(Roots Rock, Americana) [CD] Willie Nile - Places I Have Never Been - 1991, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Born and raised in Buffalo, NY, Nile came from a musical family—his grandfather was a vaudeville pianist who played with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Eddie Cantor; his uncles played boogie-woogie. He listened to the music of Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and Fats Domino, brought home by his older brothers. Nile himself began playing piano at age eight and took classical music lessons until he was a teenager, when he taught himself his first rock & roll song. He soon began to compose short songs and continued the habit into his college years, when during the summers he made trips into New York City to frequent hootenanny clubs like Folk City and the Gaslight.
Nile studied philosophy at the University at Buffalo where he received a BA in 1971, before heading for Greenwich Village. After graduation, Nile took an apartment in the Village; however, during his first winter in New York, he contracted pneumonia, which put him out of commission for about a year. He continued writing songs while recuperating, determined to make a name for himself as a latter-day troubadour. He pursued that throughout the 1970s, becoming a regular in the Village folk and rock scenes and getting tabbed by some as the next big thing to come out of that long-thriving artistic community.
He began hanging out at clubs like CBGB's, where he would see bands like Patti Smith, Television, the Ramones and Talking Heads.
Establishing residency at the Village club Kenny's Castaways on Bleecker St., Nile began drawing crowds, which in turn led to his first record deal. In a review in The New York Times, rock critic Robert Palmer wrote of Nile; "Every once in awhile [sic?] the times seems to produce an artist who is at once an iconoclast and near-perfect expression of contemporary currents. He is one of the best singer-songwriters to emerge from the New York scene in a long time."
Following a measure of critical acclaim, he had conversations with representatives from several record companies; he was signed by Arista Records, and went into the studio with a band that included Jay Dee Daugherty from the Patti Smith Group. The measure of excitement surrounding his self-titled debut album, Willie Nile, prompted Pete Townshend to request Willie's presence on The Who 's summer tour. Nile and his band were soon on the road with The Who, only a few months after Willie's first experience playing with a band. After two albums, the self-titled 1980 debut and 1981's Golden Down, Nile was involved with protracted legal problems which, among other things, managed to derail his career for a number of years.
Although he continued to write, Nile did not perform live or record again until a 1987 performance in Oslo, Norway, with Eric Andersen. A videotape of Nile’s performance in Norway prompted a Columbia talent scout to sign him to the label in 1988. For reasons that are unclear, production on his album didn't start for two more years. It was another significant delay in the troubadour’s career. Issued in 1991, His Columbia Records CD Places I Have Never Been contained the songs "Everybody Needs A Hammer" and "Heaven Help The Lonely." Places I Have Never Been featured appearances by backing musicians including Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright III, Roger McGuinn, and members of the Hooters and the Roches. His 1992 EP release, Hard Times in America, became a favorite among some listeners in Europe.
Nile has recorded and performed with several musicians, including Ringo Starr, Tori Amos, Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Ian Hunter, and Barenaked Ladies. A live Central Park concert album, Willie Nile-Archive Alive, was released on Archive Recordings, and Nile was one of the vocalists on the 1998 ensemble album Largo, along with Joan Osborne, Cyndi Lauper, Levon Helm, The Chieftains, Taj Mahal and Carole King. Another project found Nile writing and performing most of the songs for the soundtrack to the Kevin McLaughlin film Pinch Me!.
Gathering together his resources over time, he put out his first self-released album, Beautiful Wreck of the World, in 1999. It was chosen as one of the Top Ten Albums of the Year by critics at Billboard Magazine, The Village Voice and Stereo Review. Lucinda Williams called "On the Road to Calvary," Nile's song for Jeff Buckley, "One of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard." The album reached the finals of the Independent Music Awards for Best Rock Album of the Year.
In the fall of 2003, Nile was invited to share the stage at three concerts with the E Street Band, including the two final Giants Stadium shows.
In 2006, Nile released Streets of New York, which some may consider to be his best work to date, due to its production and songwriting. Former Time magazine music critic and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Jay Cocks writes of Streets of New York, "The tunes he writes and plays with such blowtorch vibrancy get the myth and magic and danger and sadness and love in this town--of this town--truer, and righter, than anything I've heard since Dion. This record is a head-twister and heart-wrencher. It's rock and roll at its best. It's New York at its best. And there's nothing better than that."
