As origin stories go, you’d be hard-pressed to invent one like this: Andrew Bird first met Jimbo Mathus in 1994 at a North Carolina folk festival, while Bird was working—and this is true—as a medieval fiddler at a Renaissance fair in Wisconsin. Mathus managed to see beyond the doublet and breeches to the keen musician within, and soon Bird was contributing to albums by Mathus’ band, Squirrel Nut Zippers, the jazz and swing revivalists best known for their 1996 song “Hell.” This is not that. After each ventured off into the thick of their respective solo careers, Mathus and Bird have reconvened on