Matt Berninger

Vinyl LP pressing. 2020 release. "When I was a kid, my dad's favorite record was Willie Nelson's Stardust. I have a really great dad, and that record has a tenderness and optimism that must have worked it's way into the fabric of my soul because every time I hear it, I feel safe and happy.I had been wanting to make a covers record like Stardust for a long time. Then in 2010, thanks to cosmic magic or god or whatever, Olivia Jones reached out to me to see if I'd be willing to duet with the incomparable Sharon Jones on a song Olivia had written with her dad, Booker T. Jones, the man who produced and arranged Stardust. A few weeks later, I started sending Booker songs that I wanted to cover. I also sent him a few rough demos of originals that I had started working on with some old friends, including the songs "Serpentine Prison" and "Distant Axis". Booker responded to those demos right away and encouraged me to keep writing and digging deeper into that stuff. Six months later we had twelve originals and seven covers. Everyone I had been working with on these songs came to Venice, CA, and we recorded it all in 14 days.