Be Your Roadie

Cute little parody of "Be Your Husband" from Sin-é. 😊❤

The Lonliest Building

One of my favorite monologues from Sin-é...😂 enjoy!

 

12/8/93 Entry

The Music Faucet: January, 1993

Another Music Faucet gig, but a bit of confusion here as this show has been labeled as being done on January 24, 1993, yet according to this gig listing, there's no bootleg, and the track listing is different. Nonetheless, I'll go with what's been listed on the original audio...enjoy!

Strictly Columbia

August 6, 1993
Submitted by Ananula

Profile: JEFF BUCKLEY

Monday nights Jeff Buckley can be found on New York's Lower East Side, in a tiny, but esteemed, Irish bar called Sin-é, where he's been playing guitar and singing for the last year or so. For two hours every Monday, he holds the audience spellbound with originals and riveting interpretations of songs by Tom Waits, Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Nina Simone, and others as diverse.
  These covers are so passionate, it's as if they're his own, while his new songs about love and relationships can stand proudly beside the classics. And he delivers them in a pure and beautiful voice you have to hear to believe, with inflection ranging from Steve Forbert to Janis Joplin to Robert Plant, sounding one moment he's from the Mississippi Delta, like a folk singer the next, or even like a Parisian torch singer.

Praise Pours In

  Accolades have poured in from fellow musicians like Sugar's Bob Mould: "Jeff is so talented, he should be looked for in '93 and for many years to come. When you hear him sing, you will understand."
  Everyone who's heard this major talent has been powerfully affected. Word of mouth spread quickly about his amazingly eclectic performances that mixed together unique arrangements of Bob Dylan, Judy Garland, and Led Zeppelin, and soon Jeff was performing at Sin-é before SRO crowds packed with celebrities. "It was getting really good, and everybody was having a total blast," Jeff remembered. And then, in a decidedly unstar-like move, he decided to pull the plug. "I said, 'man, if it went downhill from here, I'd feel so stupid.' So I cut it off, and when I come back, hopefully it will be something completely different."
  His personal history provides some glimpses as to how he brought together this dizzying array of influences and attitudes. From his childhood "all around crappy desert towns in California," through his teenage gigs in LA rock bands, to his newly adopted home of New York, Jeff concedes that he's never had any teachers since he first started teaching himself to make a guitar sing at the age of five. "I just mainly learned from listening, and from completely idealizing people and wanting to be them."

Forms Duo With Ex-Beefheart Guitarist

  Just over a year ago, when Jeff was performing around Manhattan in Gods & Monsters, a group he formed with former Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas, the duo was picked by Roling Stone as a hot "New Face." Then, a reviewer from The New York Times heard Buckley and fell under his influence, stating in print that Jeff was "almost surreally gifted. When he sings, it's as if his voice and the melodies that come with it, were emanating from a far older person, somebody who has had the time to do all the studying it takes to learn as much as he has."
  Despite the praise, the duo disbanded before releasing a note. "It was beneficial in a lot of ways, but we're very different," Jeff explained about his partnership with Lucas. "I felt I needed to get down to this one voice around which everything else would be built."
  So Jeff got down to it, and after a sojourn as a solo artist, feels ready to make his foray into the studio."So far, I've been making moves to get a band together. What it will sound like, I don't know. If I could describe it, I'd say the music is going to encompass all the things I've ever loved about music, and the people whom I've always loved. I'd like to go as far to say that what I do is soul music, because everybody's is. It's my soul."

Rich Diversity of Inspiration

  Considering the music he's into: "Bad Brains, Cocteau Twins, Robert Johnson, Lou Reed, Sun Ra, anything with soul," he says, the prognosis is that Jeff Buckley's debut Columbia LP, which he will begin recording in August, will live up to his high standards. "It's going to be something that nobody's ever heard before, and hopefully something I've never heard before." To hold us all over, we will be releasing a live EP in the Fall that was recorded during a recent performance in Sin-é.
  It seems evident to all who've followed his career that this next important chapter in the musical odyssey of Jeff Buckley could very well become an equally important chapter in American popular music.

