Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig has been friends with Jude Law for "a while."
Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig
The 47-year-old actor features on the band's Japanese edition 'Father of the Bride', in which he reads the classic poem 'Lord Ullin's Daughter', but the group didn't just approach him on a whim as they've actually known him for a long time.
Speaking on 'New Music Daily with Zane Lowe' on Apple Music, Ezra said: "Well, I've known Jude for a long time. He's come out to Vampire Weekend shows, which we always appreciated. He did a voice on 'Neo Yokio', the cartoon I made. So we, you know, we've had a relationship for a while.
"I had this idea, basically he's reading a, and old Scottish poem, 'Lord Ullin's Daughter'. This poem contains this line about, "My bonny bride". It's like a really beautiful poem. And I guess when I was working on this record I knew it was gonna be called 'Father of the Bride'.
"I always thought that there could be something cool to tie in with the poem. And then, you know, when we were working on the bonus tracks I thought, you know what? We could take the chords from 'Big Blue'. I always liked those chords. I thought we could do more with them. And I thought, yeah, somebody could read this poem and, you know, Jude's my go to. He's my go to guy."
The band - comprised of Ezra, drummer Chris Tomson, and bassist Chris Baio - have a busy year coming up as they have "plenty of shows" but, instead of playing big venues, they've decided to go to "slightly smaller cities" this time around.
The 35-year-old singer explained: "This year we got plenty of shows, but we're kinda going to places we've never been before. Like, somehow we never played Burlington, Vermont before. And we're going to be up in the mountains in like Boise, Idaho and Missoula, Montana. And in, you know, I'm kinda looking forward to that just as much if not more. I love playing the slightly smaller cities."
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