Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau

They first performed together in September 2011, during Mehldau’s residency at Wigmore Hall in London, and toured as a duo for the first time in 2013. At the end of 2015 they played two nights at the Bowery Ballroom in New York, then went into Avatar Studios in New York on 30 December 2015 and 2–3 January 2016 to record the album with the engineer James Farber, producing it themselves; Gabe Witcher of Punch Brothers edited it. Nonesuch released it on 27 January 2017 on two CDs and two LPs.

The twelve tracks include new songs from each of them: Mehldau’s “Tallahassee Junction” and “The Watcher,” Thile’s “Noise Machine” and “Daughter of Eve,” and “The Old Shade Tree,” which they wrote together. Alongside them are songs by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings (“Scarlet Town”), Elliott Smith (“Independence Day”), Fiona Apple (“Fast as You Can”), Joni Mitchell (“Marcie”) and Bob Dylan (“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”), the standard “I Cover the Waterfront,” and the Irish harp air “Tabhair Dom Do Lámh,” credited to Rory Dall Ó Catháin. Thile later appeared on Mehldau’s album of Elliott Smith songs, Ride into the Sun, released in August 2025.