Chris Thile and Michael Daves met at a bluegrass jam in Manhattan in 2005 and built their partnership on regular nights at New York’s Rockwood Music Hall. By then Thile had made his first album at thirteen, played in Nickel Creek and was leading Punch Brothers. Daves was a Brooklyn guitarist and singer who had worked with Steve Martin, Tony Trischka and Rosanne Cash.
Both of their 2011 releases were recorded in January 2011 at Jack White’s Third Man Studio in Nashville. For Nonesuch they cut sixteen songs live to tape over four days, with nothing but Thile’s mandolin, Daves’s guitar and their two voices. Vance Powell engineered and the pair produced. The songs included Lester Flatt’s “Sleep with One Eye Open,” Bill Monroe’s “Tennessee Blues,” Harlan Howard and Freddie Hart’s “It Takes One to Know One,” and traditional numbers such as “Rabbit in the Log” and the fiddle tune “Billy in the Lowground.” The album, Sleep with One Eye Open, came out on 10 May 2011.
While they were at Third Man, the duo also made a record for the label’s Blue Series, the 7-inch singles Jack White produces with musicians passing through Nashville. This one used a band. White played drums, Carl Broemel played pedal steel and bass, Cory Younts played piano, and Ruby Amanfu added timpani and backing vocals. The A-side was Harley Campbell’s “The Man in the Middle,” first recorded by the Hotmud Family, and the B-side was Kirk McGee’s “Blue Night,” first recorded by Sam and Kirk McGee. Third Man issued the single as TMR 083 on 24 May 2011, two weeks after the album.
Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.
Tracklist
- 1 Man in the Middle alt version 3:12
- 2 Blue Night alt version
