Jeff Tweedy
Photo: MTV news

Woody Guthrie's land is your land, the folk legend's daughter says, figuratively, to Billy Bragg and Wilco in an upcoming documentary.

The political Brit folk-rocker and the alt-country band recorded 1998's Grammy-nominated Mermaid Avenue and last year's Mermaid Avenue Volume 2 — two acclaimed albums of songs using previously unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics his daughter discovered in her father's notebooks.

"Man in the Sand," a behind-the-scenes portrait of the making of the first album, which will include five unreleased tracks, is due March 27 on Rykovision, the film division of the Rykodisc record label.

The DVD and VHS release centers on Nora Guthrie, Woody's daughter, who uncovered notebooks filled with words Woody scribbled down throughout his career. She then recruited Bragg and Wilco to write music for the lyrics and record the songs.

"Man in the Sand" also documents the contributions singer Natalie Merchant and guitarist Corey Harris made to the album, and it includes Bragg's original Mermaid Avenue demos.

Woody Guthrie, who wrote the perennial classics "This Land Is Your Land" and "Do-Re-Mi," died in 1967.

In other Wilco news, drummer Ken Coomer has left the band, according to its spokesperson at Reprise Records. A statement explaining his departure has not been released.

Wilco's remaining members are in a Chicago studio, fitting recording sessions for the as-yet-untitled follow-up to 1999's Summer Teeth in between singer Jeff Tweedy's solo tour dates (see "Jeff Tweedy To Debut New Wilco Songs On Solo Tour").

• Wilco
• Woody Guthrie
• Natalie Merchant

Billy Bragg and Wilco are putting the final touches on their second album of Woody Guthrie tunes, the follow-up to 1998's critically acclaimed and Grammy-nominated record, "Mermaid Avenue."

• Severance Hall Cast - "Hard Travelin' Hootenanny"
• Peter Glazer - "Payback"
• Ramblin' Jack Elliott - "1913 Massacre"
• Arlo Guthrie - "Regular Fires"
• Billy Bragg - "Against The Law"
• Bruce Springsteen - "Riding In My Car"
• David Pirner - "Pretty Boy Floyd"
• Arlo Guthrie - "Free In Every Moment"
• Ani DiFranco - "Do Re Mi"
• Fred Hellerman - "What A Song Is"
• Arlo Guthrie - "Dust Storm Disaster"
• Craig Werner - "It Ain't About Bein' Perfect"
• Bruce Springsteen - "Plane Wreck At Los Gatos (Deportee)"
• Country Joe McDonald - "Does Music Change The World?"
• Indigo Girls w/ Ani DiFranco - "Ramblin' 'Round"
• Arlo Guthrie - "Change The Moment"
• Tim Robbins - "Born Naked"
• Ramblin' Jack Elliott - "Talking Dust Bowls"
• Severance Hall Cast - "'Til We Outnumber 'Em (This Land Is Your Land)"

• Billy Bragg
• Ani DiFranco
• Woody Guthrie
• Wilco

The National Academy Of Recording Arts & Sciences will honor country icon Willie Nelson, calypso king Harry Belafonte, folk great Woody Guthrie, and bluesman John Lee Hooker with Lifetime Achievement Awards before next year's Grammy Awards ceremony.

-- Robert Mancini

• Woody Guthrie
• Willie Nelson

Already one of the most critically-lauded albums of the year, Billy Bragg and Wilco have confirmed plans for a follow-up to "Mermaid Avenue," the album of previously unreleased Woody Guthrie songs to which Bragg and Wilco wrote new music for.

The second Bragg/Wilco album will feature material originally recorded during the "Avenue" sessions held in Chicago and Dublin, Ireland. As Bragg told MTV News, the possibility for a subsequent Guthrie album factored into how songs were selected and recorded for the initial album.

"Wilco and myself had such a great time working on the project that we actually recorded 40 tracks," Bragg said, "and eventually we had to be pulled off the material, or else we'd still be working on the 'Mermaid Avenue.'"

"I suppose we thought in our minds that if this material is as good and strong as we think it is," he continued, Bragg said, "but that wasn't because it wasn't good enough. It was just because we wanted some good tracks to be on the second album as well. The second album will have by no means second-rate songs. There's stuff just as powerful as what's on the first album." [28.8 RealVideo]

Both Bragg and Wilco plan to issue their own new albums prior to the release of their collaborative sequel to "Mermaid Avenue," which a spokesperson for Elektra said was tentatively planned for spring 1999.

• Billy Bragg
• Woody Guthrie
• Wilco

Left wing folk hero Woody Guthrie, who died in 1967 and was best known for his anthemic "This Land Is Your Land," has been re-born -- in a way -- with the "Mermaid Avenue" collaboration between Billy Bragg and Wilco.

The songs on "Mermaid Avenue" were taken from a stash of 3,000 lyrics Guthrie never set to music, and that his daughter Nora compiled for a Guthrie archive in Manhattan, New York.

After hearing Bragg sing at a Guthrie memorial six years ago, Nora asked the British singer, who's also championed political causes in the U.K., to set some of the lyrics to music, and the alt. country outfit Wilco joined the project in '96.

In an interview with MTV News, Bragg admitted he wasn't exactly a Guthrie groupie, but was drawn to the project by Guthrie's personal and political pathos, which he believes would fit very comfortably alongside some of Bragg's punk rock idols.

"My biggest influence was the Clash," Bragg said, "who wrote anti-fascists slogans on their clothing and their guitars. But it is Woody who wrote an anti-fascist slogan on his acoustic guitar before electric guitars had even been invented. So you have to ask yourself, who was the first punk? Was it Joe Strummer or Woody?" [1MB QuickTime]

"Mermaid Avenue" is named after a street in Coney Island, Brooklyn, where the Guthrie family lived in the late '40s and '50s. Bragg is now working on a Guthrie documentary of the same name, and next Tuesday he will play the Crystal Theater in Guthrie's hometown of Okema, Oklahoma.

• Billy Bragg
• Woody Guthrie