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ABoF Interview Jeffrey Lewis
We here at ABoF have been very busy over the last few weeks making sure everything's absoluteley perfect for Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard's upcoming sell-out show at The Lexington this Tuesday, 2nd August.
With the gig just around the corner, we thought it was well past time to sit down with the man himself and ask him some of the questions that have been floating around the office.
Besides the Lexington show, do you have any plans while you're in London?
As usual not much time in London, just passing thru... We play Sheffield the night before and Oxford the night after, in fact in ten years of touring I can probably count our days off on one hand. Okay, maybe two hands, but it's very rare that we're not playing every day on a tour, we fly in form New York City and immediately hop in a car or a train to go to where ever our first gig is, plug in and play, and it's like that up until the last date of tour, when we sometimes go to the airport at 2 am after the show and wait for a 6 am flight home. Our philosophy as an indie band has always been that it's a job - going on tour is time to go to work! It's a great job and we love it, but it's not a vacation. Usually.
What prompted you to record an album exclusively covering Crass songs?
The first three Crass albums are total classics, and some of the best songs of the 20th Century, I thought it was a shame that only people who are into hardcore punk would ever have the chance to appreciate those songs, I figured they would still be great songs even if played in different styles and made accessible and understandable to a new audience.
What are you listening to at the moment?
Today in Germany, from my computer, I have listened to The Grateful Dead ("Live Dead"), Sonic Youth ("Goo"), Herman Dune ("Strange Moosic"), and Amon Duul ("Paradieswärts Düül ").
Any amusing tour stories you'd like to share?
Oh, there's tons of tour stories of course, and it's been ten years of touring without really keeping a tour diary so I forget a lot of stuff. Okay, quick story, this crazy lady in Florida housed us when we had no place to sleep after a show. We had no place else to go, so we were happy to not be sleeping in our car, and we stay with people all the time and usually it's great, but this one woman really was very creepy. We followed her home into this weird desolate house in a swampy area. Things started basically fine as usual, we just all piled into the living room and got ready to lie down on a couch or floor and go to sleep but it got weird quickly when she sat us down to watch some stupid sex comedy movie and kept rewinding explicit scenes to make us re-watch them, which made us all uncomfortable - she kept screeching "did you see THAT?!? Isn't that GREAT!? You HAVE to see that again!! Watch, watch!!" We were totally bored and just wanting to sleep, and after a bit we were starting to think she was an insane pervert. Then she kept telling us we all had to skinny dip in her pool in back, which also made us uncomfortable, and we had to keep telling her we were tired and we didn't want to take our clothes off and swim with her. Then what really put us in a paranoid mood was that we kept thinking we heard screaming from the swamp behind her house! Probably some kind of bird or Florida animal, but it TOTALLY sounded like a person screaming and being murdered, over and over out in the swamp, and it just added to the feeling of impending doom. We were pretty sure she was going to kill us all in our sleep or something. Of course nothing happened and we just woke up and took off early in the morning. And 99% of the time we stay with people and it's awesome. Like this punk squatter floating house-boat we slept in two nights ago in Hamburg, but that's another story.
What do you bring to the stage during a performance?
Guitar, casio keyboard, art to show, comic books and CDs to sell after the show.
What, for you, was the defining moment that made you realise you wanted to be a musician?
I have never really wanted to be a musician, I've never felt like a musician, and I have to real plans to ever become a musician. I write songs and I make sounds but I'm not much of a musician.
Where do you draw inspiration for your music and comics?
Anywhere I can get it, I'm desperate.
What comics are you reading at the moment, and besides yourself, who would you recommend?
David Heatley ("My Brain Is Hanging Upside-Down"), Jon Lewis ("True Swamp"), and I'm re-reading all the Rick Veitch issues of "Swamp Thing" from the 80s that I haven't read in a long time, great stuff. Veitch took over writing/drawing Swamp Thing after Alan Moore, and he did a really great job.
You've got five minutes until the world is hit by a meteorite. What do you spend your last 5 minutes doing?
If it was something I could tell you I wouldn't have to wait till the end of the world to do it!
What are your plans for the rest of 2011?
We have a tour of China in August, and a tour of South Korea, then I'm doing a TV filming thing with my artwork in Philadelphia for a few days in early September... then my new album comes out on Rough Trade in October and we'll be touring Spain and the UK and the USA for a few weeks for the album-release time period in October and November. Not sure what's happening after that.
For more info about Jeffrey Lewis, check out his official site.
