Watch the Jeffrey Lee Pierce documentary Jeffrey's Blues

Check out the short Jeffrey Lee Pierce documentary "Jeffrey's Blues" directed by Bram van Splunteren for VPRO's Onrust 

Remembering Jeffrey Lee Pierce on his birthday

Raising a glass to Jeffrey Lee Pierce of The Gun Club with a few interviews, performances and a couple of documentaries.

Nick Cave & Debbie Harry share duet from Jeffrey Lee Pierce tribute project

"On The Other Side" by Nick Cave & Debbie Harry is off the new Jeffrey Lee Pierce salute "The Task Has Overwhelmed Us"

Here's the scoop from Glitterhouse Records...

Nearly ten years in the making, The Task Has Overwhelmed Us is the long-awaited fourth volume in The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project series slated for release on September 29th via Glitterhouse Records. 

Conceived in 2006 by the late Gun Club titan’s guitarist Cypress Grove, the Project has always aimed to highlight Pierce as one of America’s most fascinatingly influential singer-songwriters of the last century while propelling his outpourings into modern times by placing it in the hands of former collaborators, friends and fans. 

Following 2009’s We Are Only Riders, 2012’s The Journey Is Long and 2014’s Axels and Sockets, The Task Has Overwhelmed Us presents stellar interpretations of tracks from Pierce’s Gun Club and solo canons along with fresh works constructed from rehearsal skeletons, previously unheard lyrics, songs only performed live. Taking song ideas without lyrics and words looking for musical settings gave rise to what Cypress Grove calls “Frankenstein songs”. 

The stellar roll-call of contributors features the Project’s original recurring core including Nick Cave, Debbie Harry, Mark Lanegan, Lydia Lunch, Youth, Jim Jones, Warren Ellis, Mark Stewart, Hugo Race, Cypress himself plus Mick Harvey and J.P. Shilo as The Amber Lights, even Jeffrey himself from original tapes. These are joined by new bloods including Dave Gahan, Suzie Stapleton, Duke Garwood, Pam Hogg, The Coathangers, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Peter Hayes and Leah Shapiro, Humanist, The Walkabouts’ Chris Eckman, Jozef van Wissem, Jim Jarmusch, Chantal Acda and Welsh space-rockers Sendelica with US vocalists Wonder and Dynamax Roberts. Like Pierce’s beloved jazz, the cast often spill into each other’s tracks.

The mood throughout the eighteen tracks is of rare gems crafted with love, respect and the energy of committed fans, even obsessives channeling whatever facet or fragment of Pierce’s unruly muse fires their creative juices. It’s pretty much carved in legend how Jeffrey Lee Pierce roared out of post-punk LA brandishing an incendiary genius that flamed in the spotlight for just fifteen years before his untimely death in 1996. Despite the impact of the Gun Club and resonance of Pierce’s back catalogue, his legacy seemed in danger of shrinking to eternal cult status earlier this century, fading against modern blandness yet ever-radiating for a gaggle of core diehards he’d touched with his supernatural muse (quite possibly in a blizzard of chaos). 

Then along came London-based guitarist Cypress Grove, who’d played with Jeffrey in his final years gigging and on 1992’s Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee & Cypress Grove With Willie Love. Sorting out his loft one day in 2006, Cypress found an anonymous cassette containing bedroom rehearsals for Ramblin’… - “very vague but good enough to work from,” he says. “So I had the idea of asking people who worked with Jeffrey, were friends with him or who simply admired his work to help me complete the songs.” 

“The Cypress Tape” would soon be joined by other unrealized song sources from diverse tapes supplied by key characters in Jeffrey’s life coming on board, including Gene Temesy, who started the Gun Club fan club in 1984 and brought home Pierce’s ‘98 autobiography Go Tell The Mountain, writer-DJ-musician Phast Phreddie Patterson and Jeffrey’s sister Jacqui, who supplied unfinished songs and previously unseen writings she’d discovered after her brother’s death. “The source material for some of the songs was so vague that it could be interpreted in many ways,” says Cypress. “There was no definitive or ‘original’ version. It was like trying to restore a painting where much of the material was missing.” (Lunch’s turning some lyrics from Phreddie’s collection into the scabrous nightmare roll of ‘Time Drains Away’, bolstered by Jarmusch on guitar and van Wissem’s medieval lute). 

