The Lillywhite Sessions
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| The Lillywhite Sessions | ||
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| Studio album (bootleg) by Dave Matthews Band | ||
| Released | March 2001 (unofficially) | |
| Recorded | Winter 2000–Summer 2000 | |
| Genre | Rock | |
| Length | 1:09:39 | |
| Producer(s) | Steve Lillywhite | |
| Professional reviews | ||
|---|---|---|
The Lillywhite Sessions is a collection of songs recorded by Dave Matthews Band in 1999 and 2000 and produced by Steve Lillywhite. The songs, recorded by the band as a follow-up to their 1998 album Before These Crowded Streets, were ultimately scrapped by the band. The recordings later emerged on the internet and created controversy among fans as well as the music industry, early in its campaign to curb illegal file downloads.
Contents |
[edit] Track listing
- "Busted Stuff" — 4:05
- "Grey Street" — 5:53
- "Digging a Ditch" — 4:24
- "Sweet Up and Down" — 4:43
- "JTR" — 5:36
- "Big Eyed Fish" — 5:16
- "Grace Is Gone" — 5:12
- "Captain" — 5:27
- "Bartender" — 10:09
- "Monkey Man" — 7:21
- "Kit Kat Jam" — 5:34
- "Raven" — 6:24
[edit] History
The sessions were supposed to continue a successful formula, as Lillywhite had produced the band's previous three studio albums. Having recorded with the band in various locations including New York City, Woodstock, NY and San Francisco, Lillywhite was no stranger to the group. However, for this album, the band purchased a house in their hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, which the band later used to successfully record their 2005 album Stand Up. The band tried some new things, including Dave Matthews playing a twelve string guitar. Things initially seemed fine, as Lillywhite posted a report about the sessions in progress on the band's website. Lillywhite announced that the band had recorded a number of new songs including "Sweet Up and Down," and had reworked a song which the Dave Matthews Band performed with Santana in 1999, "John the Revelator" as "JTR," as all references of the biblical figure were removed.
The album was slated for release in the second half of 2000. However, it was revealed the band had not completed the album in time for their summer tour. Rumor has it that during the production of Sessions, the whole band was not "in the groove". The songs were not turning out the way the band wanted them, so the album was shelved, and the band began their summer tour without a completed album to tour behind. The band played a number of new songs that summer from those sessions, including "Grey Street," "Raven," "Sweet Up and Down," "Grace Is Gone," "Bartender," "Digging a Ditch" and the reworked "JTR."
[edit] "The Summer So Far"
Although Rolling Stone refers to The Lillywhite Sessions' original title as The Summer So Far,[1] the album was never intended to be titled as such. The title The Summer So Far was dubbed by engineer Stephen Harris, who later produced Busted Stuff. Dave Matthews himself has claimed in several interviews that he intended to title the final album, Busted Stuff, which he eventually did when the band went back in the recording studio for their 2002 album.
"When we stopped recording for the band to start their summer tour, I returned to England with one of the eight CDs that I had made. Five for the Band, one for [Steve Lillywhite], one for Bruce Flohr, and the one for myself and had written on them 'the summer so far'. We only did that because all the other CDs that I had made up to then, I had called 'the story so far'. 'The summer so far' was never going to be an album title, by the way, just a way to distinguish what was then the most up-to-date CD."[2]
—Stephen Harris
[edit] Everyday
During the tour, Matthews was introduced to producer Glen Ballard, and discussed completing the shelved Sessions. However, during the time they spent together, Matthews and Ballard wrote an entire album of new songs, before the rest of the band had joined them. The album, which featured electric guitar by Matthews and a minimal use of the rest of the band was released in February, 2001, as Everyday. The album, which sounded very different from previous Dave Matthews Band albums, was the band's highest selling album to date. It had a vocal group of fans on Internet newsgroups which longed for the shelved sessions, which sounded more like the band they knew so well.
