When Phoebe Bridgers returned to The Tonight Show on July 15 to perform a stripped-down version of “Lost Boys” (the same song she’d performed with an all-kids band the day before), the camera eventually zoomed out to reveal she was singing alongside a 70-something man who looked like someone you might see at the post office, wearing a white “New York” baseball cap, jeans, and a black T-shirt.
The man singing with Bridgers was, in fact, Dan Reeder, an oddball folk singer-songwriter, longtime visual artist, and instrument maker who’s developed a cult following for his beautifully simple songs about butterflies and beachballs and brains. (David Grier and J.T. Thomas were among the other distinguished musicians who performed on TV with him and Bridgers.)
Since 2004, Reeder has been releasing albums on the late John Prine’s Oh Boy Records, including songs with titles like “Food and Pussy” and “Bitch Nation.” Reeder has said he “broke down and cried” when he first found out that Prine loved his songs after he mailed in a cassette out of the blue. His music often transforms a nonsense line or a passing thought into something profound. Perhaps his greatest tune is just one line, sung again and again until it sounds like wisdom: “Born a worm/Spins a coccoon/Goes to sleep/Wakes up a butterfly/What the fuck is that about?”
Another, called “Work Song,” simply repeats the line “I got all the fuckin’ work I need.”
In recent years, Reeder’s music has become less and less of a well-kept secret. Bridgers had already outed herself as a fan when her group boygenius covered Reeder’s song “Stay Down, Man” in 2023. Last year, Jack Antonoff referred to Reeder as “one of my all-time favorite songwriters” before performing his song “Maybe” with Waxahatchee, Weyes Blood, and Reeder himself. Jason Isbell has said he “loves him so much.” Actor and musician Whitmer Thomas also counts himself as a big fan, and recruited Reeder for his 2022 song “South Florida.”
Reeder lives in Germany and rarely tours in the U.S. But following a 2026 live album made with his daughter Peggy Reeder, who sings harmony and plays guitar with her father, he’s getting ready to embark on a substantial American tour in 2027 that will bring him to prestigious venues like New York’s Town Hall.
“I’ve got strategies, and one of them is to notice something about myself that’s ridiculous,” Reeder told Tape Op in 2024. “That’s pretty easy to find, usually! It works with painting, and it works with songs. Another strategy is to try to make something really sweet and pretty. It ends up being the nastiest shit I can think of. Every time! I don’t try to write funny songs. I write normal songs.”