When James McBride, a National Book Award winner for his fiction, decided to write an entire book about James Brown, he wanted to push beyond the hype and racism he says haunts Brown's legacy.
"All my songs are personal on some level; it's just a matter of how much that personal thing is buried." Bird says that on the new album Are You Serious, his private world has bubbled to the surface.
"We wanted to explore that quality of a newly born song and try to catch it," My Larsdotter says of the new album, which blends the duo's Scandinavian heritage with bluegrass, country and blues.