Phoebe Bridgers recently returned with new music, sharing “Garden Song” as the first solo material since the release of her breakout debut album, Strangers In The Alps in 2017. Tonight, she’s returned with another bit of music for fans, although it’s not quite new material – Bridgers released a cover of Conor Oberst’s “Mamah Borthwick (A Sketch),” off his 2016 album Ruminations. In the caption of the video uploaded to Instagram, Phoebe shared that she’s releasing the song to help raise money for the employees of the local Los Angeles music venue The Bootleg. The link to that fundraiser is here.
She explains that it was the place where she met Oberst, who has since become her collaborator on the project Better Oblivion Community Center. “The Bootleg is raising money to pay their employees and hopefully keep the doors open once this is over,” she wrote. “Here’s me singing a Conor song because I met him there. It’s a special place. Help out if you can. Link in my stories. #coverthebootleg”
For those unfamiliar with the story of Mamah Borthwick, she was the mistress of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and you can learn a lot more about her story via this post from the tumblr that annotates songs by Conor Oberst.