Description
The Evening Blue book-set comprises of:
a) A first pressing of Chris’s never-released solo LP on 180gsm vinyl.
Long thought as being lost, the original masters were discovered by chance in a barn in the West of England during the spring of 2013. Chris compiled and sequenced the ¼” reels with engineer Terry Barham at Island’s Fall Out Shelter studio in Hammersmith on Sunday, October 1st 1978. None of these selections have been heard before.
b) The LP is housed in a 200+ page hardback book which includes over 420 images, the majority of which are previously unseen.
The text has been abridged and edited from Dan Ropek’s biography of Chris which includes interviews with the late Jim Capaldi and Paul Medcalf as well as many of Chris’s friends and musical colleagues. Evening Blue also includesadditional exclusive interviews with Steph Wood and Anna Capaldi-Gilbey, studio engineers Dick Cuthell, Terry Barham and Brian Humphries, musicians Mike Kellie, Steve Winwood, Poli Palmer, Pete Bonas and Gordon Jackson, photographers Brian Cooke and Gered Mankowitz, as well as Muscle Shoals Swampers Charles Rose and David Hood.
b) The 4 CDs also housed within the hardback book – include music drawn from Chris’s entire career. His solo recordings take centre-stage with alternate takes and mixes, never before heard demos and other sketches included. Naturally, selections from Traffic feature as well as his collaborations with John Martyn, Dave Mason, The Sky, Jim Capaldi, Bobby Whitlock, Ginger Baker’s Airforce, Hanson, Gordon Jackson, Free, Shawn Phillips, Fat Mattress, Martha Velez and others.
Evening Blue contains Chris’s previously unheard recordings with The Wailers’ keyboard player, Tyrone Downie as well as Rebop Kwaku Baah, Remi Kabaka, Dr John and Jeanette Jacobs. Studio recordings from the only known-to-survive sessions by the short-lived Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog line-up are included as are tracks from their only BBC live session.
With only a couple of exceptions (where the original masters no longer exist) the set has been re-mastered by Richard Whittaker in the UK from the original 1⁄4”, 1” or 2” analog tapes.
Over four years in development, the first edition of Evening Blue (curated in close collaboration with Steph Wood who administers her brother’s Estate) is limited to 1,000, individually numbered copies worldwide.
