Bringing the hot jams in on little cat feet, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Robbie Fulks, and a number of other Chicago-adjacent artists are helping to set the poetry of Carl Sandburg to music. Fulks, Tweedy, Neko Case collaborator Kelly Hogan, and Sally Timms and Jon Langford of The Mekons are all listed as guest vocalists on Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems, which takes beloved works like the Pulitzer Prize winner’s “Chicago,” “Fog,” and “Lost,” and transforms them into songs.
The album is the brainchild of David Nagler, who’s been performing Sandburg’s poems in a variety of venues for years now. Out tomorrow, it marks the 100th anniversary of its source material, Sandburg’s Chicago Poems. You can stream it on Bandcamp, below; Fulks sings on “Under The Harvest Moon,” while Tweedy’s ode to Sandburg’s “tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities” appears on “Theme In Yellow.”