That Eric Alper

By 2009, Allen Toussaint’s songs were already widely recorded and performed. As a writer, he had penned classics like “Fortune Teller,” “Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette),” “Get Out of My Life, Woman,” and “Working in the Coal Mine,” while his work as a producer and arranger shaped recordings by artists including Dr. John, Labelle, The Neville Brothers, Glen Campbell, and Boz Scaggs. His Sea-Saint studio, meanwhile, became a major recording destination in New Orleans.

What Songbook captured was a different view of that career. Recorded in 2009 during two intimate performances at Joe’s Pub in New York City, the album documents Toussaint alone at the piano, revisiting songs from across five decades of writing, recording, and performance. Originally released in 2013, it was also his first live album.

The GRAMMY®-nominated album now returns in an expanded edition arriving May 29, featuring 20 previously unreleased performances—including additional songs and interview recordings with Toussaint reflecting on his early influences and career. The release will be available as a 2-CD set and across digital platforms, while the original 25-track album makes its vinyl debut as a 2-LP gatefold set. It also includes the original essay and track notes by Ashley Kahn, alongside updated liner notes from producer Paul Siegel.

In 2005, following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Allen Toussaint was forced to leave New Orleans and make a fresh start in New York City. Amid that upheaval, he found solace in music and soon became a weekly fixture at Joe’s Pub, an intimate venue in Manhattan’s East Village. For an artist who frequently shied away from solo performances, these shows offered a rare opportunity to experience him in this setting and helped spark a late-career resurgence.

Those performances also changed his relationship to his own material. As Ashley Kahn writes, Toussaint used the residency to get “truly comfortable on the stage by himself, laying claim to his own songs.” Over time, he developed the set by resurrecting material he had not touched in years, improvising on established melodies, and weaving personal anecdotes into his stage patter.

By the time of the Joe’s Pub residency, Toussaint’s catalog already stretched across multiple roles. Behind the scenes, he had built a long list of songwriting credits, with songs later recorded by artists including Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, The Rolling Stones, and The Who, as well as The O’Jays, Ringo Starr, Lee Dorsey, and The Jerry Garcia Band. He was also an in-demand producer and arranger, while his own solo discography extended from 1958’s The Wild Sounds of New Orleans through albums including Toussaint (1970), Life, Love and Faith (1972), and Southern Nights (1977).

Songbook brings those strands together in one performance setting, drawing from across decades of writing and recording, alongside material tied closely to New Orleans and its musical traditions.

Producer Paul Siegel first knew the Joe’s Pub performances as a fan in the audience. In his account, the stripped-down format made clear what the setting could reveal: “Alone at the piano, and in a setting like this one, he was able to stretch out and explore the far reaches of his seemingly endless songbook.” Siegel realized it was the right chance to document Toussaint in that form, and in 2009 he recorded two of the concerts at Joe’s Pub.

The resulting album presents not just the songs themselves, but the way Toussaint framed them onstage—through spoken recollection, career-spanning selection, and solo performance. When Songbook was released in 2013, it was met with broad critical acclaim and, the following year, earned Toussaint his first two GRAMMY nominations: Best Americana Album and Best American Roots Song.

LISTENING NOTES

• “City of New Orleans” — Written by Steve Goodman and included among the previously unreleased recordings from the Joe’s Pub performances.
• “What Do You Want the Girl to Do” — Performed live as part of the expanded material drawn from the 2009 recordings.
• “Hi Lee Hi” — Included here as Toussaint’s tribute to Jerry Garcia.
• “Shrimp Po-Boy, Dressed” — Featured in the original set and later nominated for Best American Roots Song at the GRAMMY Awards.
• ’60s Medley: “A Certain Girl” / “Mother-in-Law” / “Fortune Teller” / “Working in the Coal Mine” — A four-song concert staple built from some of Toussaint’s best-known 1960s compositions.

Songbook documents a period when Allen Toussaint returned to the stage in a new way: alone, at the piano, working through songs that had traveled widely through other artists as well as through his own recordings. The expanded edition adds further material from the same performances. It remains a record of two nights at Joe’s Pub, when a five-decade catalog was presented directly by the artist who wrote, shaped, and carried it.