Justin Vernon and his Eaux Claires festival previously launched the “For Wisconsin” initiative, where Vernon meets with contest winners to discuss voting and politics. Vernon posted a video of one of those meet-ups earlier this month, and it featured him performing a brand new song about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Your Honor.” Now he has shared another video in the series, and this time, he premieres a new Big Red Machine song.
The track is “Latterdays,” and Vernon co-wrote it with Big Red Machine collaborator Aaron Dessner, as well as Anaïs Mitchell, who is known as a member of Bonny Light Horseman and for her Tony Award-winning Hadestown musical.
The performance came after a conversation between Vernon, a young progressive voter, and her undecided mother. Vernon prefaced the song by noting that Mitchell wrote the lyrics and explaining his interpretation of it: “To me, I think about what’s it going to feel like in the future when we look back and we wonder if we did enough.” Accompanying himself on a Neil Young-toned electric guitar, Vernon sings, “I recall it all forever / How it found us where we lay / With our arms around each other / in the latterdays, in the latterdays.”
Dessner also shared a note about the video, writing of the song, “It couldn’t be more moving and poignant in this time.”
2- Here is a conversation from a rooftop in Milwaukee at the end of which @blobtower plays a new @BRMadjv song we wrote for our new record with @anaismitchell called Latterdays – it couldn't be more moving and poignant in this time. Please everyone, vote.https://t.co/gmCVgS1hHK https://t.co/kGx8qExXic
— Aaron Dessner (@aaron_dessner) October 15, 2020
Watch the video above.
