Given all the attention on his Pono Music audiophile revolution, you might have missed the fact that Neil Young has a new album out, A Letter Home; a collection of super lo-fi cover songs recorded entirely at at Jack White’s Nashville HQ, Third Man Records, as well as featuring guest vocals and keys from White.

The Canadian veteran and Detroit musician are taking their vintage collaboration one step further, booked for a joint performance on tonight’s episode of Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show. And as if pairing the two music heroes wasn’t reason enough to get excited, Young and White are also planning a historic first for their US TV slot.

The entire one take live performance will be recorded and pressed to vinyl, live on the show, and made available for sale afterwards – as a tweet from the late night host himself revealed.

The ‘live-to-vinyl’ concept continues the concept of A Letter Home, which was made entirely on the refurbished Voice-o-Graph recording booth situated at White’s Third Man Records. The vintage 1947 device can record around two minutes of audio and immediately press it to a vinyl record, a method used for each of the record’s 11 cover versions (of songs by the likes of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Willie Nelson).

The pair’s Jimmy Fallon performance is also modelled on White’s Record Store Day attempt at making the ‘World’s Fastest Record’, where he recorded and pressed a performance of his new ‘Lazaretto’ single live before whisking it off to be produced onto a 7” single at United Record Pressings; managing to complete the whole process – from performance to pressing – in a breakneck 3 hours, 55 minutes and 21 seconds.

As for Young and White’s (doesn’t that just roll off the tongue) Fallon appearance, it’s not been revealed yet what song they plan to perform, though given White’s cameos on A Letter Home – providing vocals and piano on versions of Nelson’s ‘On The Road Again’ and The Everly Brothers’ ‘I Wonder If I Care As Much’ – chances are it will be one of those two cuts. We can’t wait.

UPDATE: Watch Neil Young recording Willie Nelson’s ‘Crazy’ on Jimmy Fallon below

Watch Young recording ‘Needle Of Death’ (by Bert Jansch) in White’s Voice-o-Graph booth below.

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