Happy 60th Birthday Wesley Stace!

Cheers to Wes on his 60th! Here are a couple of performances – including one with The Boss and another with Rhett Miller.  

Catch Wesley Stace on tour in Chicago on Oct. 30 and at NYC's City Winery on Nov. 2. Anywhere but Toronto. Get tickets here.

Happy Birthday Wesley Stace!

Cheers to Wes on his birthday! Here's his swingin' World Café performance on WXPN in Philadelphia from 11/12/21. 

The Secret Series #8: Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

The Secret Series represents a complete reappraisal of Wesley Stace’s entire musical career, featuring all new solo acoustic recordings and a beautifully designed book to accompany each release, gathering the lyrics for the first time in a uniform edition. 12 albums, 12 books, 155 songs in all, stripped down to their essence with an intimacy that comes only from a solo recording by the songwriter. The books and recordings will be revealed and released over the next two to three years.  

There will be 250 copies of each book. Each numbered and signed lyric book features a new personal introduction that puts each album in context and a contemporary interview that illuminates the original release. With the MUNDANE option, you merely get a beautiful Digital Download of the brand new solo acoustic recording of Who Was Changed & Who Was Dead. Get it right here. 

Wesley Stace reprises Late Style's songs solo acoustic

The artist also known as John Wesley Harding is sharing acoustic versions of songs from Late Style. Check the snazzy wardrobe.

LATE STYLE - Solo Acoustic

1 of 13: Where the Bands Are

"'Where the Bands Are' was certainly never meant to be a solo acoustic song but, as everyone says these days, "here we are"! Seems like a good show opener, in whichever version. Enjoy."

 

2 of 13: Everything All the Time

"Today it's 'Everything All The Time,' here minus the beautiful singing of Kelly Hogan and Nora O'Connor Kean but with more whistling to make up for it. (I am modeling a very cosy Rick Owens sweater for those interested in these sorts of details.)"

 

3 of 13: Your Bright Future

It was a real pleasure, and quite hard work, to get inside these songs, particularly this one! And I'll note that it's a totally different version and arrangement from the bonus acoustic version on the LATE STYLE LP, which so far has escaped digitization into any format, and is therefore only available on the wax. Today I am modelling a piece of Bob Dylan merchandise, as featured on the cover of Desire and in the movie Renaldo and Clara.

 

4 of 13: Hey! Director

"I wrote 'Hey! Director' many years ago, and I always loved the lyric. I then wrote more than one melody for it, of which the best can be found on Sings to a Small Guitar Vol 2. (Back then it was called Hey! Director!, a small difference puncutationally, the original inspired by those exclamation marks in Oh! Calcutta!) The song never quite made it on to an album with any tune, yet the lyric kept feeling worth singing, and even more so as time rolled on. So I put it before David Nagler and he came back to me with the lovely tune that made it on to Late Style. His riff was originally the riff from Bob Dylan's I Want You, so I persuaded him to flip it around and it ended up what I'm whistling here." 

This is the older version, if you'd like to compare and contrast: https://johnwesleyharding.bandcamp.com/track/hey-director

(It isn't a competition!)

 

5 of 13: Come Back Yesterday

"Come Back Yesterday was the easiest because a) it's a strummer and b) I play the guitar on this one in the shows. Huzzah! It's going up early today because I am going on Gentleman's Record Shopping Trip. Have a nice weekend. I will put up #6 on Monday and collate the first five this weekend."

 

Wesley Stace turns up the smooth for Late Style

You could say Wesley Stace is wearing the inspiration for the new Late Style album on his sleeve. Great work Tony Stella! 

Here's the scoop from Omnivore Recordings...

With Late Style, Wesley Stace, the artist formerly known as John Wesley Harding, has done things differently. Having begun to put some new lyrics to music, in his usual way, singing to an acoustic guitar, he realized he was coming up with old solutions, reinventing a wheel he had already made, with chord progressions and melodies that worked as folk and pop songs but were not satisfying his desire for something fresh, something he’d be excited to listen to in 2021. So, he turned to David Nagler, the musical director of his portable variety show, the Cabinet of Wonders, to be the Rodgers to his Hart, the Elton to his Bernie, the Bachrach to his David.

Late Style is influenced by artists like Mose Allison, Carla Bley, Nina Simone, Bob Dorough, Steely Dan, Harry Nilsson, Gil Scott-Heron, The Bee Gees, Tom Lehrer, The Carpenters, and even The Partridge Family, without imitating them, so the songs feel modern and “modern” all at once. You can call them uneasy easy listening—smooth, but oddly shaped, with surprising harmonic changes and rhythmic angles. They have the paradoxical flavor of having been written to be hits without any thought of having hits at all.

Though Wesley had originally imagined a record that “a phenomenally well-rehearsed combo might record in a club, perhaps even in front of an audience,” COVID had other plans. But through the mysterious magic of modern technology, the recording came together out of Philadelphia, where Wesley lives; New York, where David built tracks from keyboards, acoustic guitars and virtual instruments; San Francisco, where Wes’s longtime friend and collaborator Chris von Sneidern (a solo artist and sometime member of the Flamin’ Groovies) added electric guitar, vocals, horns and the drums of Prairie Prince (The Tubes, Todd Rundgren, Jefferson Starship); and Chicago, where Kelly Hogan and Nora O’Connor of the Flat Five added harmonies. 

