The next Neil Young album will be Volume 9 in his Archive series sourced from the 1984/1985 live recordings with the International Harvesters.
The album is titled ‘A Treasure’. It features many of the songs from the 1985 country album ‘Old Ways’ plus some previously unreleased tracks.
The short-lived International Harvesters band toured the world in the mid-80s. It included Neil’s first-ever Australian tour. About the band Neil says, “In the mid 80s I played with Rufus Thibodeaux on fiddle. He was great. Ben Keith, the late, great Ben Keith. We got Spooner Oldham on piano on some of the cuts, on the great majority of the cuts. We also have Tim Drummond on bass who is still on the planet and rocking. Tim Drummond is a great bass player, he is amazing and so is Joe Allen. The last songs on the album have Joe Allen on the bass starting around ‘Southern Pacific”.
On previous Neil Young Archive DVD and Blu-Ray releases, Neil has paid little attention to the video, preferring to use the technology as an audio platform. Fans have queried the lack of video on previous releases so Neil found a solution. His Shakey Pictures team combed the internet for fan footage and they used that, sometimes with no-so accurate results. “What happens on the film, sometimes you see Joe Allen and you should be seeing Tim Drummond, because these are the only videos we have,” Neil explains. “We got them from the internet and we syched them up with the original tracks and its pretty cool to actually watch. But we have some problems because we have the wrong bass player on something like ‘Bound For Glory’. You are seeing Joe Allen who is great but you are not really hearing him playing. You are listening to Tim Drummond. Joe Allen looks great so you get a good-looking bass player with a great bass player playing or the other way around”.
For some songs there was no video to use. “Several of the songs have no video,” he says. “We use the cover when we do that. That’s when you look at the cover and get a feel for the record. We didn’t want to put anything else in there because there is nothing else and we don’t have it anyway”
The tracklisting for ‘A Treasure’ is:
Amber Jean
Are You Ready For The Country?
It Might Have Been
Bound For Glory
Let Your Fingers Do The Walking
Flying On The Ground Is Wrong
Motor City
Soul Of A Woman
Get Back To The Country
Southern Pacific
Nothing Is Perfect
Grey Riders
VIDEO: Neil Young talks about A Treasure:
VIDEO: Ben Keith and Rick Rosas, watch the Undercover interview with Neil's longtime steel player, the late Ben Keith and bass player Rick Rosas.
