Late last year, songwriter,
guitarist and vocalist Jeff Buckley emerged from New York's underground
cafe scene with Live At Sin-�, a four-song CD-5 capturing one sweltering
night in the East Village. That recording was one sliver of sound taken
from two years' worth of innumerable solo electric performances. Now,
Jeff Buckley is releasing his first full-length album, the ten
song GRACE.
Recorded in the fall
of 1993 at Bearsville Recording Studio in Woodstock, NY, GRACE
features Jeff on vocals, guitars, keyboards, dulcimer and tabla; Mick
Grondahl and Matt Thompson, members of his touring band, on bass and drums
respectively; and production by Andy Wallace (Paw, White Zombie, Soul
Asylum). Noted classical composer and jazz vibraphonist Karl Berger wrote
and conducted string arrangements assisted by Jeff. Within the walls of
this studio, Buckley and company created a unique blend of sound and vision:
emotion-drenched vocals laced throughout extraordinary instrumental work.
The record includes seven originals and one cover performed with his band
and two covers done solo.
GRACE gives
voice to those secrets of the human experience that lie mute and waiting
for sound. "Eternal Life," is a sonically bruising plea for emotional
tolerance and psychic liberation. "Eternal life is now on my trail," he
sings, "Got my red glitter coffin, man, just need one last nail/While
all these ugly gentlemen play out their foolish games/There's a flaming
red horizon that screams our names."
"Lover, You Should
Have Come Over," holds a candle in a dark circular staircase, lonesome
vocals wrapped around slow tender chords and lines like "It's never over,
she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever." "Mojo Pin," co-written
by Buckley and former Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas, is a powerful
ensemble reading of a song first introduced on Live At Sin-�, a testimony
to Buckley's avant-garde and free jazz proclivities. On the moody "Dream
Brother," the singer offers a warning to a friend, a mysterious message
swaddled in the unconscious. Tipping his hat to the master, Buckley renders
his interpretation of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," a solo track recorded
live-in-the-studio; the song is one of Jeff's most enthusiastically-received
tunes in-concert.
"The experience of
creating and performing with a band was different from my solo work,"
Buckley says about the recording of GRACE. "All the spontaneity
and attention to the dynamics of the moment is extended four times and
maybe beyond. It's the difference between the eight year-old and the twenty-eight
year old: you still contain the eight year-old, but two decades exist
around you. The object of going solo was to attract the perfect band.
All my favorite music has been band music. I love listening to Bob Dylan,
Robert Johnson and Thelonious Monk alone, but, the fact is, there are
so many other areas you can go with other instruments going at the same
time. You can reach a trance-like stage where what's really going on inside
the human psyche is being sung to...the music aims at what's really going
on underneath...not what people pretend to be or what they hope they can
buy at a store. The little scared kid or the full-on romantic lover is
being accessed. There are really majestic qualities about people that
can be reached through music. People are incredible to me even though
I'm healthily cynical sometimes. It's because we are spirits and the whole
tension is that we don't know we are. Yet, music is able to touch this."
The first member of
this "perfect band" to come on-board was bass player Mick Grondahl who
had seen one of Buckley's solo shows inside a crypt at Columbia University.
A few months later, Mick ran into Jeff on the street and offered his services.
Weeks later they met at a neighborhood bar to talk, then returned to Jeff's
apartment. "We jammed," Jeff recalls, "making this two o'clock-in-the-morning
type music. And I thought, 'he's the one!' He had all the qualities I
dug. There are bass players all over the city that can play rings around
him in terms of 'technique,' but nobody else could ever make the music
he makes. And that's more powerful!"
Drummer Matt Johnson
was recommended by some friends. Not only is Matt technically adept, even
more crucially, he's got a quality that's all-too-rare in drummers: a
strong sense of song. Jeff, Mick, and Matt began playing together four
weeks before going to Woodstock to record GRACE. "We really became
a band during the album," Jeff admits. "Even now, we're still evolving."
Following completion of the bulk of the album's tracks in early '94, Jeff
took to the road for the first time, playing solo electric shows throughout
the U.S. and Europe. Guitar player Michael Tighe--who plays on GRACE's
darkly confessional "So Real"--will perform with the band on Jeff's first
full-band tours of the United States and Europe.
Jeff Buckley
wrote his first song at age 13, "some stupid thing about a break-up,"
he claims. His horizons as a lyricist have expanded considerably since
then; he now explores complex themes of love, inner strife, and separation.
"Sensitivity isn't being wimpy," he explains. "It's about being so painfully
aware that a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom." His lyrics are
sharply-focused, yet enigmatic, revealing simple truths shrouded in the
riddles of their origin. "I enjoy a lot of mystery," he admits. "It provides
a bit more movement without too much trivializing scrutiny."