From Gahan’s opening haunted piano ballad take on ‘Mother of Earth’ through, for example, Lanegan singing ‘Go Tell The Mountain’ backed by Ellis and Cave (who back Jeffrey himself on ‘Yellow Eyes’), Cave duetting beautifully with Debbie Harry again on ‘On the Other Side’ to Sendelica and Secret Knowledge’s Wonder hotwiring ‘Bad America’ into caterwauling mayhem mixed by veteran electro-Def Jam producer Jay Burnett, NY rapper Dynamax acknowledging Jeffrey’s hiphop obsession over the juddering beats. 

Pre-order a copy right here. Check the tracklisting followed by "On The Other SIde" below. 

Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project – The Task Has Overwhelmed Us

1. Mother Of Earth - Dave Gahan

2. La La Los Angeles - The Coathangers

3. Yellow Eyes - Jeffrey Lee Pierce (feat. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis)

4. Debbie By The Christmas Tree - The Amber Lights

5. Go Tell The Mountain - Mark Lanegan (feat. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis)

6. Going Down The Red River - Jim Jones and the Righteous Mind

7. The Stranger In Our Town - Peter Hayes, Leah Shapiro, & Humanist

8. Secret Fires - Suzie Stapleton (feat. Duke Garwood)

9. Tiger Girl - Hugo Race

10. On The Other Side - Nick Cave & Debbie Harry

11. Idiot Waltz - Cypress Grove

12. Tiger Girl - The Amber Lights

13. From Death To Texas - Alejandro Escovedo

14. Vodou - Mark Stewart<

15. Time Drains Away - Lydia Lunch, Jozef van Wissem, Jim Jarmusch

16. Lucky Jim - Chris Eckman & Chantal Acda

17. I Was Ashamed - Pam Hogg (feat. Warren Ellis & Youth)

18. Bad America - Sendelica (feat. Wonder & Dynamax Roberts)

 

Walter Daniels salutes Jeffrey Lee Pierce & Yank Rachell on new 7" single

Preview Walter Daniels' covers of "From Death To Texas" and "Seems Like A Dream" here. Check Yank's original below.

Expanded reissue of The Gun Club's Fire Of Love debut out July 23!

Blixa Sounds' reissue of The Gun Club's 1981 classic includes 10 demos/alternate tracks plus an unreleased live recording from '81. 

Here's the scoop...

With a howling and unholy mix of punk rock and the blues, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and The Gun Club exploded upon the L.A. club scene in the early ’80s. They recorded their classic debut, 1981’s Fire Of Love, for the local Ruby Records/Slash label. And now that legendary album has been unearthed and brought back to life by Blixa Sounds as a deluxe two-CD and two-LP set.

Both the double-CD and double-vinyl editions contain a digitally remastered version of the original 11-track album, produced by fellow L.A. scenesters Chris D. of The Flesh Eaters and Tito Larriva of The Plugz.  The CD version will include 10 previously unreleased four-track demos and alternate versions, while the LP will include a download card for the digital version of the 10 bonus tracks.

Both the CD and the vinyl versions will include a second disc, the previously unreleased Live At Club 88 – March 6, 1981, a concert recording capturing the band’s incendiary live set at the legendary West L.A. dive bar.

The double-vinyl version will be released as a two-LP set packaged in a gatefold cover with extensive liner notes by drummer Terry Graham and remembrances from producer Tito Larriva and co-producer Chris D., as well as rare photos and ephemera. The CD version will include a booklet with liner notes, photos and ephemera.

Born on June 27, 1958, Jeffrey Lee Pierce grew up in the East Los Angeles suburb of El Monte, California, before moving with his family to the San Fernando Valley, where he attended Granada Hills High School. Back then his main passion was acting. Eventually, his interest veered to music, but he held on to his love of drama and would later inject it into his music and performances. He’d been toying with guitar since the age of 10, and by his late teens and early 20s, he’d formed a few bands and wrote about reggae for Slash magazine under the pen name Ranking Señor Lea.

It was in Creeping Ritual, a band Pierce formed with guitarist Brian Tristan, in which Pierce found his footing. He’d discovered the Delta blues from the record collections of Canned Heat singer Bob Hite and L.A. scenester Phast Phreddie Patterson, and decided to make them his own. Although his first bassist and drummer bailed, the band — rechristened The Gun Club by Circle Jerks’ singer and Pierce’s one-time roommate Keith Morris — became a reality with the addition of the fully formed rhythm section of bassist Rob Ritter and drummer Terry Graham. They had already played together in punk band The Bags and could hold down a solid foundation for Pierce and Tristan — now known as Kid Congo Powers — to improvise over. “He was injecting blues into the heart of punk rock, struggling to give life into something new and brilliant even if it was old and obvious at the same time,” Graham says of Pierce, in the book More Fun in the New World: The Unmaking and Legacy of L.A. Punk.

