Dave Harrington & Mary Lattimore

Mary Lattimore and Dave Harrington are tireless collaborators. Consider their résumés: After landing in Philadelphia more than a dozen years ago, Lattimore—a harpist whose music seems to outline the shapes, colors, and patterns of crystals—began working with Thurston Moore and Kurt Vile, Jarvis Cocker and Steve Gunn. Since landing in Los Angeles, she has made duets with Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan and the great Growing, the singular singer Julianna Barwick and the accordion whiz Walt McClements. Harrington—a guitarist with equal interests in deep space and earthbound skronk, with the tools to be beautiful and refined or messy and glorious—is not only in Darkside and Taper’s Choice but has also jammed and recorded with a top tier of American rock improvisers, from Shahzad Ismaily and Patrick Shiroishi to Chris Forsyth and Spencer Zahn. And yes, that’s Harrington on Alanis Morissette’s The Storm Before the Calm.

At Big Ears, the question becomes: Which will Lattimore and Harrington conjure, the storm or the calm? Though they collaborated in July 2025 as a duo at Zebulon, the indispensable Los Angeles space that helps to anchor a broader musical community there, this pairing remains new and rare. They are two close listeners and attentive and inventive players, rendezvousing again in Knoxville.