Mermaid Avenue

Mermaid Avenue is an album of previously unheard lyrics by Woody Guthrie, set to new music by Billy Bragg and Wilco. It came out on Elektra on 23 June 1998. The name comes from Guthrie's song Mermaid's Avenue and from the Coney Island street where he lived. It was the first of several projects organised by his daughter Nora Guthrie, original director of the Woody Guthrie Foundation and archives.

In the spring of 1995 Nora Guthrie approached Bragg, after he played a Guthrie tribute concert in New York's Central Park, about writing music for completed lyrics. Her father left behind a great many finished lyrics written between 1939 and 1967, none of them recorded and none with music beyond a vague stylistic note. She wanted the songs given to a new generation of musicians who could make them relevant to younger listeners. Bragg brought in Wilco, and they recorded with him in Ireland and finished their own share of the songs. Rather than copy Guthrie's tunes, they wrote new contemporary music.

Songs and reception

Bragg sings lead on the opener Walt Whitman's Niece and on Ingrid Bergman, and Jeff Tweedy sings lead on California Stars. Natalie Merchant takes the lead on Birds and Ships. The album reached 34 in the UK, 90 on the Billboard 200 and 12 in Australia. It was certified Gold in Australia and Silver in the UK in 2013. It was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category and placed fourth in the 1998 Pazz & Jop critics poll.

Pitchfork's Stephen M. Deusner wrote in 2012 that no other posthumous reconsideration had captured Guthrie in all his contradictions as precisely or as affectionately. Bob Dylan wrote in Chronicles that forty years after his own visit, the lyrics would fall into the hands of Bragg and Wilco. A second volume followed in 2000 and a third, with the box set Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, in 2012. The documentary Man in the Sand, released in 1999, followed the collaboration. In 2026 Wilco, Bragg and Natalie Merchant played songs from the album at Wilco's Solid Sound festival for the first time.