David Huckfelt keeps the memories of the past alive on new covers album
by Joel Swenson
January 15, 2026
David Huckfelt knows about 300 songs that he can sit down and play on the spot. Once a song really hits him and he has played it a few times, it’s in his head for good. “It’s a blessing and a curse,” he admits with a laugh over afternoon beers at Merlin’s Rest in south Minneapolis. This mental jukebox served as the foundation for Huckfelt’s latest album, I Was Born, But…, a lovingly curated collection of cover songs out Jan. 16 on Don Giovanni Records.
“It’s almost like performing error-free ceremonies,” he explains with an earnest intensity that pops up when he discusses his creative work. “In other words, it’s like stepping into somebody else’s work of art respectfully and then shining it back.”
Huckfelt’s third solo album opens with a six-and-a-half-minute journey through Bob Dylan’s “Changing of the Guards,” a song that has haunted Huckfelt for two decades. His voice channels Dylan’s prophetic rasp while maintaining a weathered warmth. Songs follow from the catalogs of J.J. Cale, Jackson Browne, Gordon Lightfoot, Tom Petty, Keith Secola, and George Jones — a lineup that reads like a masterclass in American songwriting. Huckfelt also covers his closest musical friends, like Pieta Brown and Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker, elevating contemporary voices to the same sacred stage.
“There’s a certain equanimity about these songs,” he says. “They all belong on the same stage. There’s no hierarchy.”
This democratic approach to the album’s curation reflects Huckfelt’s broader philosophy about creativity and connection — one shaped profoundly by his friendship with the late Native American poet and activist John Trudell. That relationship introduced Huckfelt to Indigenous artists and activists like Secola, Louise Erdrich, and Winona LaDuke, connections that have fundamentally altered his approach to traditional American songwriting.
“Trudell might say something like, ‘You make art to protect your spirit because you’re in a place where spirits get eaten up,” Huckfelt recalls of his friend. “When a guy who the FBI hounded for years tells you that art is really, really important and that art is the way we fight back, you listen.”
Two Days in Tucson
The album’s recording process sounds almost mythical: 17 songs recorded in two whirlwind days at Tucson’s Dust & Stone Studios. There were no lyric sheets, no rehearsals, not even headphones — just a group of musicians throwing themselves into the songs with what Huckfelt calls a “messy, quick fashion with our musicality and our passion.”
Out at a bar the night before recording, producer Gabriel Sullivan convinced Huckfelt to ditch headphones entirely for the 48-session. “What do you say? We just commit tomorrow,” Sullivan boldly suggested. So Huckfelt sang through a PA system with tons of bleed everywhere, creating what he admits was “a nightmare when it came to the mix.” But it also captured something raw, immediate and beautiful.
For the expedited studio session, Huckfelt’s Tucson “wrecking crew” included former Bob Dylan drummer Winston Watson. “Winston calls everyone he’s ever played with by name, but he calls Bob ‘the old man,’” Huckfelt says, grinning. “He said, ‘I remember playing this with the old man in Milan!’” Rounding out the crew was Connor "Catfish" Gallaher on pedal steel and dobro, Thøger Lund on bass, and Sullivan floating between synths, floor tom, and baritone guitar.
I Was Born, But… is incredibly cohesive. Huckfelt and crew kept the soul of the originals intact while adding their own flavor. His version of George Jones’ “The Race Is On” maintains Jones’ spirit and frenetic vocal patterns while adding a heavy, half-time feel to the chorus. The result fits on I Was Born, But… just as well as it would on a doom metal record from bands like Earth.
The cohesion stems fromHuckfelt’s curatorial vision. These aren’t obvious hits. Tom Petty’s “Two Gunslingers” is a fairly deep cut off Into the Great Wide Open, Warren Zevon’s “Stop Rainin’ Lord” comes from a demos collection, and Malcolm Holcombe’s fierce anti-Trump immigration anthem “Yours No More” is best known inHolcombe’s home state of North Carolina.
