Billy Bragg and Wilco expand Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions

Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue collaboration is returning in an expanded edition of The Complete Sessions on December 11, 2026. Craft Recordings announced the release on October 8, with 7LP-plus-7-inch, 4CD and digital editions.

The collection brings together all three volumes of the project, which paired previously unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics with music by Bragg and Wilco. It adds alternate versions, demos and live material, alongside a newly discovered 1951 home recording of Guthrie performing “Hesitating Beauty.”

What makes this edition different?

A set called The Complete Sessions already appeared in 2012. This is an expanded 2026 edition, rather than the first time the three albums have been collected.

The new archive selection includes alternate versions of “Aginst Th’ Law,” “All You Fascists,” “I Guess I Planted” and “She Came Along to Me.” “Aginst Th’ Law (Alternate Version)” is available as a preview. Both physical box sets include new liner notes by Bob Mehr.

Three albums, two generations of songwriting

The original Mermaid Avenue arrived in 1998, followed by Vol. II in 2000 and Vol. III in 2012. Their foundation was Guthrie’s writing, developed into songs by later collaborators rather than reconstructed as imagined Guthrie performances.

For songwriters, that distinction is the project’s lasting attraction: the words and their musical settings belong to a collaboration across time. The newly found home tape also lets Guthrie’s own voice take a place in the expanded collection.

See the formats and preview in Craft’s announcement.

Billy Bragg (photo: Darin Back) and Wilco in 1996 (photo: Marina Chavez). Promotional photographs supplied via Craft Recordings for coverage of Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions. Layout and resizing by GuitarGangsters.