***

COLUMBIA ROCKS SONY CONVENTION

FRIDAY MORNING, JUNE 18

  In the words of Sugar's Bob Mould, "When you hear him sing, you will understand." Not only did attendees get to hear Jeff Buckley sing, they also got to see his unique guitar playing style. How often do you see a guy witth just an electric guitar?

  Jeff showed us an extremely condensed version of his infamous Sin-é shows (a coffeehouse on Manhattan's Lower East Side), which featured not only his own songs, but distinctive versions of some of his favorite artists' songs. During the Columbia presentation, Jeff performed a Van Morrison song, The Way Young Lovers Do, the beautifully breathtaking Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, and his own composition called Eternal Life.

  By the end of the convention, Jeff had met, hung out with, and moshed with more employees of this company than even Andy Piretti could count! Jeff was happy that everyone got "a little glimpse into my world. It wasn't until after I performed, that it hit me that not everyone in the country could go to see me at Sin-é."

  We agree that Jeff is a very special artist that we were very fortunate to see in the early stages of his career. He will begin recording his debut album in August.

Early NME Write Up

August 7, 1993
By Simon Williams
Submitted by Ana

JEFF BUCKLEY

CRASH! CRANG! BLING! The sound of a plastic spoon digging into an ice bucket shatters the hushed calm.The distant rumble of subway trains suddenly resembles a herd of amphetamine-crazed elephants trampling through the toilets. It's 1:30 am, we're in a bar which manages to combine the aesthetic displeasures of Ronnie Scott's and Raymond's Revue Bar, and Jeff Buckley has stunned a roomful of normally gossiping biz types into complete, reverent silence.
  Melodramatic? Oh, absolutely, but thoroughly deserved. Any one-man performance by the son of songwriting legend Tim Buckley is bound to be a fatal attraction, but few could have expected a show by, hell, a showman such as this.
  Let's face the facts: Jeff Buckley is 26 years old. He has just signed to Columbia Records in the States, and Alan McGee is desperate to ensnare him on Creation in the UK. He has the voice of an angel shagging. He looks like Matt Dillon gone grunge. He makes "Lilac Wine" sound like a classic song. He is funny, cocky, charming and-most important of all-manages to play an entire set in front of a sparkling gold stage curtain without ever looking like a wanker.
  See, almost two decades after his father's somewhat reckless death, Jeff has been perfecting his craft in bars like this; coming back week after week to toy with a benevolent blend of mocking humor and the sort of soul The Commitments wouldn't comprehend if it crapped on their carpet. So he swoons through five minutes of immaculate acoustic material, all angst attacks and tearful poetry (cf "I'm down and tortured/The white horses flow").
  Sassy will love Jeff. He's hip, trippy and not adverse to ridiculing The Knack or doing his joke about How Elvis Died. By the time he rolls into a quite astonishing version of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" even the bar staff have given up and are simply staring, enraptured at the stage. Has Jeff got soul? I enquire of one particularly gobsmacked waitress.
  "Has he got soul? F-, yeah-he's got SHITLOADS!" she beams.
  What an absolutely marvellous, marvellous geezer.

"Grace" Outtakes

Ok, it's a bit of a stretch, but for those interested in hearing them, I've decided to include the "Grace" outtakes done in Bearsville from September 20-October 30, 1993...I love "Hallelujah (Take 2)" and the outro is my favorite. Enjoy!

Track list:

1. Lover You Should've Come Over
2. Eternal Life
3.  Just Like A Woman (Take 1)
4. Dink's Song
5. If You See Her Say Hello
6. Night Flight
7. Hallelujah (Take 1)
8. Just Like A Woman (Take 2)
9. Mama, You've Been On My Mind (Take 1)
10. Mama, You've Been On My Mind (Take 2)
11. Hallelujah (Take 2)
12. Mama, You've Been On My Mind (Riff)
13. Hallelujah (Take 3)
14. Outro

Fontainebleau Hotel

On June 18, 1993, Jeff played this short (15:24!) show at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Boca Raton, FL. Fun fact: he makes a reference to this show at his Stephen Talkhouse gig 😊 (website)

Setlist:

1. The Way Young Lovers Do
2. Hallelujah
3. Eternal Life

Every Monday Night at Sin-e

Known as "Every Monday Night at Sin-e" this was most likely done during the time that produced the now legendary "Live At Sin-e" EP. I know various songs can be found on YouTube, but here is the whole show together. No, I don't believe they're some the same versions found on the "official" Legacy release, and no, I don't know why there's two different versions of "Hallelujah" and "Sweet Thing" lol, but enjoy anyway!

