Parker Noon and Lily Wolf first began collaborating in New York City in the mid-’90s on a series of film soundtracks (Winterland, Spectrum Red). In 1998, they formed the band Valentine 6, which led to their incarnation (with Christina Campanella) as Parker and Lily. The group’s albums included Hello Halo (2001) and Here Comes Winter (2002).
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.