When he’s not busy making wonderful movies, Barry Jenkins has been known to dabble in music. Back in 2017, he teamed up with Houston’s OG Ron C and DJ Candlestick, aka The Chopstars, for Purple Moonlight, a chopped and screwed remix of the soundtrack to Jenkins’ Best Picture-winning film Moonlight; the trio gave If Beale Street Could Talk the same treatment in 2019, resulting in If Beale Street Was Chopped. Now, Jenkins and his collaborators have returned with Yankee Purple Foxtrot, their chopped, not slopped iteration of Wilco’s acclaimed 2002 album.
The Wilco pick is pretty out of left field, but the album works quite well painted purple. Jenkins and company’s dive into alt-country seems to have been inspired at least in part by certain positive developments in the United States of late: “Some Americana for the timeline given recent events,” Jenkins tweeted. “#YeehawAgenda is alive and well.”
Lately, Jenkins has been teasing his Amazon limited series adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, while Wilco just released a deluxe reissue of their 1999 album Summerteeth last week.
You can stream Yankee Purple Foxtrot below. Further down, revisit a Wilco performance from the Paste archives.
NOBODY asked for this BUT… in a world where Jeff Tweedy and the boyz was from Houston, TX… @candlestickem, @OGRONC and me present YANKEE PURPLE FOXTROT Some Americana for the timeline given recent events. The #YeehawAgenda is alive and well https://t.co/Ez5YWkJcu3
— Barry Jenkins (@BarryJenkins) November 9, 2020
