Jefferson's Tree of Liberty
| The Tree of Liberty | ||||
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| Studio album by Jefferson Starship | ||||
| Released | September 2, 2008 | |||
| Recorded | October 27, 1970 at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco, California; 1998 at Coast Recorders in San Francisco, California; March 16–30, 2008 and May 14–18, 2008 at Renegade Studios in San Rafael, California | |||
| Genre | Folk rock, psychedelic rock | |||
| Length | 67:08 | |||
| Label | The Lab, Varèse Sarabande, Universal Music Group | |||
| Producer | Michael Gaiman, David Freiberg, Paul Kantner | |||
| Jefferson Starship chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Blogcritics | (favorable) |
| Boston Herald | (C) |
| Goldmine |   |
| Mojo | |
| Musictap | |
| Philadelphia Daily News | (B+) |
| Toronto Sun |  |
| Yahoo! Music | (favorable) |
Jefferson's Tree of Liberty is the tenth album by Jefferson Starship, released on September 2, 2008. It is the band's first studio album since 1999's Windows of Heaven. The new album includes cover songs from Irish, American, English, and Latin-American traditions. The title is a reference to Thomas Jefferson's quotation, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." The idea began in 2003 as "The Cuba Project", which was to include classic protest and folk songs recorded in Cuba. In 2008 the album was finally recorded but in California. About half of the songs planned for The Cuba Project were used on the final cut, with other songs coming from Jefferson Starship's previous repertoire and another project band member Paul Kantner had planned called "On the Threshold of Fire." The promotional tour for the album began in late June with shows at Larkspur, California followed by tours in the US and Europe before the album's release, and continued through December 2008 with a further tour in the US and a tour in Japan. On February 1, 2009, more tour dates and venues were announced by the band's manager Michael Gaiman, with additional plans to continue the tour through 2010 and bring it to Australia and South America.David Grisman joined the band for the April 2009 tour dates. The band's promotion for the album ended in June 2009 as the band changed their set-list to Jefferson Airplane's material and started touring with the "" through the end of October.
In 2003, Paul Kantner published a book of Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship lyrics, entitled Lyrica: Paul Kantner's Theory of Everything. In the book, a new album is mentioned as "es posible?", entitled "The Cuba Project: Flores de la Noche." Marty Balin had been pushing for a classic style Jefferson Starship album, but Kantner and manager Michael Gaiman pushed for the idea of recording older protest songs in Cuba. A song list and Gaiman's notes were published along with the Lyrica book, which included 21 songs selected by Kantner, Balin and Gaiman. Manager Michael Gaiman had visited the University of Havana to set up recording for the band, but the United States Department of State wouldn't allow the venture. The next plan was to record in Amsterdam, but the financing could not be put together and the project was left in limbo as the band continued to tour.
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