How much is Jeffrey Lewis worth?
| Net Worth: | $16 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Singer |
| Date of Birth: | November 20, 1975 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 1.85 m |
About Jeffrey Lewis
Jeffrey Lewis is an American singer-songwriter and comic book artist who was born on November 20, 1975. In New York, he is well-known for both his anti-folk music and comic book artwork. Lewis plays humorous, descriptive narrative songs that are frequently recorded in low-fidelity, clearly influenced by artists like Jonathan Richman. Lewis has been referred to as “the best lyricist working in the US today.” by former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker.
Born: November 20, 1975, New York City, New York
Key Albums:The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane (2001), It’s the Ones Who’ve Cracked That the Light Shines Through (2003), 12 Crass Songs (2007)
Lewis combines autobiographical lyrics with absurd fantasies, drawing inspiration from comic writers like Harvey Pekar and Joe Sacco. Lewis told the BBC that “Some of the songs are very autobiographical, and some of them are about zombies and time machines,” Lewis told the BBC. “I guess with all my stuff there tends to be a pretty clear split. The stuff that’s true is, like, really true and the stuff that’s not true is really not true.”
Young Years
Lewis, who was raised on his parents’ record collection, which included albums by East Village proto-punk bands like The Fugs and David Peel, as well as a steady supply of comic books he purchased in St. Mark’s Place, grew up in a tenement in the East Village where he was born Jeffrey Lightning Lewis to beatnik parents.
“I’ve been drawing since before I could read,” Lewis said, in an interview with Comic World. “There wasn’t a TV in my parents’ apartment till I was about 12, so I just entertained myself reading and drawing comics. I only started writing songs to play at the open mic at Sidewalk after I got out of college.”
Lewis studied at SUNY Purchase and earned a degree in literature in 1997 along with a final thesis on the graphic novel Watchmen. Lewis started performing songs at the Sidewalk Café’s iconic open-mic event “Anti-hootenanny” in 1998, which gave rise to the anti-folk movement.
Beginnings
The Moldy Peaches, Diane Cluck, and Regina Spektor were just a few of the acts that Lewis shared the stage with. Lewis remarked at the time, “In a way that was very disconnected from anything else in the city,” Lewis offered, at the time. “It’s all been very insulated in the sense that none of us are really involved or aware of the greater New York City band scene, and they’re not aware of us. The Strokes were playing every week at the Mercury Lounge, five blocks away, and no one had ever heard of them until the British press hype began.”
The Strokes’ phenomenal success in 2001 gave the Rough Trade label new life, and the company expanded to include additional New York acts. After signing the Moldy Peaches, band members Adam Green and Kimya Dawson made a cassette of significant Lewis songs and brought it to the London offices of Rough Trade, where Lewis eventually signed with the label.
This “movement” was established for the world in 2002 when Lewis appeared on the Moldy Peaches-assembled, Antifolk Vol. 1 compilation, which was issued by Rough Trade. “I think it’s a cool title,” Lewis said. “The fact that no one knows what it means, including me, makes it kind of mysterious and more interesting than saying that you’re a singer/songwriter or that you play indie rock.”
Arrival
The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane, which was released by Rough Trade in 2001, was Lewis’s first “proper” release. His complex, funny tunes, such as the Leonard Cohen-riffing “The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song” and the album’s title track, received widespread critical acclaim right away, particularly in the UK. His subsequent cover of “The Modern Age” by The Strokes there quickly gained a cult following.
“You get addicted to the compliments,” Lewis has said, of his steady critical acclaim. “You feel like, woah, if the day goes by and somebody doesn’t tell you that you did something brillant, then there was something wrong with that day.”
It’s the Ones Who’ve Cracked That the Light Shines Through, Lewis’ subsequent lo-fi set from 2003, was released as a follow-up. From “Don’t Let the Record Label Take You Out to Lunch” to “No LSD Tonight,” which described audiences offering him acid after his debut album, many of its tracks discussed Lewis’s experiences after the publication of his first LP.
When Lewis was on the road, he would perform “low-budget music-videos,” where he would sing along with enormous comic books that detailed the histories of communism, punk rock in New York, The Fall, and Rough Trade.
Lewis’ album City & Eastern Songs, which Kramer produced, was released in 2005. The set was highlighted by “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror,” which he co-starred in with his brother Jack Lewis and in which an imagined encounter with Bonnie “Prince” Billy turns into a nightmare caused by Lewis’s artistic concerns.
Developments
Lewis’ 2007 album 12 Crass Songs, which featured tributes to legendary anarcho-punk bands, surprised everyone by becoming his most popular and profitable work. According to Lewis, who spoke to LA Weekly, “Crass is one of the few bands that stood out,” Lewis told LA Weekly “as the sterling example of how moral it’s possible to be as a band, regardless of what kind of music you play.”
Lewis began writing pieces on songwriting for the ‘Measure of Measure’ series of The New York Times’ blog in 2008. In the election year, his homemade film “A Quick Biography of Barack Obama,” in which he sings while narrating a comic-art biography of Obama’s life, gained a devoted online following.
Lewis published “Em Are I” in 2009; it is without a doubt his highest-fidelity, most musical work. Lyrically, it frequently refers to Lewis’s public split from his fiancée and keyboard player Helen Schreiner.
“If there’s some place where it feels a little uncomfortable to go in a song, that’s where I have to go, where the powerful emotions are,” he told The Guardian. “Maybe it’s not even healthy, but it’s a way of stepping outside something. Turning it into something creative means that, at the very worst, you got a song out of it.”
