Happy Birthday John Lurie!

Celebrating John Lurie's birthday with a Lounge Lizards TV appearance from '99 and some episodes of "Fishing With John."

R.I.P. Curtis Fowlkes, 1950-2023

Sadly, trombone great and Jazz Passengers co-founder Curtis Fowlkes has passed away at 73. He'll be greatly missed. 

LINKS

The Free Jazz Collective Curtis Fowlkes

William Shatner releases new concept album BILL

William Shatner's new BILL album was put out by Joe Jonas on his boutique label and features John Lurie, Robert Randolph. 

Here's the scoop...

Award-winning actor, director, producer, writer, and chart-topping recording artist William Shatner releases his new album, BILL, today via Joe Jonas’ new label Let’s Get It! Records/Republic Records.

He previewed the 14-track conceptual opus with a pair of singles earlier this month, namely “Clouds of Guilt” feat. Joe Jonas and “So Far From The Moon” feat. Brad Paisley. Right out of the gate, the tracks incited critical applause. Billboard praised how “Clouds of Guilt” ultimately “sees Shatner leaning into self-awareness.” Entertainment Tonight claimed, “William Shatner’s iconic recording is still going strong,” and CLASH Magazine described it as “a spoken word take on lockdown.” 

On the release of Bill, William Shatner said, “This album is an expression of my spirit and the talents of my partners. My fervent hope is that you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.” 

Among many highlights, the new single “Black Horse” details a powerful story of his immortal friendship with a prized black stallion in the nineties. It chronicles the weight of the animal’s transformation in confinement, redemption back in the wilderness, and finally crossing over to the other side, giving Shatner and the listener invaluable existential perspective.

Through spoken word and genre-bending music, the songs on BILL chronicle significant autobiographical moments in William Shatner’s life and the ideas, challenges, and questions he’s confronted along the way. The tracks were co-written and produced by Grammy-winner Dan Miller [They Might Be Giants], while the lyrics were a collaboration between Shatner and his friend and writer Robert Sharenow. In addition to Joe Jonas and Brad Paisley, BILL features guitarist Joe Walsh [James Gang, Eagles], pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph, saxophonist John Lurie [Lounge Lizards], Joan as Police Woman, and more. See the full tracklist after the song clips and interview below.

 On creating the album remotely during the pandemic, William Shatner says, “Through a series of phone calls, texts, and emails, music and words flew back and forth across the country. The [Covid-19] crisis created an urgency and quickly unleashed a candor between us that allowed us to peel back layers that sat on the surface of a subject to reveal the depth of truth buried underneath. What better time to contemplate life’s biggest questions than during a global pandemic? Some songs touched on painful or beautiful moments, while others turned into elliptical philosophical explorations about the very nature of existence and death.”

He continues, “BILL blends long-form autobiographical poetry and prose, music, spoken word performance art, and philosophical exploration. Toggling between passion and despair, reflection and yearning, this collection explores my life journey during a pivotal and chilling moment of history.”

On “Clouds of Guilt,” William Shatner explores the strangely powerful role guilt has played throughout his life, with equal measures of wit, irony, and self-awareness.

Joe Jonas states, “I’ve been a fan of Bill’s for as long as I can remember. He’s iconic. To not only be featured on one of his songs that mean so much to him but to also get to be a label partner on the entire project, it’s an honor.”

While on “So Far From the Moon,” William Shatner revisits a pivotal moment in his life after the cancelation of Star Trek and his divorce, when he was doing dinner theater and living out of the back of his pickup truck. One the night of July 20th, 1969, as he lay out in a sleeping bag in the back of the truck, staring at the sky, he listened to the live broadcast of the moon landing. Despite being at a low point in his career, Shatner found inspiration and a connection to the astronauts in the sky above, who he had met years before while they were training for their mission.

Brad Paisley comments, “It’s so interesting to hear what effect the moon landing had on Bill, because every generation of astronauts since those days credit him with inspiration. I’m so proud to be on this track.”

