Jeff Buckley: On the move and loving it

Calgary Herald Sun: December 4, 1994

By Tom Harrison

  For four years, he was able to settle down in New York and hone his talent in bars and coffeehouses such as the Sin-E.

  Then he released an EP entitled Live at the Sin-E and then he put a band together and released an LP called Grace and soon he was a nomad again.

  "This is like my childhood on PCP," Jeff Buckley says softly. He's making a mild joke but, like everything this quiet-spoken singer-songwriter says, there is a serious truth at the root.

  In this case, Buckley is referring to his youngest days, when he was growing up with his mother and moving from pplace to place in southern California. Now, at 27, he is the leader of a band and it is he who is doing the moving.

  "It's hard, but it's something I'm used to," he says. The same can't be said for the friends and musicians who are in his band. For Mick Grondahl, Matt Johnson, and Michael Tighe, the recording and being away from NYC are relatively new experiences.

  But Buckley and his pals all started from the same creative point with Grace, a flowing, personalized hybrid of rock, folk, and pop, and are learning to grow together and find ways to develop the songs from Grace a little more with each show.

  "Unconditionally yes. In subjective ways and objective ways. In every way," Buckley says. "We've come through a lot of different experiences already and it's different every night. Moody. I sometimes feel guilty that I brought them into this.

  "But whatever we do, we never want to lose the song; we never want to be contrived."

  Jeff Buckley never really knew his father, the late singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, but he inherited his swooping, elasticized, soulful voice and, it would seem, a similar deterination to break the bonds of conventional pop music genres.

  In the latter he has also had reinforcement from various collaborators, such as ex-Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas, and outside influences such as Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen that has made him come to regard singing and writing as spiritual and mystical processes.

  "What I like about songs is that they find their own life that exists apart from that of the creator, Buckley says. "Songs need their own moments in order to be born, and for those you need to have experiences. Melodies come to me spontaneously and when I hear a certain melody I know in my heart the voice that has to come through."