David Huckfelt’s new album I Was Born, But... arrives at a moment when both the artist and his home of Minneapolis are leaning hard on music for connection and relief.
His third solo release, and first in five years, is a covers collection built from songwriters and friends he has long admired.
Throughout the history of time, music communities all over the world have been involved in moments of social upheaval, whether it be through protest or holding up community. Sometimes, as Huckfelt said, it’s about making emotional space.
“My favorite artists ... they don't sing at you, they sing to you,” he said Wednesday, Feb. 4, on Headwaters. “Sometimes ... my tendency is to speak directly to what's happening and call it what it is. But oftentimes what we need is just beauty, escape, intimacy. And so, there's no right or wrong way to do it. But the musicians I know keep offering the love they have for this community.”
Huckfelt has always had a knack for learning songs on the fly and currently knows 300-400 songs by heart. He thinks he is able to do this with ease due to his love affair of poetry and music. During the pandemic, he made a rule for himself that if a song brought him to tears in the car, he would learn that song and play it.
When putting this album together, he chose songs from artists he deeply admires including Bob Dylan (about whom he produced a documentary for KAXE in 2024), Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, Adrianne Lenker, Pieta Brown, Howe Gelb and Keith Secola, among others. Rather than treat this like a careful tribute project, Huckfelt leaned into reinterpretation. His goal: Let the performances stand on their own terms first.
“If you've never heard the song before, it's not a cover until you know where it's coming from. So my idea was to throw a bunch of musicians at these songs and then — kind of that Miles Davis thing — play it for you first and then tell you what it is later.”
Huckfelt returned to Tucson, Arizona, to record with a trusted circle of musicians, including drummer Winston Watson, who toured for years with Bob Dylan. There were no rehearsals, and at the suggestion of engineer Gabriel Sullivan (and to the chagrin of the mixing engineer), no headphones.
“Most people would say that's insanity. And it kind of is,” Huckfelt said.
The result was an album that exudes Fun with a capital "F."
“Everyone is playing in one room. Energetically, it felt almost like a concert," Huckfelt said. “You're surprised by what the guy to your right is playing. The parts are being written in real time. And to be honest, it was an absolute blast.”
“It didn’t feel like work and it didn’t feel like science,” he said. “It felt like play.”
As for mixing engineer Adam Krinsky, his job was not Fun with a capital "F."
“I'm not going to say he had a great time doing it,” Huckfelt said.
Krinsky’s role challenged him to shape those live in-room recordings without losing their raw energy. Something Huckfelt admits required serious patience, though in the end, Krinsky’s masterful work managed to balance those two impeccably well.
“He let me know that if I do that again, that way, we're gonna have words,” Huckfelt said with a laugh.
The album is his first release with Don Giovanni Records, a label he signed with in 2025. The partnership follows difficult earlier label experiences dating back to his time with The Pines and the collapse and sale of Red House Records, where artists unexpectedly lost control of their masters.
“It was sad, mostly,” Huckfelt said. “For a label like Red House, which was built, you know, from the songs and music of Greg Brown, had an independent ethos to it the whole way through, it was sad. And at the same time, I understood it.”
He found a kindred spirit in Don Giovanni founder Joe Steinhardt, who has shown a DIY ethic with a rebel renegade attitude that Huckfelt appreciates. Steinhardt started the label 23 years ago for punk bands and has had artists like Mitski and Waxahatchee before they moved onto bigger labels.
“When you find one person in the music world who loves what you do, has a little infrastructure to help you support it and really cares, that's usually who you want to go with,” he said. “There's a lot of people who promise they can do things for you, but the person really has to believe in what you do.”
The album’s title, I Was Born, But... comes from a 1930s Japanese silent film. For Huckfelt, the phrase is both arresting and humbling.
“We are not the most fundamental facts of our own existence,” he said. “In other words, the world is not centered upon us as individuals as much as we would love it to.”
He sees the covers project as part of the folk tradition of carrying songs forward. During our conversation, he also announced he’s releasing a second new album of original material this year, recently recorded at Pachyderm Studios with JT Bates, Jeremy Ylvisaker and Mike Lewis. While he’s never released two albums in one year, Huckfelt said he sees those two records working in tandem with each other.
“Cover songs are great, but we live in a world that does not seem to be getting any brighter, any quicker,” Huckfelt said. “You have to say something in your own voice.”