The other songs on BILL dive into various stories and topics, including the nature of relationships, the struggle with fame and identity, the meaning of life, and more. Like epic song cycles of the past from Homer to Kendrick Lamar, William Shatner’s journey is both extremely personal and universal, extraordinary and relatable. His unique insights and delivery, beloved by millions worldwide, give voice to the joys and struggles we all face.

Get a copy of William Shatner's BILL album right here. Listen to "Clouds of Guilt" and "So Far From The Moon" followed by a recent William Shatner zoom interview with Tom Power for CBC's q below. 

 

William Shatner – BILL 

“I Ride”

“Made In The Shade” feat. Joe Walsh

“Clouds of Guilt” feat. Joe Jonas

“So Far From the Moon” feat. Brad Paisley

“Love, Death, and Horses”

“Just Forgive” feat. Robert Randolph

“Loneliness” feat. John Lurie

“Thunder and Fire” feat. Joan as Police Woman

“The Bridge” feat. Daniel Miller

“Black Horse”

“Masks” feat. Dave Koz

“Monday Night in London”

“Toughie” feat. Robert Randolph

“What Do We Know”

Much-anticipated John Lurie memoir The History of Bones on the way

"The History of Bones," the 448-page memoir of NYC musician, actor & artist John Lurie is published by Random House Aug 17.  

Here's the scoop from Random House...

In the tornado that was downtown New York in the 1980s, John Lurie stood at the vortex. After founding the band The Lounge Lizards with his brother, Evan, in 1979, Lurie quickly became a centrifugal figure in the world of outsider artists, cutting-edge filmmakers, and cultural rebels. Now Lurie vibrantly brings to life the whole wash of 1980s New York as he developed his artistic soul over the course of the decade and came into orbit with all the prominent artists of that time and place, including Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Boris Policeband, and, especially, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the enigmatic prodigy who spent a year sleeping on the floor of Lurie’s East Third Street apartment. 

It may feel like Disney World now, but in The History of Bones, the East Village, through Lurie’s clear-eyed reminiscence, comes to teeming, gritty life. The book is full of grime and frank humor—Lurie holds nothing back in this journey to one of the most significant moments in our cultural history, one whose reverberations are still strongly felt today. 

History may repeat itself, but the way downtown New York happened in the 1980s will never happen again. Luckily, through this beautiful memoir, we all have a front-row seat.

You can pre-order a copy of The History of Bones right here. Watch a Lounge Lizards performance of "The Incredible History of Bones" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien back in 1998 immediately following the hype. 

PRAISE

“There is a purity to John Lurie’s writing that feels almost spiritual—the stories unspool from him, seemingly effortlessly, with the fluidity of a great jazz player. Lurie has lived many lives—‘More than once I have witnessed the inexplicable,’ he tells us—and this book moves us through them all.”— Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City 

“No other human’s strange struggles and triumphs are like this. I was transfixed reading Lurie’s yearning to make sense of it all, slamming his fist through the precious veneer of the early eighties New York art/music scene. Yeeeooooow.”— Flea, author of Acid for the Children

“Look behind John Lurie’s adventure so far and see how it flows from epiphanies: their arrival, their loss, the very possibility of them. Epiphanies consign an artist to life as a hunter-mystic, in a world where the impeccable and the tawdry are equally sacred—a hell of a place, and it’s from here that Lurie’s candor throws us epiphanies to take away. This is not a book headed for bookshelves; it’s coming to crash on your couch.”— DBC Pierre, author of Vernon God Little, winner of the Booker Prize 

“By turns comic, pissed off, and desolate, his raffish picaresque captures everything. . . . The result is an energetic, raucous reprise of an adventurously offbeat life.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Lurie proves to . . . be a wry, sly, furious, and vivid storyteller. His raucously frank, sardonic, sex-saturated, compulsively detailed, and hard-charging memoir is incandescent with illuminations of his musical mission, including his film scores, his friendship with Jean-Michel Basquiat, and his conflicts with Jim Jarmusch. . . . Lurie leaves readers wanting more.”— Booklist