Tucker Zimmerman – ‘Dream Me a Dream’ album review: A final bow from David Bowie and Big Thief’s favourite folk hero
This past January, when news broke that 84-year-old singer-songwriter Tucker Zimmerman and his wife of 55 years, Marie-Claire Lambert, had died in a house fire in their home in Belgium, some of the biggest emotional reactions came from a passionate coterie of young fans that Zimmerman had only recently acquired.
In 2022, members of the popular indie folk outfit Big Thief discovered Zimmerman’s overwhelmingly out-of-print back catalogue, became obsessed with it, and tracked down the man himself to invite him to appear with them on stage at their gigs in London and Copenhagen. Recognising a similar spirit in the songwriting of Adrianne Lenker, Zimmerman agreed to the offer, and some cross-generational folk magic ensued.
Just two years later, Zimmerman collaborated with Big Thief on his [approximately] 11th studio album, Dance of Love, which Lenker helped promote by calling him “one of the greatest songwriters of all time”.
Suddenly, Tucker Zimmerman was indie’s new Lazarus man, the lost giant of folk rock rediscovered, as if Nick Drake had turned up off the street, none the worse for wear, and decided to cut a record with Waxahatchee.
The Skinny: Zimmerman didn’t intend this new, follow-up release, Dream Me a Dream, to be his farewell record, let alone a posthumous one, but then again, whether you’re a mysterious outsider poet or Paul McCartney, anything you make in your mid-80s has to include a reckoning with the increasing imbalance between one’s weighty past and shrinking future.
What makes Dream Me a Dream quite a bit more artistically interesting than McCartney’s recent Boys of Dungeon Lane, however, is the fact that Zimmerman, at essentially the same age, was only just starting to introduce himself to most of us. There’s no shorthand here, no easter eggs, no winks, and no cameos from Ringo. Instead, the musician is focused on new ideas, abstract images, fairy tales, interesting sounds, and unusual characters. Basically, he is making a record the same way any ‘up and coming artist’ would, only with the looseness and fewer fucks given of old age.
Like several past releases, Dream Me a Dream was recorded in Zimmerman’s own garden studio, but it does benefit from some first-class visitors to the yard, including backing vocalist and fiddle player Jackie Oates and producer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Holton. Marie-Claire contributes, as well, including a lovely spoken-word narrative on ‘Riding Around in My Dream.’
Going all the way back to his early 1980s records Square Dance and Word Games, Zimmerman was more than happy to de-purify his acoustic folk tunes with plonky keyboards and synthy textures; robot cowboy sounds that would have fit on a Magnetic Fields or Bonnie Prince Billy record 20 years later. Holton, fortunately, offers a hand in helping Zimmerman return to those experiments, as the new record, while ostensibly a collection of quite simple, acoustic guitar stories, also floats along on a steady stream of analogue synths and processed Moogy mood settings, giving the whole thing a wonderful, dream-like quality.
Dreams are the recurrent lyrical theme, too: “Dream me a dream of a road map with highways in strawberry jam,” goes one line from the title track; “Dreams of wolf run, dreams of wolf escape,” begins another, “dreams of invisible cities and imaginary landscapes”.
Vocally, there are moments when Zimmerman’s voice recalls a less gravelly Tom Waits or late-period ‘Keep Me In Your Heart’ Warren Zevon, but his tastefully restrained and gentle delivery, combined with Oates’ soaring violin and sweet harmonies, give songs like the title track and ‘Wolf Run’ a timeless quality, like old Alan Lomax recordings or American songbook standards. ‘Lovers of Beggar Street’ is a modern folk ballad on par with some of Richard Thompson’s finest, while ‘Rose of Sharon’ picks up the beat, converted from one of Zimmerman’s old 1960s poems into a full-on, 21st-century psych-pop jam.
Zimmerman pays a special tribute to his superfan Adrianne Lenker here, as well, performing one of the few covers of his career, doing plenty of justice to Big Thief’s ‘Wanted You to Stay’.
Standout Track: ‘Dream Me a Dream’
The Verdict: There was a time, perhaps, when the San Francisco-born Zimmerman’s hippie dreams also included commercial ambitions. His 1969 debut album, Ten Songs by Tucker Zimmerman, was produced by Tony Visconti. The two were living in London at the time, hanging out with a young David Bowie, who later admitted finding Zimmerman’s work “enthralling”.
Whereas that 1969 album kind of feels like Zimmerman trying to merge elements of Bob Dylan and Scott Walker, he clearly established his own voice over the subsequent half-century. It’s a shame that most of us, including Bowie, as he confessed in 2003, had no idea that Tucker was still out there making music.
The good news is, Dream Me a Dream doesn’t require any knowledge of Zimmerman’s back story, or the fact that some promoters used to claim he was Dylan’s cousin. It doesn’t require you to bring the sadness of Tucker and Marie-Claire’s recent deaths into your listening experience, either. The greatest accomplishment of this record is that it’s just as strong a hello as a goodbye.
Release Date: June 19, 2026 | Producer: Nick Holton | Label: Big Potato
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out New Music Newsletter
All the latest New Music from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.