Exclusive: Chris Thile and Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus Collaborate on New Video

Both Chris Thile and Merrill Garbus are serial collaborators. Thile has released separate full album projects with Brad Mehldau, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Marshall and Edgar Meyer, as well as his band The Punch Brothers. Garbus has worked with Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Thao & the Get Down Stay Down and, most recently, a new video with actor/rapper duel threat Lakeith Stanfield.

But the two musicians had never worked together until they recorded a song in four hours for Spire Studio, a portable, wireless 8-track recording device.

You can watch them play the song, written by vaudeville singer Charles B. in the 1890s, “The Sidewalks of New York”:

And watch the behind-the-scenes video from Spire Studio here: