Chris Wood / Wealth of unheard material in new ‘Evening Blue’ deluxe box set

Evening Blue is a forthcoming deluxe ‘bookset’ that chronicles and celebrates Traffic co-founder Chris Wood‘s life in music.

Central to this set, and almost 40 years after Chris compiled and sequenced it, is a first pressing on 180g vinyl of his never-released solo album (long thought lost, the masters were discovered by chance in a barn in the West of England in early 2013). While some titles are known, none of the selections have previously been heard. They are as follows:

Side One: Song For Pete | See No Man Girl | Letter One | Barbed Wire | Don’t It

Side Two: Jam In Butter | Moon Child Vulcan | Tone Blind Rhythm Deaf | Birth In A Day

The four CDs will feature the unreleased album, as well as music drawn from Chris’s entire career with his solo recordings taking centre-stage. Evening Blue also includes alternate takes and mixes as well as previously unheard compositions and never-before-heard home demos and other sketches.

Track listings are still being finalised, but there is music from Traffic as well as recordings by Gordon Jackson, John Martyn, Dave Mason, The Sky, Jim Capaldi, Bobby Whitlock, Airforce, Martha Velez, Shawn Phillips and others. The set also features previously unheard collaborative work with The Wailers’ keyboard player, Tyrone Downie as well as Rebop Kwaku Baah, Remi Kabaka, Dr John and Jeanette Jacobs. Tracks from the only known-to-survive recordings by the short-lived Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog line-up are also included.

With only a couple of exceptions (where the original masters no longer exist) the selections have been re-mastered by Richard Whittaker in the UK from the original 1⁄4”, 1” or 2” analog tapes.

It will be housed in a 200+ page hardback book which includes over 420 images, the majority of which have not been seen before. The text has been abridged and edited from Dan Ropek’s biography of Chris and includes many exclusive interviews with colleagues, friends and fellow musicians.

This set has been curated by Hidden Masters (who produced The Jess Roden Anthology) in close collaboration with Steph Wood, who administers her brother’s estate. The first edition, limited to 1,000 individually numbered copies worldwide, will be issued this summer.

• • Pre-order Evening Blue from uDiscoverMusic store