A Mostly Quiet Life is something of a hybrid album. Most of the songs were written between 2010 and 2012 when Beck lived in Portland. During a break in touring, he mentioned to his friends and bandmates Ryan Spellman (drums), Jesse Bates (bass) and Thor Jensen (guitar) that he had a group of songs he wanted to record and quickly laid down the basic tracks as demos in a single afternoon in Jon Burbank’s basement.
When Beck was stuck at home during COVID, he lost two heroes in 2020: John Prine and Jerry Jeff Walker. As a tribute to them, he recorded some lesser-known songs of theirs: ‘Blue Umbrella’ and ‘Every Drop of Water’, doing all the parts in his home studio in Brooklyn.
During the process, he stumbled upon…