The Dude wants in bed with you.
For his next LP, Jeff Bridges is releasing an album called “Jeff Bridges Sleeping Tapes,” a collection of music and sounds that the Academy Award-winning actor has created for listeners to help lull them to sleep. The album is divided into two parts and features Bridges’s voice narrating over ambient sounds and field recordings, as well as guided meditations. Bridges recorded it at Playback Studios in Santa Barbara, Calif., with composer Keefus Ciancia (“True Detective,” “Nashville”) writing the music and Grammy Award-winning sound mastering engineer Doug Sax putting the final touches on it.
“While working on the ‘Sleeping Tapes’ album we put in some long hours,” Bridges tells Speakeasy. “Listening back to our day’s works, I’d often drift off. I’d wake up and smile saying, ‘This stuff works.’”
For the album’s release, Bridges teamed up with Squarespace for a new website, DreamingWithJeff.com. He’s making it available in as a pay-what-you-want download, as well as a limited run of cassette tapes and vinyl editions and donating all the proceeds to the Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign, a charity he’s been the national spokesperson for since 2010. “That’s why I’m doing the Sleeping Tapes album to bring attention to this problem,” he says. “So many kids in our country, in this land of plenty, are coming to school too hungry to learn.”
Those watching the Super Bowl this weekend will get to experience the Bridges’s “Sleeping Tapes” album for a brief moment, when Squarespace runs their second-ever ad featuring Bridges during the first half of the game.
Over the years, he’s recorded and released two studio albums of folk-based music, as well as live album last year with his band the Abiders. In 2009, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis Blake, a down and out former country music star.
While “Sleeping Tapes” is intended to be used in a very specific instance, Bridges doesn’t think that it should be limited to just bedtime. “It can be used as a sleep aid but I like listening to the album anytime,” he says. “I just dig the sounds, stories and vibe.”