With fifty years in the music industry, a raft of hits with Dire Straits and a long line of solo albums since the band’s finish in 1995, Mark Knopfler has pretty much done it all, including composing and producing the film score for The Princess Bride back in 1987. This year will see him releasing his 9th solo record, Tracker, as well as heading out on a massive international tour as he continues to delight music fans throughout the world.
Set for a release date of the 16th March 2016 in the UK and the 17th in the US, the new album will be available on CD and 2 LP vinyl in the regular edition with a deluxe CD and digital download option with four bonus tracks. For hard core Knopfler fans, there’s also a limited edition bundle available for Tracker, which includes the standard CD and 12″ vinyl, a bonus CD containing the four extra tracks from the deluxe CD plus 2 more bonus tracks, a DVD containing exclusive videos and interviews, a numbered art print and six photographic prints.
To promote the album ahead of the release, he’s put out preview track, Beryl, which is already available as a digital download from iTunes. It’s a classic Knopfler guitar wheedling song with a lot of ringing and reverberating riffs. It’s underpinned by a Doors-style organ melody, which we like a lot as he sings the blues track that’s centred around an homage to the author Beryl Bainbridge, who died in 2010 having racked up an impressive count of five shortlisted novels in The Booker Prize, two best novels in the Whitbread Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize.
The album also includes the song Basil, which is yet another literary cap tip, this time in the direction of British modernist poet, Basil Bunting. Both tracks link into the overriding concept behind the album, Mark’s attempts to track the passing of time and trying to find his way in and amongst the changes that have held sway in his life. It’s also his effort to lay some of them down in recordings, moving the concept to documentation as much as self awareness.
The Tracker tour will follow the album’s release a little later in the year with UK dates in May, before moving on to a long list of European destinations that include Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Poland, Spain and Portugal running through until the end of July. There’s just a couple of stop off in Canada, but a pretty massive US leg of the tour taking him through until the end of October.
Tracker track list:
1. Laughs and Jokes and Drinks and Smokes
2. Basil
3. River Towns
4. Skydiver
5. Mighty Man
6. Broken Bones
7. Long Cool Girl
8. Lights of Taormina
9. Silver Eagle
10. Beryl
11. Wherever I Go (featuring Ruth Moody)
Bonus tracks on the deluxe CD and digital download album:
1. .38 Special
2. My Heart Has Never Changed
3. Terminal of Tribute To
4. Heart of Oak
Added bonus tracks on the deluxe limited edition bundle CD:
5. Time Will End All Sorrow
6. Oklahoma Ponies (traditional melody, lyrics and arrangment by Mark Knopfler)
