Strangers Almanac
| Strangers Almanac | ||||
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| Studio album by Whiskeytown | ||||
| Released | July 29, 1997 | |||
| Recorded | 1996-1997 | |||
| Studio | Woodland Studios, Nashville; Ocean Way Studios, Hollywood |
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| Genre | Alternative country | |||
| Length | 51:40 | |||
| Language | English | |||
| Label | Geffen, Outpost, Moodfood | |||
| Producer | Jim Scott | |||
| Whiskeytown chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Strangers Almanac | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    |
| Entertainment Weekly | B+ |
| Pitchfork Media | 7.8/10 |
| Record Collector | |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Uncut | |
Strangers Almanac is the second studio album by American alternative country band Whiskeytown, released on July 29, 1997 on Geffen and Outpost Records. The album was reissued as a deluxe edition with bonus tracks and an additional disc of previously unreleased material on March 4, 2008.
Throughout 1996, Whiskeytown recorded new material in Chapel Hill and Durham, North Carolina. Two separate recording sessions – dubbed the "Barn's On Fire" sessions and the "Baseball Park" sessions – produced several songs that were later re-recorded for Strangers Almanac. And while praising everyone involved in making Strangers, principal songwriter Ryan Adams once remarked in an interview that he preferred these earlier songs to the final album. Tracks from these sessions would later be released on the reissues of Faithless Street and Strangers Almanac.
The road to making Strangers was a rocky one – in late 1996, bassist Steve Grothman and drummer Skillet Gilmore left the band on the same day, suddenly placing the future of Whiskeytown in doubt. It was then that violinist Caitlin Cary also considered leaving the band, while Adams toyed with the idea of signing as a solo artist with A&M Records. But in the end, the remaining band members soldiered on and, in February 1997, Adams, Cary, and guitarist Phil Wandscher traveled to Woodland Studios in Nashville to record their major label debut. Drummer Steve Terry and bassist Jeff Rice were also added to the lineup. Producer Jim Scott was selected due to his previous work on Tom Petty's Wildflowers album.
The sessions featured plenty of give-and-take between the young, scrappy band and the older, more-polished producer. Said Adams later: "He [Jim Scott] wanted to make something flow. He wanted to make our record work, whereas we wanted our record to get damaged." And for his part, Scott points to a particularly raw-sounding guitar part in the song "Everything I Do" and says, "I listen to that and go, oh my God, we should've redone that guitar because it just is a little rough on such a beautiful song. But that's maybe what they liked about it; they were like, 'No, that's cool'... Maybe that was the bruise on the apple that they were looking for."
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Wikipedia