Louisville is for Lovers, the annual compilation of love songs from local musicians, ranging from straightforward to oddball, is releasing its 2018 version on Friday, Feb. 2. But you can pre-order it right now, which earns you an immediate download of a companion EP, featuring four duets. Those duets include such artists as Will Oldham, Lacey Guthrie, John King and The Winger Brothers. Pre-orders are available at Guestroom Records, but first we caught up with Louisville is for Lovers founder John King to talk about this years edition, which features Jaye Jayle, Tender Mercy, Killii Kilii and more.
On how technology has made it harder for the compilation in recent years, and this years idea to combat that.
Its a lot harder to do a compilation of all exclusive songs when its incredibly easy for artists to record a song, and then with in a matter of minutes share it with their fans. Since the world has changed in that manner, its harder to convince bands to give me a song that may not be released for six to eight months. So we had to think about how to go about the project differently. This year is definitely a monumental year because we opened up a day at La La Land to record as many bands as we could in one day. I got the ideas because thats what they did for the We Have A Matt Bevin Problem compilation. So I asked La La Land if it would be able to do that, and we were able to record eight tracks that way.
On how the bonus EP of duets that you receive after pre-order became a new thing this year.
The fun thing was, the day at La La Land was so fruitful that we had extra time at the end, so some of the artists there jumped in to record duets. The one with Will Oldham and I was planned, as well as the one I did with Lacy Guthrie. We planned both of those, because I figured with the law of artist averages, that maybe one of them would be completed on time. Luckily, they both were, so I had two duets, then Russell Willoughby and his girlfriend Janet, who showed up to watch The Winger Brothers record their song, ended up recording two duets that they had written. So, now I was looking at four duets, which led to the idea of not just doing a single ahead of time, but doing a whole EP.
On how the ambiguity of the idea of a love song has led to some unique and weird ideas, and what qualified as that this year.
Killii Kilii has a song called I Love You, Please Dont Eat Me. Its about a documentary on a man who was studying, and fell in love with a cannibal, and then 50 years later, went back to find this cannibal, who had remained celibate for all those years.
This article appears in January 3, 2018.
