Movies of War

1 of 5 2 of 5 Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday. Sign up for our free newsletter.Jeffrey Lewis' newest LP, The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis, features cover art that riffs on Bob Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, referencing that classic album in a brilliant way. Lewis and an old friend, Chrissy, are shown walking down the same street in New York where the Dylan and artist Suze Rotolo were photographed for the 1963 release. Except unlike Dylan and Rotolo, the two are naked (no reference to the Lennon/Ono Two Virgins cover intended, we’re told). Of course, there are dozens of similarly inspired moments in Lewis’ catalogue. My favourite in recent years is his 2018 album of covers of Tuli Kupferberg songs, Works By Tuli Kupferberg, recorded with a band that included Peter Stampfel, who was on the first Fugs record with Kupferberg. Lewis was friends with Kupferberg in the last few years of his life, and has recorded frequently with Stampfel. It’s nice to see Kupferberg classics like “I Want to Hold Your Foot” and “Hypothalamus” given new and respectfully irreverent life. No living artist could have done it better.There’s also no denying the brilliance of 12 Crass Songs—Lewis’ straight-up folk covers of Crass tracks, for instance. Or the wit of originals like his ode to obscure genius, “Exactly What Nobody Wanted”, from his 2019 full-lengthBad Wiring, recorded with his band the Voltage, who will be accompanying Lewis on his return to Vancouver this Friday (February 27). All of these can be found, among many other gems, on his Bandcamp. The new album cover is up there in his most inspired moments. He explained the history to the Straight thus: “I asked a number of friends to see who might be crazy enough to try to take this photo with me, and Chrissy was the only person who enthusiastically demanded to be part of the project! We were actually naked—the back cover of the CD and LP shows another angle. It was supposed to be on a snowy day, like the original 1963 photo, but there was basically no snow all winter so we just did what we could.”The location of the original Dylan cover shoot is not far from where Lewis lives now, he explains.“We took the photo early in the morning, shortly after sunrise, hoping there’d be nobody around, but there were still some people walking around. But it’s New York City, so nobody seemed to care.”Lewis is famously a vinyl lover--check the video for “LPs”, a Nardwuar-esque ode to record collecting, which refers back to that brief window when the hobby was actually affordable.So is he like me, buying every cheap early copy of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan he finds, hoping that one of the missing songs—"Rocks and Gravel" (aka “Solid Road”), "Let Me Die in My Footsteps", "Rambling Gambling Willie" (“Gamblin’ Willie’s Dead Man’s Hand”), or "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues"—will be on it? Short answer: nope! Video of Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage - LPs “I’m aware that there is such a thing as an early version with different tracklist. I only know those songs from when I had the first Bootleg Series stuff on cassette in the '90s, but I love all those era recordings very much—the ones on the album and the outtakes. Sometimes in a used record store I’ll take a close look at any copies I find of the first Jefferson Airplane album to see if it’s the rare one with a slightly different song list. I did once see that alternate Freewheelin’ Dylan LP in a record shop, on the wall, for a high price. Actually it was at a shop very close to the original photo location.” We don’t know what price Lewis saw, but a copy with the withdrawn songs listed on Popsike sold for US$11,500 back in 2016—not an inconsiderable amount! (Note to Canuck vinyl hunters: early Canadian copies of the album list different songs on the cover art, but the songs are absent from the LP; the truly rare version of the album actually has those four songs on it).It all makes one think of another "historical rock reenactment"—or near-re-enactment—that Lewis was involved in. That was sung about in “The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song”, from 2001’s The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane.So is that a thing he does, visit the locations of famous cultural hubs? And think, "Here I am in front of the former location of the Peace Eye Bookstore? Here I am standing on the bridge that Albert Ayler probably jumped off?"