ALLAIRE STUDIOS NEW YORK PRO

There’s a real sense of melancholy on the whole album because that’s always been where I’ve drifted.

“I think about the album, and I think about all those songs,” says Jones. I just never thought I sounded good on them at the time.”Ĭome Away With Me was not a jazz album, though Jones has roots in jazz piano and planted in regular jazz club gigs.

ALLAIRE STUDIOS NEW YORK PRO

“It wasn’t until we really had the chance to dive in and find the old tapes-everything was recorded on tape and transferred to Pro Tools-that I realized that with the proper mixes, these are actually great, and I sound great. “I loved a lot of the stuff that was happening, but I didn’t feel like I sounded good,” says Jones. Listening to earlier demos and Allaire, Jones said she found a renewed connection to many of the songs again. “Part of me always felt bad about never getting to see it through with Craig, so it was nice to reconnect and finish that with him.” “I think part of me was relieved because I knew that it wasn’t completely right yet, but part of me was also very disappointed because there was some really special stuff in there,” shares Jones. Returning to Sorcerer Sound Studios with producer Arif Mardin, the final version of Come Away With Me featured “Don’t Know Why” and “Turn Me On” from Jones’ earlier demo sessions and “The Long Day Is Over,” “Feelin’ The Same Way,” and “Seven Years” from the Allaire sessions. Looking back on the Street sessions, Jones admits things could have been handled differently by the label, but it’s also difficult to get back into the mindset of how she was feeling back then. “Many records are made that way, not with a whole record being turned down necessarily, but so many are made from different sessions with a lot of different people.” She adds, “It’s not like it needed to be told, and it was a really weird thing that happened, but I never looked back and had any regrets because the album took off crazily that whatever happened just felt like fate.” “The story became so much more that it almost didn’t matter,” says Jones. When Come Away with Me was initially turned down by Blue Note, the incident was downplayed, says Jones, because no one wanted that to become the story around the album. “It was great getting together with Craig and remixing it and making it really shine because it never got the chance to.” “I had to take a lot of care to explain that properly with the right nuance,” says Jones. Now 20 years since the release of Come Away With Me, Jones revisited some of the songs that got away, those never released from the Allaire sessions and earlier demos on Come Away With Me – 20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition. Produced by Eli Wolf, the reissued package features the original 14-track album, in addition to 22 previously unreleased tracks, including the original demos Jones submitted to Blue Note Records, the First Session demos she made after being signed, and the first version of the album recorded at Allaire Studios with Street, featuring many tracks never heard before.įor Jones, reuniting with Street to work on those songs again after two decades was enlightening. It’s pretty nice to get to release it and to tell the story of how it all came to be because it is a little bit tricky of a story as a soundbite.” “They could have easily been on the album with a little spit polish, but they just weren’t. “Some of these recordings are great,” Jones tells American Songwriter. Still, those early sessions and even earlier demos marked a moment in time for the then 21-year-old artist making her first album. Initially recording the album at Allaire Studios in Woodstock, New York with a dream collective of musicians-Rob Burger on accordion and organ, guitarists Bill Frisell and Kevin Breit, bassist Lee Alexander, and drummers Brian Blade and Kenny Wollesen on drums- Come Away With Me was later rerecorded and remixed before its release in 2002. When Norah Jones submitted her debut Come Away With Me to her record label it was rejected.

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