This Friday, June 29, Blue Note will release Vanished Gardens, a riveting collaboration between Charles Lloyd & The Marvels and Lucinda Williams. Lloyd, who will celebrate his 80^th birthday over three days with three separate ensembles at the Newport Jazz Festival in August, first learned of Williams around the time of 1998’s Car Wheels On a Gravel Road. He reflects, “Lu has worked a lot with Bill Frisell and Greg Leisz, so a couple of years ago she came to one of my Marvels concerts at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara. It was our first meeting and I sensed a deep Southern crossroads connection. Not long after that meeting she invited me to guest at her UCLA concert and then I invited her to guest at one of my concerts about a year later… It was clear we had something we wanted to explore together.”

Williams appears on five of the 10 tracks alongside Lloyd and the Marvels: Bill Frisell (guitar), Greg Leisz (pedal steel guitar and dobro), Reuben Rogers (bass), and Eric Harland (drums). Lloyd produced Vanished Gardens with Dorothy Darr and Don Was.

In anticipation of the release, we share this conversation between Lloyd and Williams.