Q

Hamilton Leithauser strikes up a 'lucky' collaboration with Rostam

The Walkmen's Hamilton Leithauser on his recent collaborative album with Rostam, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine, and how his new music draws from the past without replicating old sounds.
Musician Hamilton Lighthauser performing live in the q studios in Toronto, Ont. (Cathy Irving/CBC)

"I don't have that many friends that I'd want to work with, and I don't have that many people I've worked with that I'd want to be friends with." 

So how did former Walkmen singer Hamilton Leithauser end up forging a friendship and collaboration with Vampire Weeknd's Rostam? 

"It seems like a miracle to me," he explains. "I can't imagine that ever happening again." 

This "lucky" collaboration gave us 2016's I Had a Dream That You Were Mine, an album that mines the past sounds, more rooted in folk and acoustic guitars, without Leithauser feeling like they were just replicating something. He advises: "You take one or two things, or the the things that you think are really going to add to your own song."

— Produced by Mitch Pollock