There's a new Nick Drake release scheduled for June. It's called Family Tree, and includes many of the recordings made before Five Leaves Left that have been bootlegged for years, but with much better sound and mastering. 28 cuts in all. These are mostly home recordings. Two are actually of Nick's mom singing her own compositions and playing piano.

There are also plans to re-release the Fruit Tree box later this year with the remastered albums AND a DVD of A Skin Too Few, the film about Nick from a few years ago that has never been released to the public. The DVD will be included in the Fruit Tree box and also sold seperately. It's about time.

Amazon has the album listed. Details also at http://www.brytermusic.com.

Updated Greg's thread title with the new American release date ~ L.

Here we go ~ July 10th release:



1. Come in to the Garden
2. They're Leaving Me Behind
3. Time Piece
4. Poor Mum
5. Winter Is Gone
6. All My Trials
7. Kegelstatt Trio - The Family Trio
8. Strolling Down the Highway
9. Paddling in the Rushes
10. Cocaine Blues
11. Blossom
12. Been Smokin' Too Long
13. Black Mountain Blues
14. Tomorrow Is a Long Time
15. If You Leave Me
16. Here Come the Blues
17. Sketch, Pt. 1
18. Blues Run the Game
19. My Baby's So Sweet
20. Milk and Honey
21. Kimbie
22. Bird Flew By
23. Rain
24. Strange Meeting, Pt. 2
25. Day Is Done
26. Come into the Garden
27. Way to Blue
28. Try to Remember

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000PTYS2W/?tag=imwan-20

(Wonder whatever happened to the SACD box that was supposed to come out months ago ...)

Are these really previously unreleased songs, as the ads claim?

All but a handful of these home-recorded songs appear on "Time Has Told Me," a two-CD, 44-track import set that was issued in 2000 or 2001. This was not a bootleg -- Collectors Choice Music sold them, among others -- and claimed to "have been transferred from original copies of Nicholas Rodney Drake's home tapes and expertly equalised and mastered using noise reduction and speed correction," says the liner notes.

Sound quality isn't studio but definitely better than those misnamed "Tamworth in Arden" boots.

So, does anybody know if Family Tree has different versions of the songs that appeared on Time Has Told Me, or is this just another repackaging -- possibly with better remastering -- of the same stuff?

John,

I think this is much of the same material on "Time Has Told Me." That collection, despite appearances, was a bootleg, or at least a "gray area" release. Despite the "expert" remastering, it hadn't been approved by Nick's estate. This one has. Don't expect the sound to be studio quality, since these are mostly home-recorded demos, but I'm hoping it's noticably better than previous versions.

As I remember reading, Nick's father used to make copies of this stuff for people who came by to see Nick's childhood home, back in the days when Nick's fans were very few, so this material has been in other people's hands for a long time. I think there is some material on Family Tree that hasn't seen the light of day before, but I'm not sure.