“I guess it’s just walking around here in NYC, you inevitably cross over with a million other previous people and events and references," he explains. "So it’s just part of the fabric of life—it spawns thoughts and ideas without having to look too hard for them.” Inspired by Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel #2", Lewis' “The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song” is pretty self-explanatory. He chats up a girl outside the Chelsea hotel and muses about Leonard Cohen being given head on an unmade bed therein. (There is no reference in the song to Janis Joplin, but we presume everyone knows she was the head giver?). Alas, Lewis is too shy to actually suggest he and the girl undertake a full re-enactment of the lyrics; the best he can manage is to go home and write a song about the encounter, kicking himself for his own failure of courage.The lyrics exemplify Lewis’ humour: “If I was Leonard Cohen or some other songwriting master/I'd know to first get the oral sex and then write the song after”.The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis single “Sometimes Life Hits You”—which actually has a chorus of “Ow! Fuck, that hurts”—has a similarly memorable, charmingly self-deprecating humour. But like many of Lewis’ songs, also has a deeper sensitivity beneath the surface; it’s not just a novelty tune, but is grounded in human experience and hell, even wisdom.So did the idea for the chorus come from a particular experience or moment in his own life? “I don’t recall ever thinking of the chorus words separately from the song," he shares. "I have a couple early demo home recordings of the song when I was first making it up, and that’s part of it from the first versions. I don’t think I had any parts of it written prior to that.”I had actually mistakenly thought that one of the comic-book panels in the video, offering variant illustrations of the lyrical theme, was from one of Lewis’ own comic books (because that’s also something he does, writing and drawing his own comics). He’ll usually even include one or two “live movies” during sets, flipping through oversized panels of his drawings that illustrate a given song.But all the panels in the “Sometimes Life Hits You” video were all taken from other comic books.“There are all sort of famous comic book things,” Lewis says. “People who are fans of comic books would recognize them, so it’s a bit of a fun thing for comic book nerds.” Video of Jeffrey Lewis - "Just Fun" | Music Video Other songs on the album hint at how hard Lewis works at his craft. There’s “Just Fun”, which also comes with an entertaining rock video, also playing on the idea of the singer running about naked in the streets of New York. The song begins with musings on family, so I check in there. Are Lewis’ folks still around? Do they appreciate what he does?“My parents are old and slow but at this current moment they are still okay," he says. "I live only a block away from them so I see them pretty frequently. I don’t know if they quite get my music, and it’s been a long time since they came to a gig, but they appreciate that I’m able to do what I do.”Later in the song, Lewis’ lyrics have him music about the costs of a “life of creativity”, griping about what it is like to “Live a life where friends and relaxation leave you irking/‘Cause it’s wasting time with nonsense when you know you should be working.” "Relaxation”, meanwhile, likens taking time away from his creative pursuits to the experience of annihilation, disintegration and oblivion. You actually worry a bit for Lewis at such moments (ditto with the rather melancholic “Tylenol PM”, maybe the saddest song ever written about legal pharmaceuticals). Video of Jeffrey Lewis - "Relaxation" | Music Video But things aren’t as bad as he sometimes makes it out to be, he assures Straight readers.“I did actually take some vacation time this year, because I’m in a relationship—married now actually—so that sort of lends itself to a vacation together, I guess. But mostly I feel like I have so much to do, to make comic books and make songs, there’s never any legitimate time to not be keeping up on that stuff. Not to mention all the tour organizing work. There’s really never any time when I shouldn’t be working on stuff!” Lewis is not quite sure what he and his band the Voltage will do at the Fox, but he tries to make every show special.“I write different set lists each day, trying to come up with different ideas, depending on the inspirations of the day,” he notes.He will have vinyl of The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis, as well as comic books, on sale in Vancouver, though his new comic, Statics #3, won’t be ready in time for the tour. (It’s due out in April).“I’m impatient for it to be out,” he confesses. “I’ve been working on it for almost two years, it always takes me a long time.” Jeffrey Lewis and the Voltage play the Fox Cabaret on Friday (February 27). For tickets, go here. Join the discussion Facebook comments not loading? Please check your browser settings to ensure that it is not blocking Facebook from running on straight.com