Dance of LoveTucker Zimmerman's eleventh album, wouldn't exist without the support of Big Thief. The neo-folk group led the reclusive singer-songwriter out of seclusion in Belgium, the country he's called home for more than 40 years, to join them in a cabin in New England to write and record. Dance of Lovethe album that will introduce the 83-year-old musician to the biggest audience he's ever met.
Coming 55 years after its debut, Dance of Love it's also essentially Zimmerman's first album to receive an original release in his native America. Raised on the beatnik poetry of the 1950s, he spent the 1960s roaming the fringes of the folk and blues revival, striking up a writing sensation with blues harpist Paul Butterfield on the 1967 LP. The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw with a song called “Droppin' Out”. Zimmerman took his own advice, leaving America for Europe and studying music in Rome on a Fulbright scholarship before going to London to sing folk music. A stroke of luck brought him into contact with Tony Visconti, a new record producer fresh off his early collaborations with Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex. The couple made their debut, Ten songsa serious and sober collection that hints at Visconti's grandiose orchestrations but not the style Zimmerman later cultivated.
Ten songs he found a prominent champion in David Bowie, Visconti's friend and lifelong collaborator. Bowie touted the album in a list of “25 Albums That Could Change Your Fame” for a 2003 issue of Vanity fair. There is so little written about Zimmerman that Bowie's 107-word phrase is often cited as descriptive of the singer/songwriter's music, particularly the assessments that “the guy was well-suited to folk” and “I always found this album to be austere, angry compositions fascinating.” It is possible to hear what Bowie heard Ten songs: serious and inwardly adventurous, its luscious poetic bent is saved from austerity by Visconti's imaginative production. With its trippy echoes, honest strums and occasional fuzz freakouts, it's a period artifact, the kind of record that feels perched on the precipice of discovery.
Zimmerman did not pursue any of the possible avenues outside of the Ten songs. Faced with an uncertain future – avoiding the draft, he intended not to return to America – he chose to retire with his wife Marie Claire to her native Belgium, where they created a creative enclave filled with art. Although he continued to compose music, Zimmerman gave up recording in the early 1980s, shortly after the release of Square DanceAdrianne Lenker of 1980 LP Big Thief happened to hear when she was getting a tattoo a while back. Buoyed by his familiarity, Lenker played Square Dance for her bandmate Buck Meek, who also became a fan. The pair tried to recruit Zimmerman as an opening act for Big Thief's 2022 European tour, a plan that evolved into Zimmerman and Marie Claire agreeing to join Big Thief for two weeks at a New England cabin where they recorded Dance of Love.
