NOTE OF HOPE

On September 27th, 429 Records will release Note of Hope, a collaboration based on the words and writings of the great American Master Woody Guthrie. The collection, spearheaded by bassist Rob Wasserman is a collaboration featuring a stellar collection of artists. With Wasserman are Jackson Browne, Ani DiFranco, Kurt Elling, Michael Franti, Nellie McKay, Tom Morello, Van Dyke Parks, Madeleine Peyroux, Lou Reed, Pete Seeger, Studs Terkel, and Chris Whitley. The release is the first of a series of events leading up to the 2012 centennial celebration of Guthrie’s birth.

The tracks, primarily unpublished Guthrie writings, were penned between 1942 and 1954 while he was living in New York City and Brooklyn. The project was conceived by Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, who, inspired by the work of renowned bassist Rob Wasserman asked him to lead the project. Together the two recruited a stellar group of artists uniquely suited to bringing Guthrie’s words alive.

“I always felt that Rob Wasserman’s bass is one of the great companions to all words, having worked with so many great wordsmiths, and in so many different bands over the years,” recalls Nora Guthrie. “Each of the artists we invited to collaborate were masterful writers in their own right, with a unique and distinctive voice that stands apart from all others.”

“The words Nora found are timeless and more relevant than ever – it seems like Woody could see the future,” says Rob Wasserman. . A consummate collaborator, Wasserman is perhaps best known for the series of GRAMMY® award-winning albums SOLO, DUETS AND TRIOS, which feature him on bass alongside Neil Young, Jerry Garcia, Les Claypool, Rickie Lee Jones, Elvis Costello, Willie Dixon, Stephane Grappelli, Brian Wilson and others. He has also worked with Lou Reed, The Mark Morris Dance Group, and Bob Weir, first as a partner in the duo Weir/Wasserman, and later in the band they founded together, RatDog.

The collection kicks off with the evocative Van Dyke Parks’ instrumental “The Note of Hope” and closes with “You Know the Night,” contributed by Jackson Browne. The latter, based on a 30-page notebook entry, is an exquisite, epic love song recalling the evening when Woody first met Marjorie Mazia, his second wife. While the album version is just under 15 minutes, a four-minute radio edit will go to Triple A Commercial, Non-Comm and Americana radio with an add date of August 15th. Fans can check out the radio version at [insert link].

Guthrie always contended that he found his own voice by listening to the men, women and children he crossed paths with and Ani DiFranco’s half spoken/half sung “Voice” demonstrates just how valuable these conversations were – not only to his creative process, but to his understanding of life. His tales of working class characters ring as true today as when they were written. A man wanders around Coney Island, preoccupied with the debts that are crushing him in Lou Reed’s “The Debt I Owe” while Madeleine Peyroux’s sultry “Wild Card in the Hole” warns that “Times are getting hard, folks/they might get harder still/no matter who wins office in that big house on the hill.”

The legendary singer-songwriter Pete Seeger, who became a close friend of Guthrie’s after meeting him at a 1940 benefit concert for migrant workers, extols the redemptive power of song in the transcendent “There’s a Feeling in the Music.” Michael Franti capture Guthrie’s earthy sensuality in the percolating “Union Love Juice” while Tom Morello tells of a “Ease My Revolutionary Mind” yearning for an equally progressive woman. Chris Whitley examines the jagged edges of a relationship in the breathtaking talking blues number “On The High Lonesome,” recorded shortly before his death.

Other highlights include Nellie McKay’s “Old Folks,” a meditation on aging and “I Heard A Man Talking,” wherein the late Pulitzer Prize winning author Studs Terkel recounts an exchange between a petty thief and a barfly over music that might have been heard in a Beat-era coffee house.

Woody Guthrie, born on July 14th, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma, is widely regarded as America’s greatest folksinger. He wrote over 3,000 songs in his lifetime, including “This Land Is Your Land,” which became America’s unofficial national anthem, and such standards as “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Pastures of Plenty,” “Going Down The Road,” “Hard Travelin',” “Jesus Christ,” “I Ain't Got No Home,” “Deportee,” “Roll On Columbia,” “Vigilante Man,” “Do Re Mi,” “Tom Joad,” “Union Maid,” “1913 Massacre,” “This Train Is Bound For Glory,” “Oklahoma Hills” and “Riding In My Car.” The GRAMMY Museum, in conjunction with Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. and the Woody Guthrie Archives, will celebrate Guthrie's extraordinary body of work and impact on American music with a centennial celebration that will kick off in February 2012. Unique in scope, the yearlong celebration will include a host of tribute concerts, educational curricula, lectures, conferences, a touring exhibition, grassroots hootenannies and more. These and other centennial events will be tracked on a special anniversary website, www.woody100.com, that launches on July 14, 2011.

The track listing for Note of Hope is as follows:
1. The Note of Hope – Van Dyke Parks
2. Wild Card in the Hole – Madeleine Peyroux
3. Ease My Revolutionary Mind – Tom Morello
4. The Debit I Owe – Lou Reed
5. Union Love Juice – Michael Franti
6. Peace Pin Boogie – Kurt Elling
7. Voice – Ani Di Franco
8. I Heard A Man Talking – Studs Terkel
9. Old Folks – Nellie McKay
10. On The High Lonesome – Chris Whitley
11. There’s a Feeling in the Music – Pete Seeger
12. You Know the Night – Jackson Browne