[edit] Internet leak of the sessions
In March 2001, Craig Knapp, the lead singer of Ants Marching, a Dave Matthews Band cover band, received a CD from a friend containing the lost Lillywhite Sessions. He then contacted producer Steve Lillywhite about what to do with the tracks. He posted his conversations on the website dmbml.com. As a result, one fan sent a fake email from Lillywhite giving Knapp the OK to spread the tracks into the community. The tracks made their way all over the internet via private servers and P2P programs like Napster. After the release of Everyday, which many fans complained was too "pop-ish", the leak of the Sessions gave the fans what they wanted: an album recorded much like classic Dave Matthews Band material.
[edit] Demo #2 leak
A second demo, referred to as "disc two," had been admitted into existence to the communities after the initial release, and slowly, low-quality leaks of some of the disc started to circulate on Dave Matthews Band fan sites. There is one full song that has been released off this second disc, "Build You a House," a very rough song recorded early in the sessions and dropped later making no appearance on the widely spread Lillywhite Sessions disc. The clips that were released are recordings of recordings and have notoriously bad audio quality, but provide a glimpse into what the band was doing during the early part of The Lillywhite Sessions. Songs like "JTR" and "Bartender" in their earliest rawest forms can be found on this disc. The demo also includes a prelude to "Grace Is Gone."[3]
Below is a copy of the text file that accompanied the internet-circulated demo:[3]
Dave Matthews Band The Story So Far -- Demo #2 (The Lillywhite Sessions) Producer: Steve Lillywhite Recorded: Winter 2000 - Summer 2000 Track Name Time --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- d1t01 Bartender 06:37.94 d1t02 JTR 07:52.70 d1t03 Busted Stuff 03:56.92 d1t04 Sweet Up & Down 04:32.58 d1t05 Diggin' a Ditch 04:15.09 d1t06 Build You a House 03:58.60 d1t07 Captain 05:38.37 d1t08 untitled jam 05:48.18 d1t09 Grace is Gone 07:33.00 d1 totals 50:13:4
[edit] Aftermath of the leak
Once the album leaked, attention by fans and media escalated. Many fans were eager for an official release of the sessions. Online feedback by fans, including a website-based campaign called Release Lillywhite Recordings Campaign, received media attention from such powerful publications like Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone. During the 2001 summer tour, the band did not only debut live versions of the songs from Everyday, but also began to play "Big Eyed Fish," which was on the sessions but up to that point was not performed live. The Dave Matthews Band was unexpectedly touring behind two albums, the one which they actually released, and the one which they didn't want in the marketplace.
[edit] Busted Stuff and future tours
In 2002 the Dave Matthews Band released Busted Stuff, a new album which contained re-recordings of many of the songs that were left collecting dust with Sessions. The new album contained 11 tracks – nine tracks re-recorded from The Lillywhite Sessions, and two new tracks ("Where Are You Going" and "You Never Know"). "JTR," "Sweet Up and Down," and "Monkey Man," were the three tracks not re-recorded on the album.
Out of the three songs not re-released on "Busted Stuff," only "JTR" remains part of the band's concert rotation, having appeared on the Live at Folsom Field album and played during the 2006 summer tour. "Sweet Up and Down," only performed a few times by the band early on the 2000 summer tour, reemerged on the 2003 Dave Matthews & Friends tour. "Monkey Man" has never been performed live or released on an album, making it the only song that is only available on The Lillywhite Sessions.
[edit] Remastering
In April of 2006 a recording engineer released a new master of the Lillywhite sessions called the "Karmageddon" master. This set of recordings were processed with a range of professional studio equipment and released to the web via a popular torrent tracker. [4] [5]
[edit] References
- ^ The Long, Botched Summer: The birth, death and rebirth of a DMB album. Retrieved on 2007-01-23.
- ^ nancies.org: DMB FAQ (TXT) (2002-10-16). Retrieved on 2007-03-06.
- ^ a b Vigliotti, Jake (2007-01-02). The Whole Lillywhite Story. Antsmarching.org. Retrieved on 2007-02-13.
- ^ New Lillywhite Sessions Release: The Karmageddon Master. Retrieved on 2007-01-23.
- ^ Follow-up Interview with recording engineer "Karmageddon". Retrieved on 2007-01-23.
