Cowboy Junkies Announce Vic Chesnutt Tribute Album, Stream New LP Online

BY Greg PrattPublished May 7, 2010

&csid2 As part of the upcoming The Nomad Series, which will find Cowboy Junkies releasing four albums over an 18-month period, long-running Torontonian alt-country heroes will be releasing a tribute album to the recently deceased singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt.

The disc, which has no release date set as of yet, will be the second in the series. To be titled Demons, the album will feature the band playing a wide selection of Chesnutt songs from his vast catalogue.

"His catalogue is so deep and, for the most part, so overlooked," Junkie Michael Timmins said in a press release. "It will be a labour of love."

Renmin Park, the first volume in the series, is set to be released on June 15 on the band's own Latent Recordings. It was inspired by three months that Timmins and his family spent in China two years back. Several of the songs on this disc are built on field recordings Timmins made while there. The album also contains a pair of covers of two of China's big rock bands: "I Cannot Sit Sadly by Your Side," originally by Zuoxiao Zuzhou (ZXZZ), and "My Fall," originally by Xu Wei.

The entire Renmin Park album is streaming here now.

As for the third and fourth discs in the series, they will be Sing in my Meadow and The Wilderness, respectively. The former is still taking shape so details aren't available on it just yet; the latter will be a full album of all new material. Some astute fans will recognize some of the tunes on The Wilderness, like "Angel in the Wilderness," "The Confession of Georgie E," and "Fairytale," from live shows.

As if all that weren't enough, the band will be releasing a book after all four volumes are out, that, according to their site, will "delve into the character, nature and inspiration behind each of the volumes."

Find out more about The Nomad Series here.

The Cowboy Junkies' last full-length studio album was 2007's At the End of Paths Taken.

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