Born and raised New Yorker Jeffrey Lewis leads a double-life, as both a comic book artist and an indie-rock musician. Beginning with homemade cassettes in the late 90s, and moving on to touring the world and releasing “proper” albums since 2001, Jeffrey’s now 15-year career has included sharing bills and tours with the likes of The Vaselines, The Fall, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Roky Erickson, The Mountain Goats, Daniel Johnston, Devo, Pulp and many other luminaries.
In between his contemplative folk narratives and bashed-out indie-punk songs Jeffrey is known for often including a couple of his illustrated songs in each concert (what he calls “low budget videos”) sometimes covering historical topics (like “The History of Communism”), biographies (like “The Life of Barack Obama”) or strange flights of fancy (like “The Creeping Brain”). Appearing in the past as Jeffrey Lewis & The Jitters, Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard and other touring ensembles, his newest band incarnation is Jeffrey Lewis & The Jrams (pronounced “drams”) featuring Caitlin Gray on bass and Heather Wagner on drums.
Rough Trade Records (label of The Smiths, The Strokes, etc.) has released six Jeffrey Lewis albums to date; Jeffrey has self-published ten issues of his comic book series Fuff, and Jeffrey’s writing, illustrations, comic books and music have been featured by The Guardian, The History Channel and The New York Times (among other places).
“Weird? Very… but also downright inspiring” (four of five stars) – Rolling Stone
“The Big Apple’s best-kept secret…. Genius-gone-ignored… mind-blowing.” – NME
“Bizarre but brilliant” – Uncut
“Dazzling” – Mojo
“Hands down my favorite contemporary songwriter” – Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie)
“[Jeffrey Lewis is] The best lyricist working in the US today.” – Jarvis Cocker (Pulp)
“Jeffrey is the only artist I’ve sent fan mail to.” – Jens Lekman
“Really great and impressive and inspiring and exciting… There’s not a lot of people that can tell a story and use language like that in music.” – Will Oldham