“If you’re a songwriter and you cover your friend’s song, it’s a pretty big compliment,” Huckfelt notes. “It used to happen a lot more. ‘All Along the Watchtower’ was only out for a matter of weeks before [Jimi] Hendrix covered it.”
From the Pines to the Present
As the founding frontman of Minneapolis-based indie-folk cult favorites The Pines, Huckfelt earned praise from Rolling Stone’s David Fricke as one of the finest songwriters of his generation. But the journey from The Pines to I Was Born, But… has been marked by profound personal and political transformations — the first Trump presidency, becoming a father during the pandemic, and an increasing commitment to activism.
“These things lit a fire under the part of me that thinks music has a role to play in activism,” he says. “Maybe that’s where some of the cover songs come in too, because it’s like a shared language. Make a big tent, invite the best musicians you know to be a part of it.”
Keith Secola’s “NDN Kars” holds particular significance on the album, with Secola himself appearing on the track. “I’ve witnessed how that song inspires people,” Huckfelt recalls, his voice rising with enthusiasm. “I’ve seen entire empty fields fill up with [Native American] round dancers as soon as ‘NDN Kars’ starts.”
But this isn’t nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Huckfelt sees these songs as weapons against cultural amnesia, something accelerated by recent efforts to get rid of DEI programs and change the names of national monuments and parks.
“Songs do a better job sparking that in people than just about anything,” he argues. “You hear a song that knocks you out, and it makes you remember that you’re somebody’s son or somebody’s dad or somebody’s partner and that you have a responsibility to help take care of people.”
Beyond Ego
At its core, I Was Born, But… challenges the mythology of the self-made individual that dominates American culture. “We’re so obsessed with ourselves, culturally speaking,” he notes. “And sometimes it’s really nice to remove the ego from the process and transmit something that is of great value.”
The album title itself suggests incompleteness or dependency. We’re all born, but we’re shaped by what came before, by the songs and stories and struggles of others. It’s an ethos that extends to Huckfelt’s live performances, where he mixes covers with originals without introduction, forcing audiences to encounter songs without the safety net of credentials or context.
“If you’ve never heard a song before, if you’re not familiar with it, then there’s no such thing as a cover,” he points out. “When you encounter a song for the first time, a lot of times you're not really concerned with who wrote it.”
In addition to I Was Born, But…, Huckfelt has already recorded his next album of original songs at Pachyderm Studios, with the first single “Chief Seattle’s Dream” set to appear in season four of AMC’s Dark Winds in February. But for now, he’s focused on bringing these “error-free ceremonies” to life on stages like Icehouse for his album release show on Jan. 24 and Animales Barbeque Co., where he has a residency every first and third Thursday. Huckfelt favors more-intimate venues because, as he puts it, “these are the rooms where someone is serving up something they just made, something they just created, and they have the guts to try it out.”
They’re also the rooms where songs become more than songs, where covers become ceremonies, and where 300 memorized poems in one man’s head become offerings to a community hungry for connection. In a world that keeps insisting we’re self-made, I Was Born, But… reminds us we’re anything but alone.
David Huckfelt celebrates the release of “I Was Born, But…” at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis on Thursday, Feb. 19. The album came out Friday, Jan. 16, on Don Giovanni Records. Huckfelt is also set to perform at this year’s South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, in March.
I Was Born But…Track Listing:
1. "Changing of the Guards" - Bob Dylan
2. "Anything" - Adrianne Lenker
3. "Any Way the Wind Blows - J.J. Cale
4. "I'm Alive" - Jackson Browne
5. "Early Morning Rain" - Gordon Lightfoot
6. "All Done In" – Howe Gelb
7. "Two Gunslingers" - Tom Petty
8. "Even When" - Pieta Brown
9. "NDN Kar" - Keith Secola
10. "The Race Is On" - George Jones
11. "Little Satchel" - Public Domain
12. "Stop Rainin' Lord" - Warren Zevon
13. "Yours No More" - Malcomb Holcombe
14. "Who Do You Love?" - Bo Diddley
15. "Raft To Freedom" - Dan Reeder