Here's Ilya Mirman's portrait photo of Wesley which Tony Stella turned into the Late Style cover.  

Graphic artist Tony Stella – who recently did the book jacket for Quentin Tarantino's novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – provided the stylish sleeve art for Late Style. Wesley explains how it all came together... 

"Many of you have expressed your enthusiasm for, and asked about, the cover painting for LATE STYLE. Here goes! It's by the genius Tony Stella, whose work can be found here: https://www.tony-stella.com. You should definitely take a look around.

"As we were making the album, I realised I needed something effortlessly authentic for the cover, perhaps a painting like those old records we all love. I'd been following Mr Stella on Twitter for some time, and one morning I was lying in bed, checking out my "feed" (as one does before one fully commits to getting out of bed) and I suddenly realised: "Oh My God! This is fully perfect! It can't even go wrong!" And so I tweeted him, and made an inquiry, and guess what: he said yes. Then I had to work out what the image should be, beyond being a portrait of yours truly.

"So, I got in touch with Ilya Mirman, a brilliant photographer who also happens to be the brother of Eugene Mirman, to a) take some nice promo pics but also b) to get the image that we could send to Tony and he'd paint. I therefore went up to the Boston City Winery (who, due to the kind offices of Michael Bishop and Caitlyn Cooke, let us have the run of the place for a morning), met Ilya there, not to mention David Nagler, and took some pics, quite a few of which you'll see on the inside sleeve of the CD and LP.

"I sent Tony four images, and he apparently chose the one I attach here, perhaps combining it with one of the others (and making sure my collar wasn't askew) to get the actual image for the cover as you see it now. I was blown away. It was actually what I'd imagined, without having quite imagined anything at all, except that I loved all of his work without exception. And thanks to Ilya, of course. 

"Do yourself a favour and check out his stellar Stella work. And then why not head over here and buy one of the astonishing bundles: https://world-wide-wes.myshopify.com/collections/the-late-style-collection"  

You can pre-order Wesley Stace's Late Style right here. Check the track list following the clip of "All The Yous" below. 

 

Wesley Stace – Late Style 

Where The Bands Are

Everything All The Time

Your Bright Future

Hey! Director

Come Back Yesterday

All The Yous

The California Fix

Well Done Everyone

The Impossible She

Do Nothing If You Can

Just Sayin’

How You All Work Me

Gary Louris highlights John Wesley Harding salute, The Good Lyre

The Jayhawks' Gary Louris covers "Kiss Me, Miss Liberty" for The Good Lyre benefit album in support of Sweet Relief out April 2. 

Here's the scoop from Wes...

"In tenth place, but only alphabetically, on THE GOOD LYRE is Gary Louris of The Jayhawks, doing Kiss Me Miss Liberty!

"Gary, my comrade-in-dressing-rooms-and-record-stores, is one of my favourite friends in music-making, his band The Jayhawks one of my favourite bands and perhaps America’s finest. I was lucky enough to make my most recent album with them - they are beloved of all British men with taste (including Sir Ray Davies). Someone requested this particular song, "Kiss me Miss Liberty," from JWH's New Deal recorded by the entire band and while that seemed a little ambitious in these days of spatial distancing, I thought we might get as close as possible. Gary pointed out that “I can’t face confinement anymore” has special new meaning now; mind you, he also thought I was singing “policemen” rather than “fall leaves” in the first verse. Glad we ironed that out. He also thought the melody bore more than a passing resemblance to his 2000’s song In The Canyon so I was relieved that mine was written years earlier!

"I also now remember that, it may have been Gary who got this thing going in my head. Because when someone suggested this song by The Jayhawks, I remember thinking: "Hey, that could actually happen!" And I think that's what started this off. So thank you.

"Please pass knowledge of The Good Lyre on to your friends (this has become known, recently, as "sharing") and into the beyond because that is how we will make the most possible money for the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund - who receive 100% of the profits - when we release on Bandcamp 4/2! 

Various Artists - The Good Lyre: Songs of John Wesley Harding

1. Ryan Miller - Your Ghost (Don’t Scare Me No More)

2. Eric Bazilian - The Person You Are

3. Tanya Donelly - The World (and All its Problems)

4. Josh Ritter - Sussex Ghost Story

5. Rosanne Cash - I’m Wrong about Everything

6. Gary Louris - Kiss Me, Miss Liberty

7. Britta Phillips - Sleepy People

8. Steven Page - Why Must the Show Go On?

9. Chris von Sneidern - Negative Love

10. Graham Parker - The Devil in Me

11. Wreckless Eric - Sick Organism

12. Bad Scene - You In Spite of Yourself

13. Casey Neill - Darwin

14. The Minus Five - Making Love to Bob Dylan

15. Marti Jones and Don Dixon - Dreamfader

16. David Lewis - Infinite Combinations

17. Bob Pernice - To Whom It May Concern

18. Marshall Crenshaw - I Just Woke Up

19. Dean Friedman - Top of the Bottom

20. Dag Juhlin - People Love to Watch You Die