On the acclaimed Mermaid Avenue albums, Billy Bragg and Wilco put music to lyrics by folk legend Woody Guthrie for which he had not written music or made recordings. On Black Friday, November 29, 2013, Nonesuch Records will reissue the first two volumes on vinyl and release, for the first time on vinyl, a third volume comprising 17 previously unreleased recordings made during the original sessions, which was first released in the 2012 three-CD-plus-DVD set Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions. Each volume is pressed on 2-LP, 180-gram vinyl at Pallas MFG in Diepholz, Germany. The albums are available to pre-order in the Nonesuch Store.

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell made their Austin City Limits duo debut, performing together for the first time on the ACL stage, when the duo's set aired on PBS on Saturday. You can watch the complete episode here. Harris and Crowell will be featured again on a special ACL show on November 23, featuring highlights from the Americana Music Association Honors and Awards, at which they took home the awards for Duo of the Year and Album of the Year for Old Yellow Moon. Their North American tour, with Richard Thompson, is in the Pacific Northwest and Canada this week.

Pianist Jeremy Denk was a guest on WNYC's The Leonard Lopate Show yesterday. He talks about his latest Nonesuch release, a recording of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, and performs from the piece. "I think of Bach as this really generous spirit," Denk says, "encompassing all of humanity's possibilities in a more perfect way than most humans are able to. For me, this piece has an incredible geniality and charm and invention, and then these moments of tremendous pathos." Listen to the interview and performance here.

Randy Newman was joined on stage by his son Amos Newman for an hour-long keynote Q&A at the 2013 Billboard & The Hollywood Reporter Film & TV Music Conference, held in LA earlier this week. The conversation touched on a number of topics related to Newman père's career as a singer-songwriter and as the composer of film scores, not least for a number of Pixar pictures. You can watch an excerpt of the discussion, including some thoughts on Kanye West and talk of a new solo album, here.

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell make their Austin City Limits duo debut, performing together for the first time on the ACL stage, this Saturday, November 2, on PBS stations across the US. The performance was recorded at The Moody Theater in Austin this past June as part of a world tour supporting their album Old Yellow Moon. You can watch a preview of the show—their performance of the album track "Invitation to the Blues"—and an ACL interview here. Harris and Crowell tour California, the Pacific Northwest, and Western Canada with Richard Thompson starting this weekend.

Devendra Banhart's music video for "Für Hildegard von Bingen," from his Nonesuch Records debut album, Mala, premiered today on MOCAtv, the video channel of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. It was directed by Isaiah Seret and written by Seret and Banhart. On "Für Hildegard von Bingen," Banhart casts a contemporary life for the 12th-century Catholic mystic and composer. Watch the video here.

Iron and Wine kicks off the second leg of its North American fall tour at LA's Orpheum Theatre on Thursday, Halloween night. Sam Beam and the band perform up the West Coast, making stops in Oakland, Portland, Vancouver, and Seattle, with opening sets along the way from Laura Mvula. Iron and Wine then heads inland for shows in Missoula, Salt Lake City, Denver, Lincoln, and Kansas City, before landing in Nashville and Atlanta in mid-November, with support on those dates from Jesca Hoop. On December 10, Iron and Wine headlines the Holiday Cheer for FUV concert benefitting New York public radio station 90.7 FM WFUV. 

Sam Amidon, Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Chris Thile & Michael Daves have all contributed songs to Divided & United: The Songs of the Civil War, a new collection of Civil War–era tunes recorded by contemporary artists, to be released on ATO Records on November 5. The album, which is streaming in full via Garden and Gun in advance of the release, features Amidon on "Wildwood Flower," the Chocolate Drops on "Day of Liberty," and Thile and Daves on "Richmond Is a Hard Road to Travel," as well as performances from Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs, Ralph Stanley, Dolly Parton, Steve Earle, T Bone Burnett, and Thile's Punch Brothers band mate Noam Pikelny. Nonesuch Records released the soundtrack to Ken Burns' acclaimed documentary The Civil War in 1990.

Carolina Chocolate Drops are featured on the latest episode of On Canvas, the performance program from Philadelphia PBS member station WHYY. The episode captures a performance by the Chocolate Drops at The Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware, as well as interviews with members of the band. You can watch the complete episode here. The band plays a number of tour dates in the US South this December.

Jeremy Denk's new recording of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, has earned the top spot on the Billboard Traditional Classical Albums chart. The album, released late last month in the US and is now available internationally, includes a companion DVD with video “liner notes,” in which Denk demonstrates passages on the piano as he explains certain details of the iconic piece. The Wall Street Journal recently praised Denk's performance on the album as "gorgeously and insightfully played" and the DVD as "the kind of fresh thinking of which we can never have too much." 

Pianist Jeremy Denk and mandolinist Chris Thile have each recently released recordings of music by Bach on Nonesuch Records: Denk's recording of the Goldberg Variations with a companion DVD of video "liner notes," and Thile's Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1. The Wall Street Journal's Terry Teachout says both "stand out from the pack," finding Denk's "gorgeously and insightfully played ... enthrallingly involving" and that Thile's offers "a thrillingly new palette of instrumental colors." He concludes: "If I had to guess what the future of recorded classical music will sound like, I'd bet on Mr. Thile's Bach—as well as on Mr. Denk's video liner notes. That's the kind of fresh thinking of which we can never have too much."

Chris Thile's solo tour brought him to Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on Tuesday for an eclectic, sold-out set that featured music from his new album, Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1, and much more. "The most impressive musicians are often versatile, but few match the breadth of the brilliant mandolinist Chris Thile," raves the New York Times's Vivien Schweitzer. Of his performing Bach violin works on the mandolin, Schweitzer writes, "in Mr. Thile’s virtuosic hands, the results are breathtaking ... a revelatory reading, poignant and exuberant by turns."