Bonnie Prince Billy / The Black Swans

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4...according to our Brett on Thu 21 Oct, 2010.

This single has Will Oldham and The Black Swans tackling songs by the late Larry Jon Wilson, whose Drag City LP I remember enjoying a year or so back. Bonnie boy does a most touching take on 'Bertrand My Son', a stripped down country ballad with a backing vocal that only really kicks in just the once but does it absolutely perfectly. 'The Man I Wish For You' is The Black Swans' choice and is similarly tender and intimate-sounding... Both songs sound like they're done quite beautifully but the tapping of keys and the discussing of stock all around me isn't helping me get as into them as I'd like. Try them in the comfort of your own home and I'm sure you'll have an even better experience!

Split 7” single featuring Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and The Black Swans covering songs by the late singer-songwriter Larry Jon Wilson.
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy (AKA Will Oldham), with some help from Cheyenne Mize, tackles ‘Bertrand My Son’ off Wilson’s 1975 Monument Records debut ‘New Beginnings’.

Jerry DeCicca, who produced Larry Jon Wilson’s self-titled ‘comeback’ album released last year on Drag City, enlisted his The Black Swans to do ‘The Man I Wish For You’, an unreleased song that DeCicca says he found “rotting away on a reel-to- reel in the EMI basement in Nashville”.
Larry Jon Wilson’s rich, Georgia baritone and singular guitar style gave all his songs an inimitable feel, and any songs he covered became ‘Wilsonized’ so much that you’d think they were his songs all along. These two tracks succeed in much the same way while still paying homage and communicating a reverence to a man DeCicca and Oldham revered.

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