Janis Ian - Worktapes & Demos, Vol. 1 (2023)

From Janis: Once I lost the ability to perform as a vocalist, Jeff and I began talking about long-delayed projects we still wanted to do. Realizing that my archives contain hundreds of work tapes, live shows, demos, rough mixes and the like, we began putting together a series of potential “albums” that would feature the original versions of songs that later made it to albums. We also wanted to include some songs that were originally slated for those albums but never made it. A “worktape” is just that – a tape of a recent work, sometimes recorded for copyright purposes, sometimes so I could listen back and find out what was bothering me (that extra section in “Lover’s Lullabye” for instance), sometimes for the arranger and producer to hear. All of these are from the very first time I sang them into a microphone. Minimal “fixing” was done in order to preserve the integrity of the originals. Enjoy!

These recordings were culled from “best available”, which included DATs, minidiscs, old cassettes, reel-to-reel, and other formats. Our goal was to present them as close to the original sound as possible; you may hear small glitches in some, including one drop-out. Any further attempts to manipulate the audio and remove more hiss, or clean up external sounds, resulted in a loss of fidelity Janis was not willing to entertain. Thank you for understanding!