Matt Sweeney & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Joan Shelley & Nathan Salsburg cover each other on new single
Matt Sweeney & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy released their great collaborative album Superwolves earlier this year, and will launch their California tour to support it tonight in Big Sur. In celebration of the trek, they’ve released a new single where Joan Shelley & Nathan Salsburg cover Superwolves track “Watch What Happens” and Matt and Bonnie cover Joan and Nathan’s “Stay On My Shore.”
“Being asked to cover someone’s song is like being invited to rearrange someone’s room,” say Joan and Nathan of their rendition. “Already admiring the Superwolves’ furnishings and spatial sense, we found plenty of fun and satisfaction just messing with their stuff, rifling through their drawers, sitting in their chairs, jumping on their bed, and watching what happens.” You can listen to “Watch What Happens” below.
Says Will: ““There was a time when new songs got shared around, and when a new song was coming out it wasn’t strange for multiple recording artists to have a go at the song, and oftentimes a new composition would be recorded and released by multiple artists on multiple labels within its first year of public existence. All you have to do is listen to the first two episodes of the new season of Tyler Mahan Coe’s Cocaine and Rhinestones podcast to get a feel for this phenomenon. So we’re harkening back to more collaborative and competitive times, when songwriters and singers and publishers and producers knew what each other was up to, when we here release Joan Shelley and Nathan Salsburg’s take on our new ‘Watch What Happens.’ To be fair and fun, Sweeney and I got our hands really really dirty by thrusting them into the loam of Joanie’s ‘Stay on My Shore,’ which Matt turned from a frank admission of vulnerable love into something somewhat…creepier. I’ve sung ‘Stay on My Shore’ with Nathan and Joan many many times in the years since its recording six years ago, and I’m thrilled to sing on it every single time. Each time I sing on it, I try to wring out of it some of the weird hard complexities of my own understanding and appreciation of romantic need; it’s chock full of power and potential to be so dissected and revisited. Matt made it modal and dirgy, as scary as anything Siouxsie Sioux or Baby Dee have ever intoned…maybe. The past year-and-a-half has made many of us workers-in-song reach out over distance to reassure and inspire each other, and here we have joyfully volleyed our musical ideas forth and back, as friends and siblings in the cause.”
In other news, Matt and Bonnie have joined forces with Chicago’s Pretty Cool Ice Cream for an official Superwolves treat inspired by album track “My Popsicle.” It’s Italian licorice ice cream dipped in Milo chocolate and will be Pretty Cool’s Community Pop in Chicago for the month of June. Proceeds benefit Assata’s Daughters, a “Black woman-led, young person-directed organization which empowers young Black people in Chicago by providing them with political education, leadership development, mentorship, and revolutionary services.”
Matt Sweeney & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy Tour Dates
Mon. June 7 – Big Sur, CA @ Henry Miller Memorial Library
Tue. June 8 – Big Sur, CA @ Henry Miller Memorial Library
Thu. June 10 – Sonoma, CA @ Gundlach Bundschu Winery
Fri. June 11 – Sonoma, CA @ Gundlach Bundschu Winery
Sat. June 12 – Ojai, CA @ Ojai Retreat & Inn
Sun. June 13 – Malibu, CA @ Dry Gulch Ranch
Wed. June 16 – Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown
