Mike Scott of The Waterboys revealed on Twitter this week that he’s at work compiling a 7-disc box set of material — “114 tracks and counting,” featuring multiple takes of about 88 different songs — recorded during the sessions for the band’s classic 1988 album Fisherman’s Blues that’s due for release later in this year.
Full details of the project aren’t yet known, but Scott kicked off a series of Tweets about the set late Sunday by writing, “Great editing day on Waterboys FISHERMAN’S BOX. I worked on Saints & Angels, On My Way To Tara and BP’s Bathtub Boogie. Release later 2013.”
In response to fans’ questions (see full exchange below), Scott offered up more detail, explaining that he has, so far, dug up 114 tracks representing 88 different songs (“Some are different arrangements of the same song, recorded months apart… You’ll understand why I got burned out making it”), and that he is only editing material, not adding to or doing overdubs on the old songs.
When asked by another fan how many studio tracks were recorded overall for the Fisherman’s Blues album, Scott quipped: “That is like asking how many fractals there are in a fractal. The material from the Fisherman’s Blues sessions is infinite.”
Some of the material from those sessions, which started in early 1986 and ran into 1988, has been released on the album Too Close To Heaven, an outtakes set that was renamed Fisherman’s Blues Part 2 in the U.S., and on the 2006 expanded reissue of Fisherman’s Blues.
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Mike Scott to publish ‘musical memoir’ called ‘Adventures of a Waterboy’ this summer
- The Waterboys make ‘An Appointment with Mr. Yeats’ — stream full new album
- Video: The Waterboys’ Mike Scott talks about ‘In a Special Place,’ making ‘This Is the Sea’
- Mike Scott releasing demos of Waterboys’ ‘This Is The Sea’ as ‘In A Special Place’
- Video: Waterboys play ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ live on Irish radio at Electric Picnic
- The Waterboys’ Mike Scott sharing unreleased songs, rarities, new tracks online
This seems a bit excessive for one album.
Just did an interview with him – 6 discs, 121 tracks. Out in October.