Chelsea Wolfe's last album, 2019's Birth of Violence, saw her delving deep into her folk roots with captivating, mostly acoustic cuts like "The Mother Road" and "Deranged for Rock & Roll." Today (September 21st), the singer-songwriter unveiled two unreleased tracks from the sessions for the LP: a stunning cover of Joni Mitchell's classic single "Woodstock" and the never-before-heard original "Green Altar." She's also offered up a fully authorized documentary (by photographer-director Bobby Cochran) of her 2019 Birth of Violence Tour, which was unfortunately cut short due to the pandemic. You can watch the film above and stream the songs below via Bandcamp.
Wolfe commented of the Mitchell cover, "While preparing for the Birth of Violence tour, I was watching a lot of Joni Mitchell videos. A 1966 Canadian performance that I found of hers ended up inspiring the video for my song 'Highway.' One night after working on the live set, Ben [Chisolm, frequent Wolfe collaborator] and I were hanging out and I was just letting the Joni videos roll. 'Woodstock' came on and I started singing along. After that I simply asked Ben if he'd be into covering it with me for the tour, and we just went back into the studio and started working it out. The cover came together quite naturally and it was a treat to play on stage every night. Joni is obviously such a big inspiration to this side of my music, so it felt right to pay tribute to her."
She added of the documentary, "It's not my natural inclination to want cameras around when I'm in my head or doing vocal warmups before a show, or when I'm with friends or family backstage, but Bobby asked, and in the spirit of pushing myself to document that era of my musical life, I welcomed him along. Then, after the COVID-19 pandemic hit and I had to fly home from the European acoustic tour before I got to play a single show of it, I was so grateful that he had this footage and was putting it together. I wanted to share this documentary for that reason as well, for those who had tickets to canceled shows (I love you!), and as a sort of wave goodbye to the time I spent focused on Birth of Violence, as I'm now making plans for and in the headspace of the next new album."
