Patty Griffin's Unreleased Album from 2000 "Silver Bell"

The follow up to Patty Griffin's 1998 album Flaming Red, was supposed to be a record called Silver Bell, but it went unreleased by her label at the time, A&M records. It was recorded in March of 2000 at Kingsway Studio in New Orleans. The musicians were Patty (vocals, guitar, piano), Doug Lancio (guitar), John Deaderick (keyboards), Frank Swart (bass), and Billy Beard (percussion).

This copy was originally from a CD-R that a band member who worked on the sessions had and is the best copy yet of all the finished versions of the songs that were recorded for the album. Unlike some unreleased recordings, a final sequence was never decided upon and promo copies were never released. The music here was cleaned up and sequenced by a good soul who runs the blog Omnipop, which you can check out here.

While often it is not the case, sometimes albums going unreleased can work out for the best. While it had to be rough for this music to not come out at the time, Patty has since had the creative freedom at ATO Records to put out music that is a vast improvement over this. She has made three of the best albums of the past decade with 1000 Kisses, Impossible Dream, and Children Running Through. If you haven't given them a listen, you need to check them out. There is a link to get those records at the bottom of this post.

You can download a zip file of all of Silver Bell on Z-Share here. You can also get it track by track below.

Patty Griffin - Silver Bell (unreleased album from 2000)

01 - Little God
02 - Boston
03 - Perfect White Girls
04 - Truth No. 2 (w/ Emmylou Harris)
05 - What You Are
06 - Silver Bell
07 - Driving
08 - Sooner or Later
09 - Top of the World
10 - Sorry and Sad
11 - Making Pies
12 - Mother of God
13 - One More Girl
14 - Standing w/ bonus track "Kiss Them For Me" (Sioxsie and the Banshees cover)

Thanks for checking this out. Keep checking back for more rare stuff from Patty Griffin later on.

Download Patty Griffin's albums for ATO Records at emusic.com

Patty Griffin's upcoming album "Downtown Church"

Patty Griffin, on a break from recording at the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville

I saw Three Girls and Their Buddy a.k.a. Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, and Buddy Miller in Atlantic City on Friday. It was an excellent show. The best moments for me were when everyone joined in on a few songs from Patty's upcoming album of gospel covers Downtown Church. The album was suggested to Patty and later produced by her friend and bandmate Buddy Miller and recorded with musicians at the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. The record will be released on August 11th, but you can preorder it from Amazon here. (Today, June 3, the release date was changed to indefinite on amazon.com, but you can still track the cd through this link).

Gospel music has been an important part of Patty Griffin's work lately. Most recently, she collaborated on a duet of "Waiting For My Child To Come Home" with Mavis Staples for the benefit compliation Oh Happy Day. Here's some footage of Mavis and Patty recording the track, followed by an mp3 of the finished song.



Mavis Staples & Patty Griffin - "Waiting For My Child To Come Home"

Patty's most recent album Children Running Through featured two phenomenal songs which could definitely fit into the genre of gospel music, "Up to the Mountain" and "Heavenly Day." These videos and mp3s are from the DVD Patty Griffin: Live From the Artist's Den which you can also get at Amazon here.



Patty Griffin - "Up To The Mountain" (Live from the Arist's Den)




Patty Griffin - "Heavenly Day" (Live from the Arist's Den)

Thanks for checking this out. Make sure to pick up Downtown Church when it is released.

Download Patty Griffin's music at emusic.com

Ten Favorite Covers of Bruce Springsteen's Songs

I'm not just a Bruce Springsteen fan, I'm one of those freaks who has every official release, a bookful of bootlegs, and a few thousand dollars less in the bank account thanks to all the shows I've been to. But you can only listen to so much Boss. Then you have to listen to people that covered the Boss.

So I decided to put together a list. In the end it was a little difficult, but I narrowed it down to ten favorite covers of Springsteen songs that I think everyone should hear. It also serves as a nice mix for an Itunes playlist.

If you like a particular artist's cover here, please investigate their own stuff further. Here's my top ten.

The Mendoza Line - "Tougher Than the Rest"

Laura Cantrell - "Used Cars"

Emmylou Harris - Racing in the Streets (remastered)

Patty Griffin - "Stolen Car"

Steve Wynn - "State Trooper"

John Wesley Harding - "Jackson Cage"

Cowboy Junkies - "You're Missing"

Pete Yorn - "New York City Serenade"

Johnny Cash - "Further On Up the Road"

Bettye Lavette - "Streets of Philadelphia"

P.S. A few really cool readers brought another one to my attention that I never knew was officially released, but it deserves to be in the good company of this list.

Maria McKee - "Backstreets"

Three Covers by Patty Griffin

Who doesn't love Patty Griffin? Only people that haven't heard of her yet, I guess.

Patty's last release was a cd and dvd of her performance on the television show Live from the Artist's Den. Here she sings "Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)" to close the show.



Recently, Patty has been touring with Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, and Buddy Miller as the group Three Girls and Their Buddy. I am looking forward to seeing them perform at the House of Blues in Atlantic City on May 29th.

Here are three rare covers by Patty. Enjoy.

Patty Griffin - Take It Down (John Hiatt cover)

Patty Griffin - "Crazy" (Willie Nelson cover, made famous by Patsy Cline)

Patty Griffin - "Moon River" (Henry Mancini cover, right?)

Buy the DVD Patty Griffin: Live from the Artist's Den at amazon.com