Tucker Zimmerman‘s final studio album, Dream Me A Dream, will be released on June 19th via Big Potato Records. The first single, Sun In Scorpio, is out now.
It is, as the label acknowledges, a bittersweet release. The album was completed in 2025 as a collaboration between Zimmerman and Big Potato’s own producer Nick Holton, and was due to be announced when news came of the deaths of Tucker and his wife Marie-Claire at their Liège home. After careful consideration, the label decided to go ahead. “Well, because that’s what Tucker was expecting,” they wrote.
Those familiar with Zimmerman’s extraordinary late-career renaissance — KLOF reviewed his Adrianne Lenker and Big Thief-backed Dance of Love in 2024 — might expect another album of rough-hewn acoustic folk. Dream Me A Dream is something else entirely. Pairing banjo, violin and swirling organ with orchestral Moog, analogue synths and processed piano, Zimmerman leapt into textures that recall the electronica adventures of his earlier albums Over Here In Europe and Words Games. Some of the songs date back to the sixties, but most were written during two recording sessions in 2024 and 2025 at his garden studio in Stockay-Saint-Georges. He was in his eighties, and according to the label, the album sounds like nothing else he recorded.
Sun In Scorpio opens the album with deliberate delicacy, creating beautiful spaces for gently plucked synths and melodic bursts. Award-winning folk artist Jackie Oates, a longstanding favourite on these pages, features prominently throughout, contributing vocals, violin, organ and piano. Tucker’s love, Marie-Claire, also lends her voice to the album.
Writing about the record in October 2025, Zimmerman offered his own characteristically vivid account: “…The Little Prince by way of the pen of Antoine de Saint Exupéry said ‘Draw me a sheep’ and I said to the the Little Prince ‘Dream me a dream’ overheard by Nick HOO (Big Potato Nick) who said ‘Record me a song’ so I recorded a song and then one or two more and just like that whip crack away and snap dragon fingers we had an album and just like that pump up the jambalaya and kick the chandelier Nick’s got the tracks mixed and mastered and pressed into 12″ discs that say hallelujah and great balls of fire on the cover and that’s all I’m going to say about the outer wheels of this wagon as it rolls into your life the inner clockworks too intricate and deep to make language suffer so if you want more go to the Little Prince ask him to draw you a Dream of Now and Memory…”
Nick Holton shared:
“Tucker told me ‘Rose Of Sharon’ was about the dark side of the hippie movement in California. Young girls being swept away with various cults. We really flew with this track. Recorded it with both of us on the synths. It edges towards the psychedelic, almost Krautyrock style. Jackie Oates does a wonderful job with her beautiful voice and violin. We recorded this in 2024 and then Tucker re-sung the vocals in 2025 when he was pretty frail. But the energy came through when the tape was rolling! It rocks.
Tucker and I had long chats during the recording. And we went very deep on occasions, focusing on love, fear & the future. He mentioned he’d never recorded a cover version, but that his dear friend Annie (Adrianne Lenker) had written this wonderful song. It’s called ’Stay (Wanted You To Stay)’ and this version was for/to his love Marie-Claire.”
Dream Me A Dream features Tucker Zimmerman on vocals, 12-string guitar and piano; Jackie Oates on vocals, violin, organ and piano; Nicholas Holton on synthesisers, Moog, organ, piano, bass, glockenspiel and percussion; Marie-Claire Zimmerman on vocals; and Roger Proctor on violin.
Dream Me A Dream (BPR051) will be available on vinyl, CD and digital formats on June 19th via Big Potato Records.
Bandcamp: https://bigpotatorecords.bandcamp.com/album/dream-me-a-dream
‘Dream Me A Dream’ (BPR051) will be available on vinyl, CD and digital formats.
Album track listing:
A
1 Sun in Scorpio
2 Dream Me a Dream
3 Orion Comes Down To Walk The Land
4 Don’t Feel Like Doing Nothing Today
5 Wolf Run
B
6 Rose Of Sharon
7 Riding Around In My Dreams
8 Lovers Of Beggar St.
9 Rooftops of San Francisco
10 Stay (I want you To Stay)
11 Cross Walk