Janis Ian Pulls Iconic Recordings From Her Vast Musical Vaults
Published
Legendary Singer/Songwriter
Janis Ian
Pulls Iconic Recordings
From Her Vast Musical Vaults
The Singer Releases
Two New Offerings,
Live at the Calderone Theater 1975
And Worktapes & Demos Vol. 1
“At Seventeen” Lands
On Yardbarker’s Essential ‘70s Folk Playlist
Alongside Bob Dylan, Neil Young, & Carole King
LOS ANGELES – Janis Ian continues to “re-wire” her career creatively by digging through her extensive personal collection of rare and previously unreleased recordings for new offerings to her fans. The first two releases from her archives are Live at the Calderone Theater 1975, recorded on November 29, 1975, at the Calderone Theater in Hempstead, New York, and Worktapes & Demos Vol. 1, a mix of early versions, outtakes, and unreleased songs from over the years. Both releases are available for sale on her website at www.janisian.com as high quality MP3 digital download ($11.95) or CD quality digital download ($12.95).
“Once I lost the ability to perform as a vocalist,” explains Ian, whose vocal cord scarring caused by a virus forced her to retire from singing last year, “my producer Jeff Evans and I began talking about long-delayed projects we still wanted to do. Realizing that my archives contain hundreds of work tapes, live shows, demos, rough mixes and the like, we began putting together a series of potential ‘albums’ that would feature the original versions of songs that later made it to albums.”
Worktapes & Demos Vol. 1 features a mix of some of Ian’s previously released beloved songs, such as “Jesse,” “Applause,” and “The Man You Are in Me,” to name a few, from her album Stars. But it also has songs that never made it to any record, such as “One-Armed Johnny,” which was considered for both 1974’s classic Stars, which critics dubbed “ground-breaking,” and Between the Lines, her 1975 GRAMMY-nominated No. 1 album.
“We wanted to include some songs that were originally slated for those albums but never made it. A worktape is just that – a tape of a recent work, sometimes recorded for copyright purposes, sometimes so I could listen back and find out what was bothering me (that extra section in ‘Lover’s Lullaby’ for instance), sometimes for the arranger and producer to hear. All of these are from the very first time I sang them into a microphone. Minimal ‘fixing’ was done in order to preserve the integrity of the originals,” says Ian.
As for Live at the Calderone Theater 1975, which features such Ian classics as “At Seventeen,” “Stars,” and “Between the Lines,” she confides, “To be honest, the mid-seventies were pretty much a blur for me. I was touring 10 months a year and trying to write an album, arrange and record it, do press appearances, and live my life all at once. So, unless the concert was really awful – either because of my own lack of preparedness or because the audience or promoter was a problem – I don’t remember specific dates. I do, however, remember that this theater was absolutely gorgeous!”Ian wanted to offer fans a true glimpse of her creative process by releasing the songs from both albums as-is — minor flaws and all! “These recordings were culled from best available, which included DATs, minidiscs, old cassettes, reel-to-reel, and other formats. Our goal was to present them as close to the original sound as possible; you may hear small glitches in some, including one drop-out. Any further attempts to manipulate the audio and remove more hiss, or clean up external sounds, resulted in a loss of fidelity we were not willing to entertain,” she adds.
Meanwhile, Ian was honored to see her GRAMMY-winning, No. 1 iconic hit, “At Seventeen,” the 1975 song that put her on the musical map, on the prestigious Yardbarker’s list of “The essential 70s folk playlist,” alongside other iconic songs such as Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” Carole King’s “It’s Too Late,” Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue,” Jim Croce’s “Operator,” John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold,” James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain,” and others.
As Ian continues to mine her vaults for future releases to be announced, she’s gearing up for TradFest 2024, Ireland’s largest gathering of traditional and folk music, on January 28, 2024, at the National Stadium in the heart of Dublin. The lineup includes a special evening, “Janis Ian – A Life Between the Lines,” to honor the life and works of the legendary singer/songwriter. The event will feature Ian discussing her life and career as well as performances of her work by friends and colleagues.
For more information on TradFest, visit www.tradfest.com.
For Ian’s detailed song-by-song reflections her new releases, visit https://janisian.com/
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