Tucker Zimmerman and Buck Meek on World Cafe
Tucker Zimmerman | photo by Dirk Leunis
World Cafe
How Big Thief found a kindred soul in Tucker Zimmerman
In this session, Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek and producer / singer-songwriter Tucker Zimmerman talk about their musical chemistry and how they ended up working together.
Setlist
Jan
10
Tucker Zimmerman
World Cafe
- Burial At Sea
- Leave It On The Porch Outside
- A Face That Hasn't Sold Out
- Nobody Knows
The first time the members of Big Thief heard Tucker Zimmerman, they heard a kindred musical soul. Zimmerman is a singer-songwriter who grew up in mid-century America at the same time as many beloved folk artists, but he moved to Europe to study and avoid the draft.
After Big Thief frontperson Adrianne Lenker heard Zimmerman’s 1980 album, Square Dance, she showed it to her bandmates, and they decided to reach out to Zimmerman, who is now in his 80s and living in Belgium.
In this session, Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek and Zimmerman talks about what happened next, their musical chemistry and how they ended up working together on Zimmerman’s 11th album, Dance of Love. Zimmerman also shares the story about how he got his start in music, falling in love in Europe, and the really bad advice he once gave David Bowie.
This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.