Musician Paula Cole has announced a new two-volume boxset titled Sonic Memoir: Demos 1989-1998, which is scheduled for release on Sept. 10. The 63-track collection was pulled from Cole’s personal archives of cassettes, DATs, ADATs, and analog tapes. To preview the release, Cole has made the demo version of her song “Mississippi” available today.
The launch of the boxset precedes the 30th anniversary of her breakthrough album, This Fire, which was released on Oct. 15. That recording earned Cole a Grammy Award for Best New Artist and made her the first woman to be nominated for Producer of the Year (Non-Classical) entirely on her own. The new boxset features the original demo versions of her hit songs “I Don’t Want To Wait” and “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?”.
The physical release features a booklet containing photography and stories that catalog the timeline of Cole’s career. The text includes specific anecdotes regarding the recording locations, her creative eras, and the various musical collaborators involved during that decade.
Cole began sorting through her archival recordings following the death of her longtime collaborator and friend, Mark Hutchins. While digitizing work for the Hutchins family, Cole reviewed hundreds of live performances, rehearsals, and bedroom demos before narrowing the collection down to the final tracks.
Cole learned to self-produce during the 1980s and 1990s by buying secondhand audio gear and scavenging studio time. She noted that these early song incarnations represent her intellectual property and her collaborations with key musical partners.
In conjunction with the anniversary of This Fire, Cole will embark on a nationwide concert tour named This Fire: 30. The performances will feature the entire studio album played in full, with scheduled tour stops in cities including New York, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Houston, Austin, and Washington, D.C.
Pre order here.
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