Music / Studio Albums / Jericho

Jericho

Released November 2, 1993, on Pyramid Records (a Rhino Entertainment label). The group's first studio album in sixteen years, and the first made without Robbie Robertson, who had left in 1976, or Richard Manuel, who died in 1986. Sessions stretched intermittently from 1985 to 1993 across Bearsville Studios and Levon Helm's own studio in Woodstock. Produced by John Simon, who'd produced the group's first two albums, with Aaron L. Hurwitz. The reunion years are covered more broadly in Reunion Years (1983–1999); this page covers the record itself.

Track listing

Without Robertson as principal songwriter, the album leans heavily on outside material: covers of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen alongside originals from within the touring band. Track order varies slightly between releases; songs include:

• Remedy
• Stuff You Gotta Watch (Muddy Waters cover): lead vocal Helm
• Blind Willie McTell (Bob Dylan cover): lead vocals traded between Danko and Helm
• The Caves of Jericho: lead vocal Helm
• Atlantic City (Bruce Springsteen cover)
• Move to Japan
• Too Soon Gone (a tribute written after Manuel's death)
• Country Boy: lead vocal Richard Manuel, recorded in 1985 and the last lead vocal he ever committed to tape
• The Same Thing (Willie Dixon cover)
• Amazon
• King Joe (featuring Los Lobos members David Hidalgo and Louie Perez)

Personnel

• Rick Danko: bass, guitar, vocals
• Levon Helm: drums, mandolin, vocals
• Garth Hudson: organ, keyboards, horns
• Jim Weider: guitar, vocals
• Richard Bell: keyboards
• Randy Ciarlante: drums, vocals
• Richard Manuel: vocals, "Country Boy" only, recorded before his death
• Stan Szelest: keyboards on tracks recorded before his 1991 death
• Fourteen additional guest musicians across various tracks

Critical standing

AllMusic gave the album three and a half stars, noting that while Robertson's songwriting and guitar were missed, the record proved the group could still function without him. Rolling Stone singled out the cover of "Atlantic City" as a highlight; Springsteen himself reportedly considered it a definitive version of his song. "Blind Willie McTell" was the first Dylan song the group had recorded since 1971, and one of the earliest widely heard versions of a song Dylan himself had left off Infidels a decade earlier.

Notes

Cover art is a painting by Peter Max depicting Big Pink, the West Saugerties house where the group first developed its sound with Dylan in 1967, a deliberate visual callback given how far removed this lineup was from that one.