You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe.

On September 5th, I'm going to be doing a special live Song Exploder event in Los Angeles with Boni Vair.

Justin Vernon and producer Jimmy Stack are going to be joining me on stage to tell the story behind one of the songs from the new Bonie Verre album, Sable Fable. So if you've ever wondered what a full, unedited Song Exploder conversation is like, this is your chance to be in the room. This is going to be a live event only. It's not going to be live streamed or repeated on any other night, so I hope you can make it. It's going to be at the beautiful Palace Theater in downtown L.A.

You can get tickets to this special Song Exploder Live event with Bonnie Vair at

at SongExploder.net slash live.

Again, it's on Friday, September 5th in downtown L.A.

And you can get tickets at Song songexploder.net slash live.

John Batiste is a pianist, songwriter, and composer from New Orleans.

He's been nominated for multiple Grammys, and he just won the Golden Globe and got an

Oscar nomination for the soundtrack to the Pixar film, Seoul, which he composed along with Trent

Rezner and Atticus Ross.

John is also a recipient of the American Jazz Museum's Lifetime Achievement Award, and on

weeknights, you can see him as the band leader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

In March 2021, he put out his new album, We Are.

But the title track from it actually came out much earlier in June 2020.

We put the song out during the Black Lives Matter protest before it was even finished being

mixed and mastered.

In this episode, John talks about how he drew from his roots, both at a personal level

and at a cultural level,

and wove all of it into the song.

We are, we are, we are, we are the chosen ones.

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