Setlist:

1. People's Parties
2. Hallelujah
3. The Way Young Lovers Do
4. In A Different Place
5. May The Circle Be Unbroken
6. Twelfth Of Never
7. I Shall Be Released
8. Calling You
9. Strange Fruit
10. Julia
11. Sweet Thing
12. Lost Highway
13. Dink's Song
14. If You See Her, Say Hello
15. Mama You've Been On My Mind
16. Hallelujah
17. Eternal Life
18. Sweet Thing

Sin-e for "The Music Faucet"

Another one for WFMU's "The Music Faucet", this time done at Sin-e on June 6, 1993. Jeff performs "Lilac Wine" and the first ever version of "Lover, You Should’ve Come Over"...enjoy!

Early Sin-e Footage

Filmed sometime in 92/93, here's some early, uncredited flashes of Jeff playing at Sin-e. I'll always love how innocuous he is, and how while they were focused on the girl for the story, the real one was going on in the background...😉

0:27 and 3:49

CBGB

On this day in 1993, Jeff played the legendary CBGB's 313 Gallery in NYC. This is also the one of, if not the first, times performing live with the band, and the only available live version of "Forget Her"...enjoy!

Setlist:
1. Grace
2. Mojo Pin
3. Last Goodbye

4. Ivo

5. Lilac Wine
6. Forget Her
7. Lover, You Should've Come Over
8. Corpus Christi Carol
9. The Way Young Lovers Do
10. Eternal Life

Courtesy of Karen Pace 

RIP

The location now

The Unmade Star

The New York Times, October 24, 1993 by David Browne.

Jeff Buckley has a compelling voice and a cult following, as did his father. But he's not sure he wants to be famous.

Strange things happen when Jeff Buckley opens his mouth to sing. One moment he's a white bluesman with a sound straight out of the Mississippi Delta; the next, a jazz singer whose acrobatic voice swoops and glides through a haze of cigarettes and pained memories. The last thing he sounds like is his age -- only 26.

Even odder, his singing makes otherwise jaded clubgoers and music-business executives rave with none of their usual cynicism. They will talk of catching Mr. Buckley at East Village hangouts like Sin-é and the FEZ, where they have heard him sing anything from "I Loves You Porgy" to a Sufi chant, an obscure Elton John oldie or one of Mr. Buckley's own unconventional songs. And they will talk about his new contract with Sony Records and how Buckley is a name to watch.

The one person who doesn't care for the talk is the source of it all. "The music business is the most childish business in the world," Mr. Buckley said one morning last month at a downtown bistro, "Nobody knows what they're selling or why, but they sell it if it works."

Mr. Buckley, whose hair is cut in a short, modestly spikey buzz, pauses and shoots an intense stare out the window. "There was a woman outside who was talking to someone, and I was trying to guess from her eyes what she sounded like," he said softly. "You can tell everything from the eyes."

You can tell a lot from Mr. Buckley's eyes, too. He's the son of the late Tim Buckley, who helped disassemble the barriers between folk, jazz and improvisational music before a fatal overdose of heroin, morphine and alcohol in 1975. Not only does Jeff Buckley have the same winding, sensual, octave-stretching voice as his father, but his waiflike looks recall the face on the covers of Tim Buckley albums like Goodbye and Hello, a cult classic from 1967.

Jeffrey Scott Buckley was born in 1966, the same year his father released his first album and also parted ways with his first wife, Mary Guibert. "I never knew him," Jeff Buckley said flatly. "I met him once, when I was 8. We went to visit him, and he was working in his room, so I didn't even get to talk to him. And that was it."

Mr. Buckley grew up with his mother and stepfather, mostly in Southern California, and learned about his father from old friends. "His life was hell." his son said.