Fire of Love captures the Gun Club at their rawest on such originals as the unforgettable album-opener “Sex Beat,” the addictive “She’s Live Heroin to Me” and the psychobilly stomp of “For The Love Of Ivy,” an ode to Cramps guitarist and future Kid Congo bandmate Poison Ivy Rorschach. The band also delved into their influences on the set, digging up Tommy Johnson’s “Cool Drink Of Water” and Robert Johnson’s “Preaching The Blues” and jolting them back with jumper cables via Pierce’s new arrangements and “Elvis from Hell” howl.

As Graham writes in the liner notes, “I couldn’t be more thrilled to know Fire Of Love has given so many a nice kick in the ass…I not only loved fighting off the Devil while a member of Gun Club, but I’m proud of what we did on Fire Of Love with Chris and Tito as our guides. And if this music continues to irk the purists, I couldn’t be more proud. Jeff, you were one hell of a great musician, but you knew that.”

The Gun Club went on to record several other albums — including 1982’s Miami (reissued by Blixa Sounds in 2020) — before Pierce’s death in 1996, yet Fire Of Love is their finest hour.

Pre-order the The Gun Club's Fire Of Love reissue via Amazon on vinyl right here or CD right here. Watch the preview trailer followed by the track listing below. 

The Gun Club - Fire Of Love CD tracks

DISC 1

1. SEX BEAT

2. PREACHING THE BLUES

3. PROMISE ME

4. SHE’S LIKE HEROIN TO ME

5. FOR THE LOVE OF IVY

6. FREE SPIRIT

7. GHOST ON THE HIGHWAY

8. JACK ON FIRE

9. BLACK TRAIN

10. COOL DRINK OF WATER

11. GOODBYE JOHNNY

BONUS TRACKS

12. BAD INDIAN (ALTERNATIVE VERSION)

13. COOL DRINK OF WATER (ALTERNATIVE VERSION)

14. FIRE OF LOVE (ALTERNATIVE VERSION)

15. FOR THE LOVE OF IVY (ALTERNATIVE VERSION)

16. GHOST ON THE HIGHWAY (ALTERNATIVE VERSION)

17. FIRE OF LOVE (4 TRACK DEMO)

18. DEVIL IN THE WOODS (4 TRACK DEMO)

19. GOODBYE JOHNNY (4 TRACK DEMO)

20. PREACHING THE BLUES (4 TRACK DEMO)

21. WATERMELON MAN (4 TRACK DEMO)

DISC 2 / LIVE AT CLUB 88 – MARCH 6, 1981

1. DEVIL IN THE WOODS

2. BAD INDIAN

3. SHE’S LIKE HEROIN TO ME

4. PREACHING THE BLUES

5. KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

6. JACK ON FIRE

7. RAILROAD BILL

8. FIRE OF LOVE

9. SEX BEAT

10. GHOST ON THE HIGHWAY

 

The Gun Club - Fire Of Love LP tracks

LP ONE

SIDE A

1. SEX BEAT

2. PREACHING THE BLUES

3. PROMISE ME

4. SHE’S LIKE HEROIN TO ME

5. FOR THE LOVE OF IVY

6. FREE SPIRIT

SIDE B

1. GHOST ON THE HIGHWAY

2. JACK ON FIRE

3. BLACK TRAIN

4. COOL DRINK OF WATER

5. GOODBYE JOHNNY

LP TWO / LIVE AT CLUB 88 – MARCH 6, 1981

SIDE C

1. DEVIL IN THE WOODS

2. BAD INDIAN

3. SHE’S LIKE HEROIN TO ME

4. PREACHING THE BLUES

5. KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

SIDE D

1. JACK ON FIRE

2. RAILROAD BILL

3. FIRE OF LOVE

4. SEX BEAT

5. GHOST ON THE HIGHWAY

Nick Cave & Iggy Pop vs. The Gun Club

Nick and Iggy teamed up with Jim Sclavunos and Thurston Moore to salute Jeffrey Lee Pierce with a cover of The Gun Club's "Nobody's City"

Happy Birthday Jeffrey Lee Pierce

Remembering the late great Jeffrey Lee Pierce on his day with a memorable performance at The Haçienda in 1983. 

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