Billy Corgan has announced new project that will once again take him across the continental United States, visiting people all over the country with “no destination,” while filming everything that happens. The working title for the month-long project is “Thirty Days.” “There will be new musical pieces, interviews with people, and we’re gonna try to document this journey and try to come up with some sort of collective vision,” said Corgan in a video uploaded to Facebook. The Smashing Pumpkins frontman went on to explain that there will be “three projects that are involved.”
The first, which he dubs “50 By 50” in honor of his upcoming 50th birthday, will be a collection of 50 of his favorite songs “from all my years of writing… not necessarily my greatest songs, because obviously opinions differ on those, but maybe a sort of personal reflection.” He’ll be putting up many of those songs as he goes along, and is asking fans for feedback on which songs from his back catalog he is missing. His tentative plan is to record the songs for a compilation at the end of the year.
The second part of the project is an album of cover songs, which will ostensibly be made up of “10 to 12” songs. Finally, the third aspect of the project is that Corgan will be writing for new album. “I am sort of remiss to play new music too soon, so I won’t necessarily be sharing that music, but I’d like to at least talk about some of the process involved.” Corgan has been working with Rick Rubin on a new solo album.
“Last time I kinda just took Route 66 and headed west,” Corgan said, speaking on the traveling aspect of “Thirty Days.” “This time we’re really gonna go all over… I think we’ll probably go to the Carolinas at some point, maybe down to Louisiana, across Texas… visit some of my conspiratorial friends.”
UPDATE (1/13): Corgan has posted an extended announcement video for the 50×50 project, in which he will revisit 50 of the Smashing Pumpkins/solo songs. He explains that he will start from Smashing Pumpkins’ first album Gish and work his way through his entire discography. Beginning with Gish, he will post three snippets on the Smashing Pumpkins Instagram account and judging by fans’ reactions, will have a full version posted the next day. From Gish, he announces the three songs he will provide snippets for will be “Crush,” “Rhinoceros” and “Snail.”
Additionally, he has also released a short video covering Blind Faith’s song “Presence of the Lord” on the Smashing Pumpkins Twitter page:
UPDATE (1/17):He has also covered the traditional Irish folk song, “Gentle Annie.”
Find the episodes of “Thirty Days” below – stay tuned, we’ll continuously update throughout the project.
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