Dark Horse Records have just announced a new Joe Strummer box set, Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years. It will be released on September 16th as part of the celebrations honouring Joe’s 70th birthday year.

The press release says the set is “….the first-ever comprehensive collection highlighting Joe’s work with his post-Clash band, The Mescaleros. The collection includes remastered editions of all three of the band’s studio albums, plus 15 rare and unreleased tracks spanning the first demos Joe wrote for the Mescaleros, and outtakes of several tracks of Joe’s final recordings with the band.”

The box set was executive produced by Lucinda Tait (Strummer) and produced by David Zonshine and features exclusive new interviews with Joe’s friends, collaborators and Mescaleros band mates, plus never-before-seen handwritten notes, lyrics, and drawings by Joe taken from the Joe Strummer Archive. All the albums are remastered by three-time GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer Paul Hicks (The Beatles, John Lennon, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie) and are packaged with extensive new liner notes, unreleased images, and four reproduction lyric sheets and chord charts.

Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years will be available as a 4CD with 72-page book box set, and 7LP with 32-page book, special edition packaging and exclusive 12”x12” art print.

The first track from the collection, the previously unreleased version of ‘The Road To Rock ‘N’ Roll (Demo)’ is available to stream now. The video for the song was created using Strummer’s drawings and handwritten lyrics found in the Strummer archive:

If you’re wondering about the title it’s because this is the second installment in what looks to a series of career-spanning compilations. The first, Joe Strummer 001, was released in 2018 by Ignition Records. Since then, Dark Horse has taken over publishing and distribution rights for the Stummer legacy.

“There’s so much great music that Joe left us in his archive,” says Joe’s widow and the executive producer, Lucinda Tait. “We started this work with 001, so to focus on Joe’s work with The Mescaleros was the natural second step on 002 because those songs he made with them just seemed to resonate so strongly and reinvigorated his connection with his audience at a level he hadn’t experienced since his days with The Clash.”