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Dec 19, 2018 By Christopher Roberts Ryley Walker

Last month Ryley Walker released The Lillywhite Sessions, in which he took an unreleased Dave Matthews Band album from 2001 and covered it track-for-track. Walker wasn’t doing it ironically, he was genuinely a Dave Matthews fan in his youth, and his version also took the songs in interesting new directions, such as free jazz. Earlier this month Walker actually hung out with Dave Matthews Band when they were both playing Montreal on the same night. Now Matthews has taken his approval even further and in a Facebook post he has written his approval of Walker’s covers album.

Matthews wrote: “The first time I heard Ryley’s cover of the Lilywhite Sessions, I was in a record store. I didn’t recognize it. Then I heard the words… It’s much more than a cover record. It’s all its own. A beautiful new collection. A tipped hat, maybe. It stands alone. If you didn’t know what inspired it, it wouldn’t matter. It’s all Ryley Walker and it’s badass. Now I have everything he’s released.”

Wouldn’t it be funny if The Lilywhite Sessions ended up becoming Walker’s best selling album, thanks mainly to sales from Dave Matthews Band fans? Check out Matthew’s post below.

The Lillywhite Sessions was released by Dead Oceans and the above photo of Walker and Matthews is from the label’s Instagram page.

Walker released another great new 2018 album, Deafman Glance, only back in May via Dead Oceans.

Previously Walker shared The Lillywhite Sessions’ first two singles: “Busted Stuff” (which was one of our Songs of the Week) and “Diggin’ a Ditch.”

Here’s some background on the album. Dave Matthews Band recorded the original The Lillywhite Sessions in 1999 and 2000 with producer Steve Lillywhite, as the follow-up to 1998’s Before These Crowded Streets. The band’s label rejected the album and Matthews instead teamed with producer Glen Ballard to write a new album, which only took them 10 days to write and resulted in 2001’s Everyday. The Lillywhite Sessions leaked to the Internet soon after Everyday‘s release, in the days of Napster, and some fans preferred it to Everyday. The Lillywhite Sessions was never officially released, but most of its songs were reworked (sometimes with new lyrics) and re-recorded with producer Stephen Harris for the band’s 2002 album Busted Stuff.

Dave Mathews Band have been very successful, all but their first two albums have debuted at #1 on the Billboard album charts, but they aren’t what you would call a cool band, or at least one that’s been all that embraced by indie rock fans and musicians. Walker, however, grew up listening to them. As a previous press release put it: “When he was a kid growing up in the Rust Belt suburbs of Chicago, worlds away from the city’s cultural stronghold, the Dave Matthews Band taught him how to play and love music.” The album features Walker’s frequent collaborators Andrew Scott Young and Ryan Jewell.

View this post on Instagram

It happened.

A post shared by Dead Oceans (@deadoceans) on Dec 8, 2018 at 10:15pm PST

(Via Pitchfork)

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