Van Morrison

Follows the story of a boy growing up in the late 1960s in Belfast whose family must decide whether to stay or leave amid the social tumult.

Several decades after his childhood hangouts in famed Belfast record store Atlantic Records, Van Morrison revisits his love of the genre with his new album. Launching with lead single "Streamline Train," the 23-track album takes a homemade style that exploded across Britain in the mid-1950s and infuses it with sophistication, soulfulness, and an underlying message on the importance of freedom and living on your own terms, his lifetime philosophy.

Van Morrison interprets some of the very building blocks of modern music in his own utterly unique style. Along with classics made famous by artists like Chet Baker and Frank Sinatra, the album features six stunning new original songs.

When musicians in the New York folk scene of the 1960s grew tired of city life, they decided to "get it together in the country." They headed for Woodstock-not the site of the infamous music festival of 1969 but to the Catskills, to Bearsville, to Woodstock proper. Counterculture revolutionaries like Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, and Paul Butterfield got "back to the land," turning the once sleepy hollow into a funky Shangri-La. Small Town Talk tells...