di New
Orleans E Le Marchese Del Mississippi, El Príncipe Del Purgatorio and
finally Der Herzog Des Rampenlicht, including several studio and
previously unreleased tracks from his collaborations with New Orleans
R&B legend, Allen Toussaint, and longtime creative accomplice, T Bone
Burnett. In addition to a handful of songs from Costello and Toussaint’s
collaborative album, The River In Reverse, included are live versions of
“Bedlam” from that record and “Clown Strike,” arranged by Toussaint and
performed with The Imposters, A.B. Crown and The Crescent City Horns in
Montreal in 2006, and the Toussaint-penned, Lee Dorsey classic, “The
Greatest Love,” as featured in HBO’s David Simon-produced, New
Orleans-based series “Treme.” This version is being made available for
the first time outside of the show while the Montreal performances are
making their audio debuts, having been released on the long out-of-print
DVD “Hot As A Pistol, Keen As A Blade.”
Discs 5 and 6 features nearly half of Costello’s Burnett-produced album,
National Ransom, joined by “Lost On The River #12” from Lost On The
River: The New Basement Tapes, the acclaimed 2014 Burnett-led project
consisting of musicians singing and setting discovered Bob Dylan lyrics
from 1967 to music. Costello offers unreleased recordings of “Quick Like
A Flash” from the New Basement Tapes sessions, demos of the National
Ransom tune “Church Underground” and album outtakes “Condemned Man” and
“For More Tears,” the first-ever release of the latter song which has
only ever been performed live, as well as a stirring live performance of
“A Scarlet Tide,” Costello and Burnett’s Oscar and Grammy-nominated song
for the film “Cold Mountain,” recorded at the Grand Ole Opry in
Nashville with Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
Elsewhere on the collection, Costello duets with singers Lucinda
Williams and Emmylou Harris on The Delivery Man tracks “There’s A Story
In Your Voice” and “Heart Shaped Bruise.” The latter, recorded live with
Harris at the Hi Tone in Memphis in 2004, was previously only available
on the concert DVD “Club Date: Live In Memphis.” Rosanne Cash and Kris
Kristofferson are joined by Costello on the captivating “April 5th,” one
of two songs recorded by the elusive supergroup “C.C.K.”
King Of America & Other Realms culminates with three new recordings
recorded in 2024: “Indoor Fireworks” (Memphis Magnetic Version), “That’s
Not The Part of Him You’re Leaving” with Larkin Poe and a recent
arrangement of “Brilliant Mistake” performed, as Costello remarks, “over
a habanera rhythm in a minor key to mark the dark passing of the years
and our elusive hold on hope, taking a detour into the 1933, Harry
Warren/Al Dubin song, ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’ rather than just
alluding to it in the lyric of the last verse.” The final song of the
set is “That Day Is Done,” a song co-written by Costello and Paul
McCartney for McCartney’s 1989 album Flowers In The Dirt, here performed
with the gospel group The Fairfield Four, bringing this wild and
wonderfully odd odyssey to a close.
Released in 1986, King Of America marked a significant shift in
Costello’s career, both musically and personally. Unlike his previous
albums with The Attractions, he mostly collaborated with a group of
session musicians, including Ray Brown and Earl Palmer, and members of
Elvis Presley’s TCB Band, that he dubbed The Confederates, and curiously
only listed himself as The Costello Show. Similarly, the songs were
credited to Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus. A departure from the new
wave and punk he made his name with, the record’s sound leaned heavily
into American country and folk influences, showcasing Costello’s
versatility as a songwriter and musician. The album was critically
acclaimed and helped to reinforce his artistic credibility during a time
when he was transitioning away from the brash persona that had initially
defined his career. This pivot not only broadened his musical palette
but also solidified his reputation as one of the most innovative and
enduring artists of his generation.
In the nearly forty years from its release, King Of America’s stature
only continues to grow among fans and critics. Retrospectively, the
album is seen as one of Costello’s best works, with All Music calling it
“one of his masterpieces,” and Stereogum declaring it “the most
successful of Costello’s pointed genre excursions, a detour into roots
music and country that plays to his great strengths as a lyricist and
storyteller.” Pitchfork hailed it as a “complex and conflicted album
that, despite all the spit and polish, sounds lively and raucous,” while
Spin remarked, “stately country-folk overtones lend the heartrending
songs ‘Brilliant Mistake,’ ‘American Without Tears’ and ‘Jack Of All
Parades’ a grandeur that feels timeless.”