House of a Thousand Guitars was released to positive reviews on April 14, 2009.
On November 22, 2009, Nile joined the E Street Band for the cover of Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher."
The Buffalo News said that their hometown troubadour's Streets of New York, House of a Thousand Guitars, and The Innocent Ones stand as “three of the finest recordings to ever straddle the worlds of “singer/songwriter” fare and good ol’ street-tough rock ‘n’ roll.”
On April 23, 2013 at a ceremony in Leeds, UK, Nile was named Legacy Ambassador for the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation. The Foundation declared: "Whether performing at home on the Streets of New York, or appearing in the many countries around the world that he regularly visits, Willie Nile’s brilliant live shows always express passionately and energetically the issues of the day, with meaningful and relevant lyrics that are both thought provoking and uplifting. Willie is one of the great American Troubadours, from the old school of acclaimed singer/songwriters. He is a wonderful artist who follows in the footsteps and traditions of legendary storytellers such as Jimmy Rogers, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan, but like Dylan, Willie went electric a long time ago and also acknowledges and has a real respect and love for the great original music and artists from the Rock n Roll era, especially Buddy Holly."
June 25, 2013, Nile releases his eighth full-length studio album American Ride through Loud & Proud Records. The decision to release American Ride through Loud & Proud Records was unexpected as Nile was originally planning on self-publishing through money raised on PledgeMusic.com. The decision to sign onto a record label occurred after he was approached by Tom Lipsky, president of Loud & Proud Records.
On November 11, 2014, Nile released If I Was a River, a 10-track all-piano album, composed by Nile with assistance from his long-time collaborator Frankie Lee. Nile performs on the same Steinway Grand piano that he'd played 34 years earlier on the evening of the death of John Lennon. This release marks a divergence from his usual electric rock and roll roots. “I wanted it to be intimate and reflective, and I wanted to keep it simple and let the songs speak for themselves,” Nile explains.
Carlo Wolff, in The Cleveland Jewish News, refers to Nile along with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen as bards and masters of melody and meaning.
At a surprise appearance at the 2015 Light of Day Benefit in Asbury Park, NJ, Bruce Springsteen joined Nile on stage to perform Nile's One Guitar.
On May 28th, 2015, at the Best Buy Theatre in Times Square, New York City, Willie joined Bruce Springsteen, Joan Jett, Roger Daltrey and Billy Idol at the 11th annual MusiCares MAP Fund benefit concert to honor Pete Townshend for his commitment to helping other musicians with addictions. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Nile)

After releasing a pair of fine albums for Arista, Willie Nile signed a deal with Geffen Records in 1982, but a dispute with the label put Nile's recording career in limbo, and he ended up not making an album until he struck a deal with Columbia and released Places I Have Never Been in 1991. While in many respects Nile's debut was the purest expression of his music, Places I Have Never Been is where he really nailed the elements of record making; unlike the lean, stark textures of Willie Nile or the overcooked bombast of Golden Down, Places I Have Never Been boasts a sound and an approach that really flatter Nile's songs, and it's certainly his most eclectic and musically adventurous major-label set. T-Bone Wolk and Stewart Lerman produced the album with Nile, and though there's a bit more polish on these tracks than they really need, the team also matched up Nile with some stellar studio players (as well as some Grade-A guest stars, among them Roger McGuinn and Richard Thompson), and they fill out Nile's arrangements with a lot more finesse than on his previous sets. Nile also delivered a set of terrific songs for this album, and he rarely sounded as joyous as on the title cut and "That's Enough for Me," as edgy and expressive as on "Café Memphis" and "Children of Paradise," and as passionate as on "Heaven Help the Lonely," which sounds like the hit single Nile deserved but never got. Nile's luck with Columbia proved to be no better than he had with Arista, and his next release would be financed on his own dime and released by his own label, but that doesn't change the fact that Places I Have Never Been is a solid and beautifully crafted record from a gifted songwriter who also knows how to rock on out, and shows both these talents to his advantage on this disc. (Mark Deming, AllMusic)

Track-by-track participants are availble in the scanned booklet.