Dean Wareham was the singer and guitarist of seminal Boston band Galaxie 500 from 1987 to 1991. In the early ’90s, Wareham moved to New York City and established the group Luna, whose albums include Bewitched, Penthouse, Pup Tent and Romantica. He and Luna bass player Britta Phillips formed Dean and Britta in 2003, and have released the albums L’Avventura and Back Numbers.
For our first invitational, we gave a group of musicians the following assignment: Create a song based—directly or in the most oblique way imaginable—on public domain material. Some of the participants chose to work from public-domain recorded music purchased for this project, while others contributed unique covers of older traditional tunes.