KING OF AMERICA & OTHER REALMS SUPER DELUXE EDITION TRACKLISTING
DISC 1 – KING OF AMERICA (2024 REMASTER)
- Brilliant Mistake
- Lovable
- Our Little Angel
- Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
- Glitter Gulch
- Indoor Fireworks
- Little Palaces
- I’ll Wear It Proudly
- American Without Tears
- Eisenhower Blues
- Poisoned Rose
- The Big Light
- Jack Of All Parades
- Suit Of Lights
- Sleep Of The Just
DISC 2 – LE ROI SANS SABOTS
Demos, Outtakes & Other Realms
- The People’s Limousine – The Coward Brothers
- Next Time Round *
- Deportee *
- Brilliant Mistake (First Draft) *
- Suffering Face
- Poisoned Rose
- Jack Of All Parades
- Sleep Of The Just *
- Blue Chair *
- I Hope You’re Happy Now
- I’ll Wear It Proudly
- Indoor Fireworks
- Having It All
- Shoes Without Heels *
- King Of Confidence
- They’ll Never Take Her Love From Me – The Coward
Brothers - American Without Tears No. 2 (Twilight Version)
DISC 3 – KINGS OF AMERICA LIVE AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL
Royal Albert Hall 27th January 1987
- The Big Light *
- Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line *
- Our Little Angel *
- It Tears Me Up *
- I’ll Wear It Proudly *
- Lovable *
- Riverboat *
- Sally Sue Brown/36-22-36 *
- American Without Tears *
- Brilliant Mistake *
- What Would I Do Without You *
- Your Mind Is On Vacation /Your Funeral, My Trial *
- Pouring Water On A Drowning Man *
- Payday *
- That’s How You Got Killed Before *
- Sleep Of The Just *
- True Love Ways *
DISC 4 – IL PRINCIPE DI NEW ORLEANS E LE MARCHESE DEL MISSISSIPPI
1.There’s A Story In Your Voice – with Lucinda Williams
- Country Darkness
- The Delivery Man
- Nothing Clings Like Ivy
- Heart Shaped Bruise – with Emmylou Harris (Live At The Hi-Tone, Memphis) **
- Bedlam (Live At Montreal Jazz) **
- Either Side Of The Same Town
- Wonder Woman
- In Another Room
- The Monkey * – Rehearsal with Dave Bartholomew & The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
- Monkey To Man
- Deep Dark Truthful Mirror
- Clown Strike (Live At Montreal Jazz) **
- Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further?
- The River In Reverse
- The Greatest Love – from Treme *
- Ascension Day
DISC 5 – EL PRÍNCIPE DEL PURGATORIO
- Stations Of The Cross
- Quick Like A Flash (Previously Unreleased) *
- Sulphur To Sugarcane
- Red Cotton
- Lost On The River #12
- A Slow Drag With Josephine
- I Felt The Chill
- Complicated Shadows (Cashbox Version)
- She’s Pulling Out The Pin
- Condemned Man (Demo) *
- Hidden Shame
- Red Wicked Wine – with Dr. Ralph Stanley
- The Scarlet Tide – with Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch & David
Rawlings (Live at the Grand Ole Opry) * - One Bell Ringing
- Bullets For The New Born King
- All These Strangers
- For More Tears (Demo) *
- You Hung The Moon
DISC 6 – DER HERZOG DES RAMPENLICHT
- Stella Hurt
- Mr. Feathers
- Under Lime
- Jimmie Standing In The Rain
- Down Among The Wines And Spirits
- Dr. Watson, I Presume
- Church Underground (Demo) *
- A Voice In The Dark
- April 5th – with Rosanne Cash & Kris Kristofferson
- Indoor Fireworks (Memphis Magnetic Version) *
- That’s Not The Part Of Him You’re Leaving – with Larkin Poe *
- Brilliant Mistake/Boulevard Of Broken Dreams (Cape Fear Version) *
- That Day Is Done – with The Fairfield Four
- previously unreleased ** first-ever audio release
2CD
CD 1 – KING OF AMERICA (2024 REMASTER)
- Brilliant Mistake
- Lovable
- Our Little Angel
- Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
- Glitter Gulch
- Indoor Fireworks
- Little Palaces
- I’ll Wear It Proudly
- American Without Tears
- Eisenhower Blues
- Poisoned Rose
- The Big Light
- Jack Of All Parades
- Suit Of Lights
- Sleep Of The Just
CD 2 – SELECTIONS FROM THE OTHER REALMS (BEST OF THE BOX SET)
- Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line – Live *
- There’s a Story In Your Voice – with Lucinda Williams
- American Without Tears – Live *
- Jimmie Standing In The Rain
- Indoor Fireworks – Live *
- Suffering Face – (Demo)
- In Another Room
- Wonder Woman
- Riverboat – Live *
- Sulphur To Sugarcane
- Country Darkness
- April 5th – with Rosanne Cash & Kris Kristofferson
- The People’s Limousine – The Coward Brothers
- Live in London, UK, Royal Albert Hall / January 27, 1987
1LP
Side A
- Brilliant Mistake
- Lovable
- Our Little Angel
- Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
- Glitter Gulch
- Indoor Fireworks
- Little Palaces
- I’ll Wear It Proudly
Side B
- American Without Tears
- Eisenhower Blues
- Poisoned Rose
- The Big Light
- Jack Of All Parades
- Suit Of Lights
- Sleep Of The Just