Jeffrey Lee Pierce Unearthed!

From the time Jeffrey Lee Pierce first hit the L.A. club scene – playing to tiny but appreciative audiences including Lux Interior, Poison Ivy, John Doe, Exene Cervenka and Dave Alvin –  his value as a uniquely gifted artist has always been better understood by his peers than the public at large.
So while none of the amazing records he made with the Gun Club ever sold well enough to pay his peroxide bills or keep a band together, Pierce did manage to inspire the White Stripes, Nick Cave, Jon Spencer, the Pixies, Beasts Of Bourbon, Alejandro Escovedo, 16 Horsepower, the Gories, Gallon Drunk and loads of booze-friendly European scuzz rockers to delve deeper into the darkside of Americana.

So when Pierce's British guitar-playing sidekick Cypress Grove came across a dusty old demo cassette labeled "JLP Songs" while rummaging through his attic, he remembered this was the rehearsal tape they'd made together while assembling material for the 1992 album Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee & Cypress Grove with Willie Love. The initial plan back then was to write both country and blues tunes but as work progressed, Pierce decided to focus on the blues leaving the remaining song fragments unheard and unknown.
Even though the songs were unfinished and the audio quality of the bedroom boombox recording was well below bootleg standards, Cypress Grove knew Pierce well enough to recognize Jeffrey Lee gold when he heard it. So he set about contacting some of Pierce's musician friends and fans with the idea of bringing the embryonic compositions into full bloom. Since Deborah Harry and Chris Stein were pals of Pierce way back to the 70s when he was the president of the Blondie fan club (true!), they signed on without hesitation, as did Nick Cave, Kid Congo Powers, Lydia Lunch, Mark Lanegan and others. Once word of Cypress Grove's scheme spread, other demo tapes magically appeared, including one containing the two previously unknown pre-Gun Club numbers My Cadillac and St. Mark's Place, turning the notion of salvaging a couple promising song ideas into the full-on Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project pieced together from parts recorded in various time-zones and different decades. 

You'd never know it from the seamless way in which the finished songs flow together on the resulting release We Are Only Riders (Glitterhouse). That's due in part from the co-operative interaction of the players like Barry Adamson playing bass on Cave's powerful rendition of Ramblin' Mind then doing the same for Lanegan's haunting howl through Constant Waiting. In turn, Cave adds perfectly poignant piano fills to Harry's reading of Lucky Jim, the only tune here that Pierce issued before passing away in 1996 at the age of 37 following a brain hemorrhage.
 At first glance at the tracklisting of We Are Only Riders, I thought it was crazy to have different artists interpret some of the same songs on a 15-track album. But now that I've had time to listen through the thing a few times, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea at all. The Raveonettes' fuzz-soaked version of Free To Walk is enough of a departure from the duet versions sung by Mark Lanegan & Isobel Campbell and Deborah Harry & Nick Cave to be a completely different tune. Likewise, hearing The Sadies rip through Constant Waiting and Johnny Dowd overhaul it Primus-style after Lanegan's chilling take offers radically different perspectives which, taken together, create an intriguing Roshomon effect. Knowing how much Pierce enjoyed reggae music – even reviewing reggae records for the Slash zine under the alias "Ranking Jeffrey Lee" – he likely would've loved the versioning practice applied to his music. Personally, I would've much rather heard Tex Perkins do Snow Country and Alejando Escovedo could've brought a lot to St. Mark's Place but maybe there'll be a volume 2.

Tracklisting
1. Ramblin’ Mind –  Nick Cave
2. Constant Waiting – Mark Lanegan
3. Free To Walk – Raveonettes
4. Lucky Jim – Deborah Harry
5. My Cadillac – Lydia Lunch
6. Constant Waiting – The Sadies
7. Free To Walk – Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
8. St Marks Place – Lydia Lunch
9. Bells On The River – Crippled Black Phoenix
10. Ramblin’ Mind – Cypress Grove
11. Constant Waiting – Johnny Dowd
12. Free To Walk – Nick Cave & Deborah Harry
13. Snow Country – Mick Harvey
14. Just Like A Mexican Love – David Eugene Edwards & Crippled Black Phoenix
15. Walkin’ Down The Street (Doin’ My Thing) – Lydia Lunch & Dave Alvin with The JLP Sessions Project  

For those seeking further interpretations of the Jeffrey Lee Pierce song catalogue, check out the 2005 double LP tribute album, A Salvo of 24 Gunshots (Unrecording) which includes some righteously raucous covers courtesy of the Dirtbombs, Demolition Doll Rods, Andy G and the Roller Kings, DM Bob and the Deficits, the Cool Jerks, the Fatals, Come Ons, Speedball Baby and many more knuckleheads.

LINKS
Label http://www.glitterhouse.com
myspace http://www.myspace.com/jlpsessionsproject