THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Elvis Costello’s King Of America & Other Realms celebrates and explores the songwriter’s lifelong love and fascination with American music, spanning his many albums and inspired collaborations with some of the most celebrated musicians, songwriters and producers in this music, including his longtime creative partnership with T Bone Burnett.
Compiled by Costello, the six-disc box set traces Costello’s musical travels from Hollywood — where the King Of America album was recorded — to a brand-new take on that album’s opener Brilliant Mistake, recorded in Cape Fear, N.C. in early 2024. Between those points, it chronicles Costello’s adventures in New Orleans, Oxford, Clarksdale, Nashville and Memphis. This one-of-a-kind 97-track journey is guided by Costello in a newly self-penned 35-page essay, beautifully illustrated with rare and never-before-seen photos in a 57-page booklet. A startlingly beautiful cover shot by Terence Donovan reveals the majesty and absurdity of a king in his velvet and bejeweled crown and embroidered denim jacket.
Released in 1986, King Of America marked a significant shift in Costello’s career, both musically and personally. Unlike his previous albums with The Attractions, he mostly collaborated with a group of session musicians, including Ray Brown and Earl Palmer, and members of Elvis Presley’s TCB Band, that he dubbed The Confederates, and curiously only listed himself as The Costello Show. Similarly, the songs were credited to Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus. A departure from the new wave and punk he made his name with, the record’s sound leaned heavily into American country and folk influences, showcasing Costello’s versatility as a songwriter and musician. The album was critically acclaimed and helped to reinforce his artistic credibility during a time when he was transitioning away from the brash persona that had initially defined his career. This pivot not only broadened his musical palette but also solidified his reputation as one of the most innovative and enduring artists of his generation. In the nearly 40 years from its release, King Of America’s stature only continues to grow among fans and critics. Retrospectively, the album is seen as one of Costello’s best works.
King Of America & Other Realms is anchored by a new 2024 remaster (from the original master tapes) of Costello’s 1986 career-defining, Burnett-produced album, and features solo demos from 1985, including previously unreleased demos cut at Red Bus Recording Studios in London in the months prior to the KoA sessions in Hollywood, and mixed from newly discovered multitrack tapes. It also features a 17-song Royal Albert Hall concert from 1987 in London, mixed from multitrack tapes; and a three-disc compendium of recordings and collaborations from across the last four decades, including previously unreleased demos, outtakes and live recordings. The collection was produced by Costello and Steve Berkowitz.
Le Roi Sans Sabots, the second disc of the set, collects Costello’s solo demos from 1985. Brilliant Mistake and Blue Chair are presented with radically different lyrics, shedding new light on the intention of key songs from the album. Deportee — later brutalized and distorted on Goodbye Cruel World — is heard in a direct and emotional vocal performance with acoustic guitar. Meanwhile, an early sketch of Next Time Round shows that it was actually written for King Of America but not recorded again until the album Blood & Chocolate, released eight months later. Also included is an outtake of Shoes Without Heels, a contender that ultimately didn’t make the album; a different recording would eventually be released on the 1987 rarities and unreleased tracks collection, Out Of Our Idiot.
The disc is bookended by opening and closing title themes by The Coward Brothers, the pseudonymous side project that Costello and Burnett adopted for tours in ’84 and ’85. The Red Bus Demos are sequenced together with solo sessions recorded at Hollywood’s Ocean Way Studios. “If you are familiar with the songs of King Of America and then listen to the collection of sketches and solo performances on Le Roi Sans Sabots, you may see a different picture,” Costello writes. “Assembling Le Roi Sans Sabots has been a little like developing an old negative to discover a photograph, close to a very familiar image but crucially different in composition and implication. It seems that sometime after these initial solo sessions, I resolved to balance the breakup theme with lyrics with a more satirical note.” Also included are early drafts of Jack Of All Parades and Sleep Of The Just, along with solo versions of Poisoned Rose, Indoor Fireworks, I’ll Wear It Proudly, Suffering Face, and the piano ballad Having It All — written for a scene in the movie Absolute Beginners.
