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Interview with Jeffrey Lewis
Interviewed By: DaVe Lipp
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Jeffrey Lewis is a musician based in NYC who combines comic book art and music to create some of the most original and quirky songs to come out of New York since King Missile’s “Detachable Penis.” Taking the experimentation and rebellious spirit of the 60s, psychedelia, folk, and punk among others he crafts witty, funny and literary songs that are highly funny, interesting and all too true. I had the chance to talk to him about all of the above. |
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I read that you were into comics before you even learned to read. What was it about comic books that drew you in?
No pun intended, eh? Well there was no TV in my family's apartment till I was about 12 so comic books and reading and drawing were my main source of entertainment, in addition to the usual toys and games etc.
You create comics yourself. What do you base them on?
Some are fiction, some are true stories of travels I've been on, or stories from my dad's life of adventures.
How did you get the idea to combine comics and music?
I'd been doing comic books all my life, and when I started playing music in about 1997 and 1998 I realized it was a great way to sell my comic books, playing a show and selling comic books afterwards. I used to make very elaborate fliers for my shows that were miniature comic books. Music gets people's attention much more than comics do, so I used to say that I was doing shows to advertise the fliers rather than the other way around.
What do you think of all the movies being made right now based on comic books? Any favorites? Any you hate? Any you can't wait to see? (movies and comics)
There's no movie based on comics that I've seen that's really good. Some of them are not TOO bad, I thought American Splendor was particularly well done, and even Ghost World and V for Vendetta were pretty good. But filmmakers don't seem to realize how much you lose when you lose the lines and the artwork. You could even put a comic book on the screen, word for word and panel for panel (like the Sin City movie) and even at its best it would only be half as good as the comic because you lose the entire expressive effect of the artwork. While reading a comic you may not be fully aware of the emotional effect the linework or page layouts are having on you, but it's a huge part of your experience. SO even though comics are a visual medium, it's usually less of a strain to put novels on the screen than to put comics on the screen, because to lose the flavor of the artwork sort of fatally amputates half of the story. Which is not to say that I like comics with flashy art and I don't think the stories are important - but can you imagine making a movie out of Love and Rockets comics? No matter how closely you adhered to the plot, or how good the writing is, or how good the cinematography is, you will never make up for what you've lost in the visual character of it.
How did you get involved in the Anti-folk scene?
Just by playing the open mic at the Sidewalk Cafe; anybody who plays there is considered part of the Antifolk scene.
Let's talk about your style of writing. How did you develop it?
I didn't set out to develop a style, everybody who does anything just naturally has their own style of doing it, right from the get-go.
Who are some of the literary and music influences on you and why?
Anybody who forges their own unique path, like the Fall or Lou Reed or Jonathan Richman or Daniel Johnston, people for whom technical excellence is less important than ideas or a sense of one's own unique voice/perspective.
You’re parents seem cool. Being beatniks, did they have a role in helping you develop music?
My dad plays guitar very well, just acoustic finger-picked country blues stuff, in a Mississippi John Hurt style. He also plays some boogie-woogie piano. My mom also plays a little bit of folk guitar, in an early 60s folk-revival style, a la the Weavers or Joan Baez. They never pushed the instrument on me or gave me lessons but there was always this one guitar around the house so when I started getting interested in playing guitar all I had to do was go across the room and pick it up. My father gave me the general idea of what finger-picking was, and probably a couple of chords, but that's about it
I know you were influenced by Donovan and The Fugs. They seem like artists that cool older parents would turn their kids on to, especially The Fugs, being that they were a NYC band led by reactionary poets, from the 60s. What was it about these two random artists that had such and effect on you?
I did find the rare first Fugs album in my parents' collection, my dad played a couple songs off of it for me when I was about 16 and I thought it was really bizarre and somewhat distasteful, although a couple of the songs were funny. I didn't get more into it until college when I started getting into music that was a little punkier and scrappier and weirder than the standard classic rock i was already into, I was getting into the Violent Femmes and Mr. Bungle and the Velvet Underground and Ween and that first Fugs album started to make a lot more sense to me and I started searching for more of their albums. My parents' record collection was never very big, mostly some blues and jazz stuff, a bit of folkie stuff, with a few Rolling Stones and Beatles and Dylan records. When I began getting heavily into 60s classic rock and psychedelia I discovered a lot of things on my own, like Syd Barrett and the Grateful Dead and somewhere along the way I got really into Donovan. It was the extremely simple and beautiful style of his early pre-psychedelic albums, especially as I started to play acoustic guitar, it seemed like these were the sorts of songs I could learn to play and learn to write. Also, like the Fugs, Donovan was an artist whom I did not know ANYBODY that was into. It was something I could fully discover on my own and form my own unbiased relationship to. These always end up being the things I love the best, the things I randomly find and fall in love with on my own without much preconception.
Speaking of The Fugs, your live shows and your songs seem to really capture that rebellious spirit of experimental and raw music that came out of the 60s, and you even have a song called "The History of Punk 1955-1975," which is self-explanatory. What is it about this era that makes many artists gravitate towards it and how did it influence your own music?
The joy of experimentation and breaking boundaries found in that music makes it very irresistible. But that spirit is not totally confined to the 60s by any means.
You just released a new album 12 Crass Songs, which are songs written by the Anarcho-pacifist British rock band Crass that you reworked. How did that project idea come about?
It's all explained in the comic book that comes with the album...
You’ve played with a number of well respected and experimental musicians like Devendra Banhart, Daniel Johnston, the Mountain Goats, and Thurston Moore. Did you learn anything from these musicians about songwriting or playing to a live audience?
As far lessons about playing live, I'd have to say that of the artists you've mentioned the Mountain Goats are the best example of live lessons - John Darnielle really worked himself up by his own bootstraps over years of small-time touring and home-recording, and he really gives performances his all, throws himself into the roles in the songs with tremendous fervor. Maybe it's just because I've seen him play on stage in various states of sobriety but when he gets intense it just seems like he's going to explode, scream, cry, and have a heart attack. It's a challenge to think of touring that much and still putting so much emotion into each performance. I'm actually currently drawing a comic book that John will be using as the press kit for the new Mountain Goats album! He wrote descriptions of all the songs and I've illustrated them sort of in comic book form.
You seem to play in various projects including your solo, band (The Jitters), and Guitar Situation. Do you prefer one over the other or are you keen on experimenting?
I like trying all sorts of different situations out but my preferred performance mode is with my usual trio, brother Jack on bass and friend Dave on drums. |
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