Describing himself
as "rootless trailer-trash born in southern California," Jeff Buckley
grew up singing in the car with his mother, a classically-trained pianist
and cellist. At the age of five, he discovered his grandmother's guitar
and began to teach himself to play. At 17, he left home, finished high
school and wound up in Hollywood. The widening orbit of his sensibility
led him through a motley series of rock and reggae bands and he did scattered
studio session work "for grocery money."
In 1990, he moved
to New York, performing with various local outfits before striking out
on his own. Hanging out on the Lower East Side, he found himself feeling
very much at home. "More than any place," he claims, "this is where I
felt I belonged. I prefer the Lower East Side to any place on the planet.
I can be who I am here...I couldn't do it any place I lived as a child.
I never fit in in California, even though my roots are there."
Jeff Buckley
describes his music as a "low-down dreamy bit of the psyche. It's part
quagmire and part structure. The quagmire's important for things to grow
in...do you ever have one of those memories where you think you remember
a taste or a feel of something...maybe an object...but the feeling is
so bizarre and imperceptible that you just can't quite get a hold of it?
It drives you crazy. That's my musical aesthetic...just this imperceptible
fleeting memory. The beauty of it now is that I can record it onto a disc
or play it live. It's entirely surreal. It's like there's a guard at the
gate of your memory and you're not supposed to remember certain things
because you can only obtain the full experience by completely going under
its power. You can be destroyed or scarred...you don't know...it's like
dying."
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Copyright
Sony Music Entertainment Inc
Credits
Jeff
Buckley: Voice, Guitars,
Harmonium, Organ, Dulcimer,
Additional Tabla on "Dream Brother"
Mick
Grondahl: Bass
Matt Johnson: Drums, Percussion, Vibes on "Dream Brother"
Michael Tighe: Guitar on "So Real"
Gary
Lucas: Magicalguitarness on "Mojo Pin" & "Grace"
Loris Holland: Organ on "Lover, You Should've Come Over"
Misha
Masud: Tabla on "Dream Brother"
Karl
Berger: String Arrangements
Produced,
Engineered & Mixed by Andy Wallace "The Fist"
Mastered by Howie Weinberg at Masterdisk
Executive
Producer: Steve Berkowitz
Management:
George Stein & Dave Lory
"So
Real" produced by Jeff Buckley, Engineered by Clif Norrell.
Mixed by Andy Wallace
"Corpus Christi Carol" & "Dream Brother" additional engineering
by Clif Norrell
Assitant engineers: Chris Laidlaw at Bearsville. Steve Sisco
at Quantum Sound, Bryant Jackson at Soundtrack Studios, Reggie
Griffith
THANKS
to Steve Berkowitz, David Kahne & Don Ienner for the opportunity.
Michelle
Anthony, Leah Reid, Howard Wuelfing, Julie Borchard, Josh
Rosenthal, Sean Sullivan and the College Department, Nicky
and Christopher and thanks to Missy Worth. Thank you to all
the PMM's on the last trip out, this is not our last trip-out!
Thank
you eveyrone at St. Mark's Sounds.
Thank
you to all at Bearsville, at Soundtracks and all the way at
Quantum Sound...
To
my stompbox bredren & sistren, Karl Berger and the Woodstock
Symphony of Five -- Here's to Shostakovich and King Buzzo.
Big
love to Tia & Kevin, The Clouse Family, The Grondahls, the
Bennetts, The Llewellyns, The Hagbergs, The Guiberts, The
Moorheads & The last of the Buckleys, to The Moores -- all
my love.
To
Micky and Matt for their massive soul and for appearing just
in time.
To
Gary for his special touch and his music.
And
to Andy for his focus and patience and his ability to listen,
may God slim those last few off of you forever.
Mick
wants to say farewell to Bogart, a good dog and a great friend.
I love you Jhelisa A. I love you R. Rallo and Holly, John
Humphrey, El Guapo, Jasen Hamel, Robin Horry, Timmet Marse,
John Lindsey & Dan Roth, Chico Tighe rules, Larry Miller and
Sara Seagull and your awesome honeyness, and Clif Norrell
the engineer angel.
Thank
you, Nina S. & thanks to all on the Sin-� tour -- Ah, Mon
Amours.
Matty's
thanks : Marty and Jim Bennett and to Fred and Kelly Johnson.
Additional
thanks to Jack Bookbinder, Becky Yeagle and the staff at De-El
Entertainment, Mark Bevan, Gene Bowen, Abbo, Linda, Jacqui,
Frank, Shelly and the staff at Big Cat Records, Don Muller,
Troy Hansbrough, Aaron Blitzstein, Montana Studios, Victor
Wlodinguer, Wallis Norworth, Emma Banks, Mike Webb and Reggie
Griffith.
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