Rolling Stones Announce New Album 'Blue & Lonesome'

(hennemusic) The Rolling Stones will release a collection of blues covers, "Blue & Lonesome", on December 2. It will be available on CD, vinyl and digital download, with a Deluxe Box Set version adding a 75 page mini-book about the making of the album and band postcard prints.

Produced by Don Was, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the band's first studio album in over a decade features a pair of guest appearances by Eric Clapton and updated versions of tunes originally recorded by blues legends Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and Magic Sam, among others.

The project was recorded over three days in December last year at British Grove Studios in West London, just a stone's throw from Richmond and Eel Pie Island where the Stones started out as a young blues band playing pubs and clubs.

The group played live in the studio without overdubs and were joined by Clapton, who happened to be in the next studio making his own album. "This album is manifest testament to the purity of their love for making music," says Was, "and the blues is, for the Stones, the fountainhead of everything they do."

Guitarist Ron Wood previously shared some insight into the sessions for the follow-up to 2005's "A Bigger Bang." "We went in to cut some new songs, which we did," said Wood in April. "But we got on a blues streak. We cut 11 blues in two days. They are extremely great cover versions of Howlin' Wolf and Little Walter, among other blues people. But they really sound authentic."

The Rolling Stones are previewing "Blue & Lonesome" with a snippet of "Just Your Fool", originally recorded by Little Walter. Check it out here.

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