We decided to cover The Lillywhite Sessions, an earlier version of Busted Stuff. At a Christmas party, me and Eric were drinking, and we’d be like ‘Wouldn’t it be sick to cover a Dave Matthews record?’ One day he said, ‘Hey, I think I can actually get a budget and make this happen.’ I’m a fucking white dude, so of course, some Dave Matthews records came my way. These are songs about mortality and grace, surprising and genuine. Those listening for the sly, ironic tone that characterizes Walker’s social media feeds may find themselves initially baffled. Though mocked and derided by many as Clinton-era feel-good fluff, Walker highlights both the musical adventurousness and lyrical darkness that exists in the best Dave Matthews Band material. On “Busted Stuff,” the first taste of the forthcoming album, Walker draws a line straight from Chicago post-rockers the Sea & Cake to the DMB. “With the wine you gave Jesus that set him free/After three days in the ground.” “Bartender please, fill my glass for me,” Walker sings on “Bartender,” the album’s best moment. These are far from faithful renditions Walker opens “Grey Street” with discordant, minimalist reeds, recasts “Kit Kat Jam” with a math rock tint, and brings a sense of impressionisitic melencholy to the bleary “Sweet Up and Down.” For all the instrumental reinvention though, Walker seems keenly tapped into the existential fears that the DMB’s buoyant jams have a tendency to obscure. But for their new album, Walker and collaborators Andrew Scott Young and Ryan Jewell took inspiration from the initial, stranger, and altogether less-polished takes, using them as raw materials with which to fashion something new and unexpected. Originally recorded in 19, many of these songs surfaced on the DMB’s shined-up 2001 lp Everyday. On November 16th, he releases his second record of 2018, The Lillywhite Sessions, a reimagining of the Dave Matthews Band’s lost album. MBHO KA100DK/603A (stage lip) > Naiant PFA > Sound Devices MixPre-6 > WAV (24/48) > Audacity 3.0.Earlier this year, Chicago-based songwriter and bandleader Ryley Walker released his fourth full-length lp, the knotty and darkly funny Deafman Glance. Stream and download the show at the Live Music Archive. I recorded this show with a pair of MBHO omnidirectional mics positioned at the stage lip. Ryley Walker isn’t touring with David Grubbs, but you can still catch him live this month and beyond. You don’t see two performers of this caliber get together very often, and I’m glad we were there to capture it. It sounds like they’re listening to each other just as much as they’re playing their own guitars. For fifty minutes they alternate between ruminative wanderings and dizzying freakouts, neither soloing or overwhelming the other. Though the pair won’t be touring behind the record (for now, anyway), they did get together last month for a one-off record release show at Public Records in Brooklyn. The album brings the two former Chicagoans together for the first time for seven loose, explorative guitar tracks with Grubbs also contributing some piano. Way back in September, which is about a decade ago according to my experience of time, David Grubbs and Ryley Walker got together to release a fantastic collaborative album, A Tap on the Shoulder, via Ryley’s Husky Pants label.
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