Jeffery+Lewis+-+interview+transcript

Outside in the warm weather on the white-railed balcony, I had the opportunity to interview Jeffery Lewis. Jeffery Lewis is a folk singer and is a comic book writer. When I asked him about his music and if he identified himself as a folksinger he said, “I guess. Yeah. Is it Louis Armstrong who said, ‘All music is folk music—I never heard a horse sing.’” He was very laid back and relaxed while talking about this. He is wearing some solid colored, loose fitted clothing that go along with his mellow, folk looking attitude. He sees that less is in fact more so he continued on by saying, “I took piano lessons for a couple years, and at a certain point I realized that I didn’t, I couldn’t make music on the piano unless I reached a certain, much higher level of ability, whereas on guitar, with just a few simple chords, it really sounded like powerful, real music. And I guess that is my concept of folk music.” It was easier for him to learn the guitar and play his folk music because for him, “you can do more with less.” After he played his song “Heavy Heart” for me, I then continued on asking him about how old he was when he came up with these songs. He said, “Twenty-two. About that time I had just graduated from college.” He then continued on writing his comic but it was the guitar that drew him to playing music by saying, “…there was this old guitar around, and I started messing around on the guitar, and a number of months later that next spring I started playing at the open mic at the Sidewalk Café and recorded my first tape of songs that following summer.” While explaining his music, his hand gestures began to grow because he was getting more and more into what we were talking about.