Booker T coming out with new album

[flatgrass]

Came across a short CNN article that says Booker T Jones has a new album coming out.

Not quite the "Green Onions" style, a bit more hard. Still, glad he is back, always liked the B-3.

(Neil Young plays on most of the tracks, if that tells you anything)

[thebes]

It's out. gotta got me that one.

Here's an article on his new album "Potato Hole":

wo years ago, Booker T. Jones went to South by Southwest and ended
up performing with his old band and connecting with a new one.
After playing a showcase with the MG's—the Stax Records house band
that backed Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and others and became
famous for instrumentals like "Green Onions"—Booker met a member of
the group that would back him on his first solo album in almost two
decades.



The band he found is one that few would associate with soul music:
the Drive-By Truckers.



"I knew I wanted that attitude before I found the band," Booker,
64, says over a glass of red wine at a bar in Manhattan's East
Village. "This album has a lot to do with attitude. The MG's were
never an in-your-face band—the MG's is a groove band. But this is
in your face, this raw, gritty sound that's too loud."



"This" is "Potato Hole," Booker's new album, which Anti- will
release April 21. It's every bit as raw as Booker says, thanks to
layers of guitar from the Truckers and Neil Young, who plays on
nine tracks. The title track has five guitarists—three Truckers,
Young and Booker, who writes on guitar even though he's famous for
playing organ.



Like classic Booker T. & the MG's albums, "Potato Hole"
consists entirely of instrumentals, which have melodies and funk
rhythms to balance their grit. And like those classics, "Potato
Hole" also includes instrumental covers of pop songs—Tom Waits'
"Get Behind the Mule" and a down-home take on OutKast's "Hey
Ya!"

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Booker hasn't released an album since "That's the Way It Should
Be," his 1994 reunion with the MG's. But he never stopped
performing—as a backup musician for singers like Young, as a solo
artist with his own group and as a member of the MG's, who have
served as the house band for high-profile gigs like Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame inductions. And he never stopped writing, at least
"not mentally."



Booker came to Anti- through his manager Dave Bartlett, president
of 525 Worldwide, which also manages Mavis Staples. As Staples
prepared to release her 2007 comeback album on Anti-, which has
guided several heritage artists to critical and commercial success,
Bartlett introduced Booker to Anti- president Andy Kaulkin.



"They think about how they're going to market their records from
the beginning," Bartlett says. "It's not just trying to take a
record and push it to radio—they try to really tell a story about
an album."



Booker says that Kaulkin asked him what kind of album he wanted to
make, then sent him new CDs that he thought might inspire him. In
2007, Kaulkin took Booker to Coachella, where they spent a couple
of days walking around, listening to bands and talking about
music.



"He doesn't need someone who's young enough to be his child to tell
him what a cool record is," Kaulkin says, "but maybe he was able to
see the possibilities."



Booker says that all of this outside input helped him make the
album he had in his head. "It just made it more accessible," he
says. "If you don't think you can get it out, I don't think you're
going to start it. I felt free and open, so when I went into the
studio, I wrote what I wanted to write."



Anti- plans to focus its promotional efforts on media, especially
magazines and newspapers—the same strategy it has used to raise
awareness of comeback albums from Porter Wagoner, Merle Haggard and
Staples, whose 2007 Anti- album "We'll Never Turn Back" sold 55,000
copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The label will also try to
introduce Booker to a new generation of listeners when he performs
with the Truckers at three of this summer's major concerts:
Coachella, Bonnaroo and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage
Festival.



After those three gigs, Booker says he'll spend much of the summer
touring with his own band. "I'm trying to hold myself back from a
second album right now," he jokes.



"I love the album, I love the sound," Booker says, less out of ego
than enthusiasm. "It's like rock'n'roll but it's like having a
symphony. To be 64 and come to that place in my life, it's like
arriving at a new shore."