David Byrne Collaborates With St. Vincent And Totally Blogs About It, OMG

By Pete Freedman Tue., Mar. 16 2010 at 11:58 AM

Categories: DFW Music News

About a month ago, we all stumbled across a clip of Dallas native St. Vincent (nee Annie Clark, duh) and one David Byrne performing together at The Allen Room in New York City. At that show, the two performed a song called "Breathing"--which, turns out, was just the tease of a collaboration that we thought it was. Yesterday, as Byrne revealed on his personal blog, the two are working together on a collaborative release--which, go figure, will be his third straight project of the sort, following his Brian Eno team-up Everything That Happens Will Happen Today and his upcoming Fatboy Slim partnership Here Lies Love.

So far, Byrne writes, he and Clark are a good eight songs into their tandem project. And it's going pretty well, he writes, with each half writing parts and passing them along to the other. Only, Byrne adds, this collaborations a little different:

I have sometimes started the brass parts on my end and then sent them to Annie; I've also sent her words, potential lyrics, that I had written. The latter is unusual, as I don't usually write words in advance, but I wasn't sure what form of collaboration she'd be comfortable with. So far none of those have achieved true song status. It's all still evolving -- where these will end up? We don't know -- and that's a nice place to be in.

It seems she doesn't like writing words -- and she's not alone there. Brian hates it as well. I find it to be the most labor-intensive part of songwriting, but when it works, and it doesn't always, then the song can seem more like something that magically flowed out -- something that emerged naturally, rather than something that was made in incremental pieces.

A nice place to be in, indeed. I want to be there.