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Sep 24, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Kurt Vile

Kurt Vile has announced a new EP, Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep), and shared its first single, a cover of “How Lucky” by the late John Prine that is actually a duet with Prine, recorded before his passing. Vile says that recording with his hero Prine was “probably the single most special musical moment in my life.” Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep) is due out digitally October 2 via Matador (and physically early next year). The five-song EP features two originals and three covers (including Prine’s “Speed of The Sound of Loneliness”) and was recorded in various sessions over the course of four years at The Butcher Shoppe studio in Nashville, TN. Listen to the “How Lucky” cover below, followed by the EP’s tracklist and cover art.

“The truth is John was my hero for a long time when he came into The Butcher Shoppe to recut one of his deepest classics with me,” Vile says in a press release. “And, man, I was floating and flying and I couldn’t hear anything he told me while he was there till after he was gone for the night…. A couple nights later we were playing ‘How Lucky’ together again; this time onstage at the Grand Ole Opry on New Year’s Eve at the turn of 2020. Nothing like seeing John and his band of musical brothers and family and friends playing into the new decade in front of an adoring audience on that stage in Nashville, TN… and, yup, that’s just how lucky we all got that night.”

Prine died in April due to complications from COVID-19. Read our tribute to him here.

In May, Vile covered Prine’s “Sam Stone” for a livestream fundraiser.

Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep) features Bobby Wood, Dave Roe, Kenny Malone, Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys), and Matt Sweeney (Chavez, Superwolf). It also includes a cover of “Gone Girl” by the late “Cowboy” Jack Clement and Clement’s protege, David “Fergie” Ferguson, ran The Butcher Shoppe studio at the time. It was Sweeney that connected Vile with Ferguson, which is then how he met Prine.

“It was backstage at the Station Inn where Ferg introduced me to John Prine for the first time,” says Vile. “And the first thing John told me was that he heard and liked my version of ‘Speed of the Sound of Loneliness.’ I knew Ferg had showed him that recording, but it was wild to hear him acknowledge it to say the least…. meeting him then was a perfect moment to do so, but also comical… I had my daughter Awilda back there with me at that moment—who was 6 at the time—and other interesting people were around like Billy Ray Cyrus, who was being really funny and cool… the other big reason I was there in Nashville at that time was to catch Prine’s two 70th birthday shows at the Ryman… so to see him a couple nights before his big shows, warming up on such a tiny stage in a moment when I was sort of ‘in the scene’ was a real treat and a trip… I had to break the ice by asking Billy Ray in front of everyone if he ever heard that Cypress Hill song where they namedrop him, to which he replied ‘no, I never heard it!’”

Vile’s last album, Bottle It In, came out in 2018 via Matador. It was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2018.

Read our interview with Kurt Vile on Bottle It In.

Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep) Tracklist:

1. Speed of The Sound of Loneliness
2. Gone Girl
3. Dandelions
4. How Lucky (with John Prine)
5. Pearls

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