Anti-Folk Comes To Athens: A Q & A With Jeffrey Lewis

by Gordon Lamb
03/15/2008

Chances are good that if you’ve heard of New York’s Jeffrey Lewis at all then you’ve only just heard of him recently. You’d be forgiven, too, because Lewis’ latest album, 12 Crass Songs, upon which he covers a dozen classics by anarcho-punk stalwarts Crass, has been written up in press outlets worldwide. But now that you’ve heard of him you’d do well to start digging a little.

Over the past decade Lewis has operated in the punk-folk underground which is often referred to as the ‘anti-folk’ scene. The reason, of course, is that the term folk music tends to conjure up gentle images of singer-songwriters plucking out a variety of musings with a similar moon-June-spoon theme. Unfortunately, the images of folk music as an authentic, working-class, rebellious phenomenon have been lost to history. The irony is that Lewis’ music must classify itself as ‘anti-folk’ when it is, in actuality, quite authentic folk music. Although it’s likely not his intention, what he does is reclaim folk music’s spirit and channel through a distinctly punk and indie identity. Since 1997 he’s released 17 albums, including four for his current home, the legendary label Rough Trade.

In preparation for his show Monday, March 17 at Athens’ 40 Watt Club, where he will open for Ra Ra Riot and The Cribs, Athens Exchange asked Lewis a few questions which he graciously answered in quick order.

Athens Exchange: How's the tour going so far?

Jeffrey Lewis: So far no vehicle breakdowns, which is quite nice... and only 3 nights sleeping in the car with all 4 band mates, all freezing and uncomfortable in the middle of nowhere... 3 tough nights out of 4 weeks of touring is pretty good!

AE: Are you playing by yourself or do you have some folks on stage with you?

JL: When I was starting this tour I was doing shows with Super Furry Animals and Times New Viking, for that part I was playing solo. Then I went straight from that to the west coast tour with the Mountain Goats for which I met up with the rest of my band, which is my brother Jack on bass, Dave [Beauchamp] on drums and Helen [Schreiner] on keys and vocals. We're actually undecided at this point who will be going on the Cribs tour, so by the time we get to Athens I’ll either be solo, a duo, a trio or the whole 4-piece.

AE: A friend of mine recently commented that 'anti-folk' shows can be so boring. How would you react to this?

JL: Well, it's like saying "punk shows can be so boring" or "jazz shows can be so boring"... there's not really such thing as a boring genre, all artists are different and a great artist I great regardless of what section of the record store their albums are in. In fact, most great artists are usually hard to firmly put in a genre anyway, unless it's a genre they themselves have set the standard for. I don't know what "anti-folk shows" your friend was going to, maybe they were boring.

AE: How well do you think the Crass songs translated to folk arrangements?

JL: Quite well, they're such fantastic songs.

AE: Along with the previous question, I'd imagine you hold that the lyrics are the most important part of a song whereas I tend to think of a song as a whole piece where music and lyrics are equally important. Do you think that anything was lost from the originals when doing the covers?

JL: Certainly a lot is lost, but it was worth losing certain elements in exchange for seeing what other elements might be gained. I wouldn't at all say that my versions of these songs are nearly as good as the originals, but they do open up a new listener-ship and a new angle on a lot of the material. I absolutely love the original Crass music and I do feel that music and melody etc can be as important to a good song as good lyrics, but I think lyrics tend to be overlooked as an important factor for most bands - I think a lot of people in bands are probably much better at whatever craft they have, be it drumming, playing guitar, etc, than they are at writing. In some ways it makes great sense to have a system like the Grateful Dead did, with the lyrics being written by a guy who wasn't even playing in the band.

AE: Do you feel anything was added that the originals didn't have?

JL: I did do a lot of re-working of certain songs, to make them more song-like and less rant-y, and in some cases to sort of focus the song on one topic. But again, I can't take too much credit, it was a joy to work with such great songs.

AE: Is there any fear that this album of covers, which is getting so much attention, will become the overshadowing album in your catalog?

JL: It's the most press-worthy, anyway, since it gives journalists more of an angle to write about than other albums perhaps, but I've had enough fans for enough years to not be too worried about being a flash-in-the-pan with this one album. If curiosity-seekers buy this album but don't stick around to hear the next one, that’s okay, we've been surviving without them. It's nice to have a few new ears on us for these recent months but I feel more comfortable as a moving target anyway, like, I wouldn't want to build up and rely on an audience that only likes us for our cover songs. We've never been a band to "tour an album" in the sense of going on the road solely to perform and promote the latest release, so it's not like we're running around currently as a Crass cover band, we're still doing our usual combination of things but with a few Crass songs mixed in here and there.

AE: Can you talk a little about your own songwriting process? Do songs come quickly to you? How much twiddling about with them occurs before they make it to a record?

JL: There’s not much "process", it's always different. Some songs come out quite quickly, like "The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane", I don't even remember writing it, whereas songs like "Don't Let the Record Label Take You Out to Lunch" and "Moving" went through a lot of re-writing over the course of many live performances and various recordings, trying to get rid of lines that I thought were awkward or dumb and replace them with lines I feel a lot better about. Usually I play a song live for a while before it makes it onto an album, I find that's really helpful for the evolution of the song.

AE: Are you already writing songs for your next album?

JL: I've got a bunch, actually most of it was recorded before I did the Crass album but I never had a chance to finish it. I kind of think the longer I take with everything the better, why rush it and get to the end of my career that much faster? Also, the longer I wait to put an album together the better my song selection is, like, if I currently have about 17 new songs from the past year or two I could pick the best 12 and have that be the album, but if I don't assemble the album for another year then I might be picking the best 12 songs out of a batch of 30 or something.

AE: What's a typical, non-touring day for Jeffrey Lewis like?

JL: I can't even remember! Hopefully I'd get some work done on my next comic book, I left behind 17 unfinished comic pages when I left NYC to start this tour, I'd really like to have issue 7 of my series ready for publication this summer but it'll take a lot more work. Most likely a non-touring day at home would involve a chunk of time e-mailing to set up some future tour, the booking process takes a lot of time. Also answering various other emails though I'm always hopelessly behind. I’d probably go grocery shopping with my girlfriend and make dinner with her. Maybe we'd go see some friends' band play a show. Maybe I'd check my post office box and see if any more rare 60’s psychedelic records that I bought on eBay might have arrived.