The Band will celebrate the 50th anniversary of their third album, Stage Fright, with a massive box set featuring a trove of new material. Out on February 12th, 2021 via Capitol/UMe, the remixed, remastered, and expanded edition of the album will include a previously-unreleased show from London’s Royal Albert Hall on June 3rd, 1971, field recordings of the album’s tracks, and more.
Supervised by The Band’s Robbie Robertson, the anniversary edition of Stage Fright will also host the album’s tracks in their originally intended order. The reissue will be available in a variety of formats including CD, vinyl, digital, and Blu-ray audio disc.
There’s a lot to unpack in this new edition of The Band’s 1970 album comprised of new mixes by Bob Clearmountain. In addition to remixed and remastered versions of the original recordings—tracked live onstage at the Woodstock Playhouse without an audience in 1970—fans get an intimate window into how the music came together with newly-unearthed field recordings. These primitive musical documents find Robertson alongside his bandmates Rick Danko and Richard Manuel at the Calgary Hotel in 1970 in a late-night jam where they workshopped “The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show” and jammed on other songs that didn’t make the album.
Also contained in the Super Deluxe Box Set is a previously-unreleased June 3rd, 1971 concert at the Royal Albert Hall. This 20-track recording finds The Band at the top of their game on a European tour as they cruised through passionate takes on many of their hits from Stage Fright and before like “The Shape I’m In”, “The Weight”, “I Shall Be Released”, “Up On Cripple Creek”, “Chest Fever” and many more. This 50th-anniversary edition also hosts alternate versions of “Strawberry Wine” and “Sleeping” that have yet to be released.
Robertson writes in the new liner notes,
Doing new mixes on these songs with Bob Clearmountain has been a gift and special opportunity. Glyn Johns and Todd [Rundgren] did a terrific job on the original mixes in England while The Band was on the Festival Express train tour across Canada with Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. We had always been part of the mixing process before, which left something on this album feeling a little unfinished. Clearmountain has taken this music and given it the sonic lift it deserves. The album has become a whole new listening experience with the original song order and the depth of these mixes.
There may be some purists that prefer ‘the way it was,’ and of course that’s always readily available. I’m enjoying this new version, this story, this musical journey. It feels like a fulfillment and I know my brothers in The Band would definitely agree.
Click here to order the 50th-anniversary edition of The Band’s Stage Fright on CD, split color or black vinyl, or the Super Deluxe Box Set. Scroll down to see the full tracklist for the release, out on February 12th, 2021. The Band has also shared a 2020 remix of “The Shape I’m In” available via the player below or through your preferred streaming service.
The Band – “The Shape I’m In” (Remix 2020)