Buried Treasure: Ben Kweller and Conor Oberst Team Up

Two of our favorite singer-songwriters on the same stage? It doesn’t get much better than this. Thanks to TwentyFourBit for unearthing this video, in which Ben Kweller adds harmonies to Conor Oberst’s “Another Traveling Song,” from I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. It’s a little like seeing Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen team up to sing “Forever Young.” It also kind of feels like a fun night at the open mic. Their performance is ragged and beautiful. “I’ll fight like hell to hide that I’m given up.” Wooh!

Kweller recently wrapped up a series of one man shows, and Oberst has resurrected Bright Eyes for The People’s Key, which drops February 15. We’ve heard the album, and it’s a winner, but don’t expect any slide guitars or banjos.

“We’re over the Americana, rootsy, whatever that sound is,” Oberst says in a new interview with Billboard. “People say country, but I never thought were very country at all. But whatever that element is or that aesthetic is, I guess it’s worn a little thin for me these days. So we very much wanted it to be rocking and, for lack of a better term, contemporary, or modern.”