Watch Will Oldham join Silver Jews members for a surprise reunion in N

To honor the fifth anniversary of David Berman‘s death, his widow Cassie Berman, other past Silver Jews members (William Tyler, Peyton Pinkerton, Brian Kotzu, Tony Crow), and William Tyler’s former Lambchop bandmate Matt Swanson did a semi-impromptu show on the porch of Julia Martin Gallery in Nashville on Saturday night (8/10); Cassie was billed as one of the musical performers from the start but announced shortly before the event that she’d be doing a full Silver Jews set with fellow ex-members. It was most of the same lineup that also did a one-off Silver Jews members reunion in 2019, just a few months after David’s death, and this time they also had a surprise appearance from Silver Jews contributor Will Oldham (aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy), who shared lead vocal duties with Cassie on “Punks in the Beerlight” and “The Wild Kindness.” They also performed a few other Silver Jews songs without Will and the Purple Mountains song “All My Happiness Is Gone.” Michael Haydon, who posted a video from the show on YouTube, described the night like this:

Silver Jews played a somewhat impromptu show on the porch of Julia Martin Gallery in Nashville last night, August 10th 2024. It was part of a “monochromatic exhibition” called Purple Reign curated by Brett Ralph & Julia Martin, dedicated to their friend, the late David Berman who passed about five years ago. It involved a number of visual artists from both Nashville and Louisville, KY working from that colour (and I have to imagine David himself) as inspiration.

Cassie Berman was billed to perform however the night before the show the gallery made it known that Silver Jews would also be coming to join her. Brian Kotzur, William Tyler, Peyton Pinkerton, Tony Crow, Matt Swanson (who is playing on the stairs, out of shot in this video) and Cassie played about 45 minutes of SJ songs. They also performed All My Happiness is Gone from Purple Mountains, DCB’s final record. Opening that number mostly acoustically, Cassie sang a verse we did not recognise and she later informed us was part of the writing process before later being removed from the final released song by David.

Watch some videos from the night below…