Andrew Bird hosts a Facebook Live series called “Live From the Great Room,” where artists ditch their shoes and join him for an acoustic set in his home. Past guests include the National’s Matt Berninger, John C. Reilly, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, and others. Today, he hosted Fiona Apple. They began with a performance of Apple’s amazing Idler Wheel cut “Werewolf,” and then discussed the song’s “super guy” lyric. Apple explained that she got inspiration for it from the movie Fargo, in which a character screams “super lady!” (Apple mistakes the line for one from another Coen brothers’ film, The Big Lebowski.) After that, they played “Why?” from Bird’s 2001 record The Swimming Hour.
Next, Apple and Bird debuted a new song, “Railroad Sam and Slingshot Sue,” which they explain they wrote in collaboration with a 5-year-old named Sam. (In the caption for the episode, Bird calls Apple “Slingshot Sue.”) It began as an interpolation of Bird’s “Railroad Bill.” He explains, “Usually, he rides alone, but we decided to add Slingshot Sue to the mix, and you make a good Slingshot Sue. So a lot of this song was written in collaboration with this boy named Sam, and then with yourself [Fiona Apple].”
The two then played the standard “(I’d Like to Get You on a) Slow Boat to China,” and closed with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Oh, Sister” (from 1976’s Desire). Watch the full episode, which includes a hug between the two, below.
Earlier this year, Bird and Apple collaborated for the duet “Left Handed Kisses,” which appeared on his latest album, Are You Serious.
Read “The Radical Self-Respect of Fiona Apple’s ‘Sleep to Dream,’ 20 Years On” on the Pitch.
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Watch Fiona Apple’s “Hot Knife” music video, via Pitchfork.tv:
