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How Big Thief found a kindred soul in Tucker Zimmerman

Tucker Zimmerman
Dirk Leunis/Courtesy of the artist
Tucker Zimmerman

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 Merl 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.

Set List

  • "Burial At Sea"
  • "Leave It On The Porch Outside"
  • "A Face That Hasn't Sold Out"
  • "Nobody Knows"

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.

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She is also involved with Canada's highest music honors: Since 2017, she has hosted the Polaris Music Prize Gala, for which she is also a jury member, and she has also been a jury member for the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).