In early 1987 Costello played a six-night, sold-out stand at the Royal Albert Hall in London; three shows with The Attractions and three devoted to King Of America, with a band billed as The Confederates (the dictionary definition for ally or accomplice and nothing to do with America’s Civil War), featuring guitarist James Burton and bassist Jerry Scheff from Elvis Presley’s legendary TCB Band, drummer Jim Keltner, keyboardist Benmont Tench of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and T-Bone Wolk, who added accordion and mandolin to the ensemble. The electrifying concert featured live renditions of several King Of America titles, along with Costello’s takes on a host of great American songwriters’ songs: Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line, made famous by Waylon Jennings, Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham’s It Tears Me Up, Arthur Alexander’s Sally Sue Brown, Allen Toussaint’s Riverboat, Sonny Boy Williamson’s Your Funeral And My Trial, Mose Allison’s Your Mind Is On Vacation, Ray Charles’ What Would I Do Without You, Jesse Winchester’s Payday, Dave Bartholomew’s That’s How You Got Killed Before and Buddy Holly’s True Love Ways. This never-before-released concert, recorded on Jan. 27, 1987, has been newly mixed from the multitrack tapes.
King Of America would mark the second in a long line of Costello’s albums to be recorded in the U.S. over the ensuing four decades. That musical American odyssey is chronicled in great detail on this 48-track digest of recordings — spanning the albums Spike (1989, Hollywood and New Orleans), The Delivery Man (2004, Oxford, Miss.), The River In Reverse (2006, Hollywood and New Orleans), Momofuku (2008, Los Angeles), Secret, Profane & Sugarcane (2009, Nashville), National Ransom (2010, Los Angeles and Nashville) and Look Now (2018, Hollywood, New York City) — woven together with a slew of previously unreleased demos, outtakes and live recordings.
Some of Costello’s many collaborations with American musicians are represented throughout the three discs, labeled Il Principe Di New Orleans E Le Marchese Del Mississippi, El Príncipe Del Purgatorio and finally Der Herzog Des Rampenlicht, including previously unreleased tracks from his collaborations with New Orleans R&B legend Toussaint and longtime creative accomplice Burnett. In addition to a handful of songs from Costello and Toussaint’s collaborative album The River In Reverse, included are live versions of Bedlam from that record and Clown Strike, arranged by Toussaint and performed with The Imposters, A.B. Crown and The Crescent City Horns in Montreal in 2006, and the Toussaint-penned Lee Dorsey classic The Greatest Love, as featured in HBO’s David Simon-produced, New Orleans-based series Treme. This version is being made available for the first time outside of the show, while the Montreal performances are making their audio debuts, having been released on the long out-of-print DVD Hot As A Pistol, Keen As A Blade.
Discs 5 and 6 features nearly half of Costello’s Burnett-produced album National Ransom, joined by Lost On The River #12 from Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes, the acclaimed 2014 Burnett-led project consisting of musicians setting discovered Bob Dylan lyrics from 1967 to music. Costello offers recordings of Quick Like A Flash from the New Basement Tapes sessions, demos of the National Ransom tune Church Underground and album outtakes Condemned Man and For More Tears, the first-ever release of the latter song, which has only ever been performed live, as well as a stirring live performance of A Scarlet Tide, Costello and Burnett’s Oscar and Grammy-nominated song for the film Cold Mountain, recorded at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville with Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
Elsewhere, Costello duets with Lucinda Williams and Harris on The Delivery Man tracks There’s A Story In Your Voice and Heart Shaped Bruise. The latter, recorded live with Harris at the Hi Tone in Memphis in 2004, was previously only available on the concert DVD Club Date: Live In Memphis. Rosanne Cash and Kris Kristofferson are joined by Costello on the captivating April 5th, one of two songs recorded by the elusive supergroup C.C.K.
King Of America & Other Realms culminates with three new recordings recorded in 2024: Indoor Fireworks (Memphis Magnetic Version), That’s Not The Part of Him You’re Leaving with Larkin Poe and a recent arrangement of Brilliant Mistake performed, as Costello remarks, “over a habanera rhythm in a minor key to mark the dark passing of the years and our elusive hold on hope, taking a detour into the 1933, Harry Warren / Al Dubin song Boulevard Of Broken Dreams rather than just alluding to it in the lyric of the last verse.” The final song of the set is That Day Is Done, a song co-written by Costello and Paul McCartney for McCartney’s 1989 album Flowers In The Dirt, here performed with the gospel group The Fairfield Four, bringing this wild and wonderfully odd odyssey to a close.”
