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JM: The Newport Folk Festival is going to be the big one, but maybe some TV stuff. You also just get off-script.ĪH: Are you and Andrew planning on doing more live stuff for These 13? When you’re performing, at least the type of performer I am, you want to put a little more oomph into it. When you’re in a studio, it’s almost a solemn space, it’s so quiet. When performing, you want to add that energy to it. The vocals on the album blow me away because they are really smooth and refined.ĪH: The livestream vocals sounded richer and grittier, though, in a way. The main thing I noticed was a difference in the vocals. We did it right, so the end is the end.ĪH: I was observing the differences between the recordings on the album and the performances that I saw and heard on the livestream. We could have redone it, but it wouldn’t have been as cool, and it wouldn’t have sounded right. Like on “Jack of Diamonds”, you can hear that it just kind of falls apart at the end. That leads to a lot of surprising things. We’re listening very closely to each other to anticipate and just run with that. Sometimes I’m messing up and we’ll just go with it, or he messes up and I follow him. Generally, what you’re hearing on the record is the first time we played it all the way through, literally.
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We knew what key they were going to be in, and the basic arrangement. We just stick to the old tried and true since back in the Zippers we used to record that way.ĪH: So in these recordings on These 13 that we can hear on the album, are you and Andrew reacting at times to surprising things that the other person is doing? JM: The technology has made it so possible to screw your own stuff up. Like there are songs from Sun Studios in Memphis where you can hear the phone ringing in the office, but they are like, “Fuck it! This is the take, man.” There are no edits or moving things around, and that’s the way we did it.ĪH: That’s much less common to do things that way today, of course, but I would say there’s a kind of counter-movement among some bands to go back to a live sound if they can get it. We try to get the first or second take because after that, you start losing the cool bits. Any recording session we were in, we started doing that as much as 25 years ago. That’s the way he and I have always done things anyway. It was a two-year process, but we only saw each other twice, and that was in the studio.ĪH: Wow, that’s amazing how much you accomplished in that time. We started the conversation at the end of 2018 and did a session for six or eight titles, then at the end of 2019, we did another session. JM: I’m coming up on about two years since he contacted me. In terms of timeframe, when did you and Andrew start putting things together? I got to watch the 40 minute “Director’s Cut” version, which was excellent. We released the record in the middle of lockdown, so that was our first official performance together, so that was wonderful.ĪH: I learned a lot about the inspiration and creation of the different songs on the album These 13 by watching the show and hearing you and Andrew talk, but also by watching the documentary that was made about the album. We only recorded and that was all before the pandemic. Jimbo Mathus: Yes, I guess it’s the first time we’ve performed together, period. Was that the first time that you and Andrew Bird have performed together on a livestream?
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Jimbo Mathus joined us to talk about the making of These 13, his own musical sensibilities, and some of the stories behind these highly memorable songs.Īmericana Highways: I was able to watch the Ojai livestream (on April 12th) and enjoyed it a lot. The true story behind how the album came about is pretty idiosyncratic, like both artists, and came down to a desire to create a body of music confined creatively to two individuals, their ideas, and their playing methods. Alongside both the album and the concert, fans could also enjoy a documentary that accompanied These 13, discussing the songs and their more than 25 year relationship, also capturing Bird and Mathus playing album tracks together in an outdoor setting. They also played a concert streamed from Ojai, California, on April 12th that was their first time playing the album together with an audience, and that too, had its own musical identity, capturing differences in sound and vocals that made it unique. The album, These 13, is a truly haunting collection in many ways, blending tradition and modern methods seamlessly and creating a powerful sense of the past in the present day. This Spring, Jimbo Mathus and Andrew Bird released the outcome of a monumental team up, a major reunion in music making for the former bandmates of Squirrel Nut Zippers.
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