Curiously, it was his father's music that made people notice Jeff Buckley. In 1991, he flew to New York to appear at a Tim Buckley tribute concert. "Everyone was there to celebrate the music of Tim Buckley, and here was someone who looked like him, sounded like him and had the same vocal range," said Nicholas Hill, who was at the concert and has since presented Mr. Buckley on his live music show on WFMU-FM. "It was very spooky, but impressive. The buzz was pretty immediate after that.

Mr. Buckley played briefly in a rock band, Gods and Monsters, but departed in the spring of 1992. As his main solo base, Mr. Buckley chose Sin-é (Gaelic for "that's it"; pronounced shin-AY), a coffeehouse where the occasional baby mouse scurries across the wooden floor. The stage, such as it is, is a cleared-away area against a wall.

"I figured if I played in the no-man's land of intimacy, I would learn to be a performer," Mr. Buckley said. Gradually, he did; he also paid the rent on his East Village apartment with money he'd collect from the plastic pitchers passed around at Sin-é.

Shane Doyle, Sin-é's owner, said : "He'll stop by to sing at 2 in the morning, and it doesn't matter if only a handful of people are there. He's definitely unusual in that way." Mr. Buckley often helps wash the dishes, too.

Mr. Buckley's apprenticeship didn't last long. Even though he has no manager -- just a lawyer -- word spread through the music business about the raw talent downtown. Soon, record executives like Clive Davis of Arista were spotted wedged behind Sin-é's chessboard-sized tables. Late last year, Mr. Buckley was signed by Sony, which will release an EP, Live at Sin-é in mid-November, followed by a full album next year.

With any luck, that EP, recorded this past summer, will make listeners feel as if they're in that 50-person space during one of Mr. Buckley's eccentric shows. Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, he often starts by casually telling a story about, say, attending a heavy-metal festival, complete with all the mimicry and timing of a stand-up comic. Then, accompanied by his own electric guitar, he starts singing, and suddenly the pale, thin, wise-cracking kid is transformed into a kid possessed.

Singing an a Capella version of the traditional gospel/blues song "Be Your Husband," he dips and gyrates, slapping his palm against his chest for a beat. Even his guitar playing is unpredictable, swerving from a metal riff with clear links to Led Zeppelin to complex, jazz-influenced chord changes, sometimes during the same song.

Tim Buckley had only a cult following and bounced from label to label. Not surprisingly, his son is apprehensive about entering the big-time music business. "I'm convinced part of the reason I got signed is because of who I am," he said with a sigh. "And it makes me sad."

Sony executives declined to comment, saying it was "too early" to discuss Mr. Buckley. But Mr. Doyle said : "He gets nervous when the record company limos pull up outside. Those are never his best gigs.

When asked which musicians have influenced his work, Mr. Buckley cites figures that predate his father. Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong and Judy Garland records taught him about phrasing, for example. And "there was a time when I wanted to be Miles Davis," he said.

"A lot of time I feel like I don't belong here" he added, quickly turning forlorn. "Here" meaning where? "Here," he replied, as if the question was downright silly.

One moment Mr. Buckley will gush about a Led Zeppelin bootleg or will cockily say, "There are no precedents for what I'm doing." Then he will turn near-suicidal : "I'm sick of the world. I'm trying to stay alive."

Although Mr. Hill has booked Mr. Buckley on his WFMU show several times, he still doesn't know what to make of him. "He's very enigmatic and mysterious," he said. "It adds to his mystique." 

What no one doubts, it seems, is Mr. Buckley's charisma. Just before he left, for Woodstock, N.Y,, last month to record his first album, Mr. Buckley gave one more show at Sin-é. It was near midnight on a Sunday night; yet, the crowd spilled out onto the sidewalk. Afterward, a dark-haired woman approached him. "You are like a sieve for music," she gushed. "Your soul is beautiful."

Mr. Buckley thanked her and began stuffing his guitar into its canvas case. "I'll never stop playing places like this," he said after she left. "You know when someone puts out an album, and then they start only playing big places? I hope I never end up like that. I love it here."

©1993 by New York Times. All rights reserved