Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam Batmanglij have known each other since 2008 — nearly a decade before the indie rockers and D.C. natives would release their collaborative album, “I Had a Dream That You Were Mine.”
Back then, Batmanglij’s band Vampire Weekend opened some shows for Leithauser’s band the Walkmen. Four years later, a mutual friend set them up on a lunch date to see if they would want to work together. Pretty quickly, the conversation turned to their shared hometown.
“We started talking about how fluffy the flour tortillas are at the Cactus Cantina,” Leithauser says of the Cathedral Heights mainstay.
“We also talked about how there’s like a very distinct brand of sarcasm that is unique to people who grow up in D.C.,” Batmanglij says. “There’s a certain kind of eye-rolling that’s interwoven into the experience of growing up in a political town.”
Back in 2012, Leithauser was eyeing a solo record. The Walkmen, his influential D.C.-bred, New York-based band, would release their final album, “Heaven,” in 2012 and go on hiatus at the end of 2013. The mega-popular Vampire Weekend would release “Modern Vampires of the City,” Batmanglij’s final album as a full-time member of the band, in 2013 (though he wouldn’t announce that he had left until 2016).
Both artists found themselves at an inflection point, leaving behind successful bands to start something new. After that Brooklyn lunch, they went back to Batmanglij’s apartment and he played Leithauser some in-progress music.
“I felt like everything we tried worked, very quickly and very easily,” Leithauser says. “Rostam’s sort of like a one-man band at the computer, which is not the way that I’ve ever done it. I’ve always done it [where] you bring it in the room with everybody.”
Batmanglij ended up producing two songs — “I Retired” and “Alexandria” — on Leithauser’s 2014 solo debut, “Black Hours,” and the two would continue collaborating off and on. That led to a collaborative LP, “I Had a Dream That You Were Mine,” in 2016. Now, Leithauser and Batmanglij will kick off their first joint tour behind the album — in honor of its 10th anniversary — at the 9:30 Club in D.C. on Thursday.
Influenced by retro shooby doo wops, Leonard Cohen-esque torch songs, baroque pop and country rock, the album combined Leithauser’s distinctive crooning snarl with Batmanglij’s super-producer pop songwriting instincts. The foundation was there from that very first session.
“We got this huge track going, and it just came out of nowhere,” Leithauser recalls. “Sounded a little bit like Vampire Weekend. It sounded a little bit like the Walkmen. It sounded a little bit brand-new. … It was this meeting up of these new sounds. It’s really exciting to work with somebody new when it really happens quickly.”
Batmanglij, who studied music theory while majoring in music at Columbia University, was similarly struck by Leithauser’s approach to songwriting.
“I’d never met anyone who thought about melody in terms of music theory until I met Hamilton,” he says. “[He’s] also a music theory head, and the way that he approaches it with melody I find really fascinating, unique and kind of enlightening.”
A fan of the Walkmen before he met Leithauser, Batmanglij viewed the band as a soundtrack to his 20s. “I definitely remember every Walkmen record,” he says, “and what apartment I lived in, what dorm room I lived in at Columbia when each record came out, what bar I was in when ‘The Rat’ came on.”
“I Had a Dream That You Were Mine” was mostly written and recorded in Los Angeles, where Batmanglij now lives, and New York, where Leithauser resides. But they also did some sessions in Georgetown — in Batmanglij’s childhood bedroom — when they were both visiting family over the holidays.
“Rostam’s parents are so nice, but I didn’t know them very well, and it’s an old Georgetown house,” Leithauser says. “I was like, ‘This is going to get really, really loud.’”
Batmanglij interjects: “It wasn’t as bad as when I was 17 and my parents let me have a drum kit up there.”
Though Leithauser toured behind the album and plays several of those songs live, they’ve never done a proper tour together — just some radio gigs, one-offs and a few shows where Batmanglij sat in with Leithauser’s band (like at D.C.’s now-shuttered Rock & Roll Hotel in 2017). The plan for the tour is to play songs from the album with a band that includes drums, bass and pedal steel, but there will be set list surprises and special guests, too.
“There’s no way to make everyone who comes to these shows happy, but I think we’re going to get pretty damn close,” Batmanglij says. “Maybe I’m being my cynical D.C. self and, actually, everybody who comes to these shows is going to be very happy.”
Thursday at 7 p.m. at 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW. 930.com. $56.70.
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