Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts
Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts
– Tickets are available on the door at £11. (Tuesday 15th December)
“[Jeffrey Lewis is] The best lyricist working in the US today.” – Jarvis Cocker (Pulp)
“A wordy force of nature… stirs you up with politics or knocks you sideways with sadness… ideas burst from Jeffrey Lewis like an overstuffed suitcase – strange ones, funny ones, poignant ones, usually a mixture…. kicking out ramshackle fuzzbomb jams… it’s difficult to imagine how any couple of hours spent in Lewis’s company couldn’t prove inspirational.” (four of five stars) – The Guardian
“…[F]or me Lewis is as close to unmissable as music gets and he didn’t disappoint, raking brilliantly over the content of several albums (and he’s never released a bad one) and leaving us, among many highlights, with […] perhaps this festival’s greatest moment.” (Ranked #1 in the top-10 favorite sets of Green Man Festival 2014, even beating out Neutral Milk Hotel and Slint!) – Unwashed Territories
Combining folk warmth with garage noise, like if Woody Guthrie fronted Sonic Youth, Jeffrey Lightning Lewis (full birth name) began recording cassettes of his songs in his native New York City in the late 90s. Some of these songs found their way to the Rough Trade Records label in London (famous indie label of The Smiths, The Strokes, etc); since 2001 Jeffrey has been releasing critically acclaimed albums on Rough Trade and touring the world with his band, currently Jeffrey Lewis & Los Bolts (with Heather Wagner on drums and Emily Mem Pahl on bass).
In addition to headlining tours, Jeffrey has often shared gigs with the likes of Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Roky Erickson, The Mountain Goats, The Fall, Daniel Johnston, Devo, Adam Green, Pulp and other luminaries.
The new album “Manhattan,” mixed by John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Kurt Vile, Bob Dylan), will be released on Rough Trade in October 2015 – it’s the best album Jeffrey’s ever done, but not the best he’ll ever do.
“The Big Apple’s best-kept secret…. Genius-gone-ignored… mind-blowing.” – NME
“Weird? Very… but also downright inspiring” (four of five stars) – Rolling Stone
“Bizarre but brilliant” – Uncut
“Dazzling” – Mojo
Tickets are available on the door at £11.
Born and raised New Yorker Jeffrey Lewis leads a double-life, as both a comic book artist and an indie-rock musician.Beginning with homemade cassettes in the late 90s, and moving on to touring the world and releasing “proper” albums since 2001, Jeffrey’s now 15-year career has included sharing bills and tours with the likes of The Vaselines, The Fall, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Roky Erickson, The Mountain Goats, Daniel Johnston, Devo, Pulp and many other luminaries. In between his contemplative folk narratives and bashed-out indie-punk songs Jeffrey is known for often including a couple of his illustrated songs in each concert (what he calls “low budget videos”) sometimes covering historical topics (like “The History of Communism”), biographies (like “The Life of Barack Obama”) or strange flights of fancy (like “The Creeping Brain”). Appearing in the past as Jeffrey Lewis & The Jitters (featuring his brother Jack and David Beauchamp), Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard and other touring ensembles, his newest band incarnation is Jeffrey Lewis & The Jrams (pronounced “drams”) featuring Mem Pahl on bass and Heather Wagner on drums.
Rough Trade Records (label of The Smiths, The Strokes, etc.) has released six Jeffrey Lewis albums to date; Jeffrey has self-published eleven issues of his comic book series Fuff, and Jeffrey’s writing, illustrations, comic books and music have been featured by The Guardian, The History Channel and The New York Times (among other places).