Antifolk tragi-comic singer/songwriter and graphic storytelling aficionado Jeffrey Lewis will play at Craw Daddy to promote his new album 'Em Are I'.
Born Jeffrey Lightning Lewis in New York City, November 1975, Jeff grew up with loving beatnik parents in an East 9th St tenement. Having no television in the household, young Jeff became a comic book fanatic before he even knew how to read. His brother Jack was born in 1980. After graduating New York State University at Purchase in 1997 (with a Literature degree and a senior thesis written on the comic book "Watchmen") Jeff spent the lonely winter of 97/98 starving in a 150$ a month illegal co-op sublet, listening to lots of scratchy Pearls Before Swine and Donovan records, and making up some musically minimalist songs on an old guitar belonging to his dad.
Subsequently, spring of 1998 found Jeff playing at Lach's Monday night Anti-hoot open mics, and that summer friend/mentor Whip (of Timesbold) assisted the recording of 11 of Jeff's solo acoustic songs onto a 4-track tape, to which Jeff added two bedroom-recordings of songs sung by brother Jack, who had recently picked up playing electric bass. The resulting 13-song cassette "Indie-Rock Fortune Cookie" (the title a spin-off of the 1960s Blues Magoos records "Psychedelic Lollipop" and "Electric Comic Book") was packaged with a photocopied miniature comic book and sold for $3 at Jeff's soon semi-monthly gigs at the Sidewalk Cafe.
In 2001 Adam Green and Kimya Dawson of the Moldy Peaches made a CD of 8 songs selected from Jeff's first two cassette albums and passed it along to Geoff Travis at Rough Trade Records in England, beginning a chain of events which lead to the September 2001 UK release of "The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane and other favorites" a 10-song CD culled from 2 years of Jeff (and Jack) Lewis' DIY recordings. Jeff has since released three further albums on Rough Trade.
The Jeffrey Lewis Band has toured the US, UK and Europe, sharing bills with Steven Malkmus & the Jicks, Devendra Banhart, Black Dice, Thurston Moore, the Fall, Beth Orton, Frank Black, the Fiery Furnaces, Daniel Johnston, Scout Niblett, the Mountain Goats, the Moldy Peaches, Cornershop, the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, Wooden Wand, the Cribs, the Danielson Famile, Dr. Dog and others.
Their last album Jeffrey Lewis: 12 Crass Songs, released by Rough Trade in late 2007, is a collection of songs by the legendary anarchist punk band Crass, reworked by Jeffrey into glorious folk, rock, psychedelic, orchestral and electronica productions which dazzle the ear while losing none of the political power of the originals. For the recording of 12 Crass Songs Lewis was joined by Helen Schreiner on back up vocals.
12 Crass Songs follows in the footsteps of the critically acclaimed Jeffrey & Jack Lewis: City & Eastern Songs, which was produced by Kramer (Galaxie 500, Butthole Surfers, Low, Daniel Johnston, etc) and was selected as one of 2006's best albums in Time Out NY, the Boston Globe, CMJ Monthly and elsewhere. Jeffrey's most recent comic book series Fuff is currently up to issue seven.
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