From: owner-bklist-digest@smoe.org (bklist-digest) To: bklist-digest@smoe.org Subject: bklist-digest V1 #56 Reply-To: bklist@smoe.org Sender: owner-bklist-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-bklist-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "bklist-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. bklist-digest Thursday, June 19 1997 Volume 01 : Number 056 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Newspaper Article: Brenda on Jeff Buckley's death. [Eric Trondson-Clinger] Brenda on Jeff Buckley ["Mark Anthony Miazga" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 23:00:33 -0500 From: Eric Trondson-Clinger Subject: Newspaper Article: Brenda on Jeff Buckley's death. From St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 13, 1997 Printed without permission, please don't hurt me. - ------------------------------------------ Jeff Buckley's legacy lives on through his friends Jim Walsh When rumors surfaced two weeks ago today that Jeff Buckley Was missing, his friend Brenda Kahn immediately knew they were true. And when Buckley's fully clothed body was found in the Mississippi River near downtown Memphis June 5, Kahn was shocked, but not surprised. "If he was gonna go, he was going to walk into a river and never come back," Kahn said softly by phone from her temp job in New York City Tuesday night. "That's how he was. He would just jump in a river with all his clothes on as a joke." Buckley was the only child of '60s songwriter Tim Buckley, who died from a drug overdose at the age of 28 in 1975. Jeff Buckley had been in Memphis since February, rehearsing new material for an album he was slated to begin recording on June 30. In order to work out the new songs, Buckley and his band had set up a weekly gig at a local Memphis club. A few days after his last show on May 26, the 30-year-old singer/songwriter went down to the riverbank with a friend for a swim. Police recovered Buckley's body last week, after a passenger on a riverboat spotted it. In the week since Buckley's death, Kahn has received a slew of letters and e-mails from people all over the world. Many of them included condolences from fans who knew that Kahn and Buckley were close friends and collaborators. "Everyone's looking for some way to connect and understand what's going on," said Kahn. "There's an unofficial web site up, and there's pages and pages of stuff. Everything from poems written by a girl who sat next to him at a sound check, to a guy who says something like, 'Jeff Buckley made the best record in the past 10 years.' "He had this strange ability to communicate without really talking at all. He connected with a lot of people, even people he only met once or twice. And that is so obvious after this week, because the outpouring of mail and e-mail, and the sadness that people are expressing, is amazing." Kahn met Buckley in 1992, when both artists were newly signed to Columbia Records. Despite the fact that the two songwriters cut their teeth on the Greenwich Village music scene, neither was familiar with the other's work at the time. But when they met one day at the Columbia offices, Kahn sensed an instant bond. "Right after we met, I had this strange dream that he was making shiitake mushrooms," she said with a laugh. "And I woke up and thought, 'I gotta call that guy.' It was so weird, because I didn't know him, and I didn't know his music. And I called him, and it was cool. We hung out and talked, and we were friends from then on." The first time Buckley ever went on the road, he played bass in Kahn's band at a benefit in Providence, R.I., in 1992. Around the same time, the two co-wrote a song, "Faith Salons." The track appeared on Kahn's album, "Destination Anywhere," with Buckley playing guitar and singing backup vocals. After a tumultuous stay at Columbia, Kahn departed for the smaller, more hand-on environs of Shanachie Records. Buckley, meanwhile, was one of Columbia's rising stars. He released the critically acclaimed EP "Live at Sine" in December 1993, and his breakthrough album, "Grace," garnered him a spot in the 1994 year-end edition of Rolling Stone's "Future of Rock" issue. Although Buckley and Kahn were at different rungs on their respective ladders of success, they became friends. And in 1993, the two embarked on a two-month U.S. tour. "We had a very strong mutual admiration of each other's music," said Kahn. "My music is very lyric-oriented, and his is very music-oriented, and when we would get together, we would come up with the coolest stuff. That was great, because we felt like equals. But the whole Sony experience was not that." In other words, Buckley was the headliner on that tour, and Kahn was the opening act. Buckley and band traveled in a bus; Kahn in a van. According to n, the label wouldn't pay for a guitar technician to travel with her, so if anything went wrong, she was out of luck. On one of the first stops on the tour, in Albany, N.Y., her set was clipping along nicely-until she broke a string. "Nobody stepped forward for this really long, awkward moment," Kahn recalled. "And Jeff came up onstage and said, 'I got it.' It was like that. Jeff and I cared about each other, musically. "When we were on tour, he would always play drums with me at sound check. And I kept asking him to teach me to play drums. And I remember the last time that I really hung out with him, he called me at about 10 o'clock at night, and he wanted me to go play drums with him. And I was kind of sick, and I said, 'Naah." And he kept bugging me, and I ended up playing drums in his studio with him for three hours. "And that's how Jeff was. He would just disappear. I'd call him a bunch of times, and he wouldn't call me back, and I'd sort of give up. And then out of the blue, he'd call and talk on my answering machine for 10 minutes. And he'd be superimmediate -you know, 'Let's go shopping!' " Buckley's body was cremated over the weekend, and his family held a private ceremony in California. In New York, there has been talk about a memorial service for he young songwriter, who had recorded with Patti Smith, John Zorn and the Jazz Passengers, and written the liner notes for a forthcoming Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan compilation album. So it would be easy to lament Buckley's death as a bright light snuffed out too soon. But Kahn chooses to see it otherwise. "Although I feel shocked and betrayed, and definitely feel like I wasn't done talking to him, I also feel like there was a sense of completeness to his life," said Kahn. "I think he had done a lot of things that he felt he needed to do. "He had a really amazing sense of what life was about. I think he faced death early, because of his father's death. He was very aware of his time on earth, and I think that gave him an ability to connect with people that a lot of people don't have." - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Eric Trondson-Clinger holyboy@minn.net Holyboy Road http://www1.minn.net/~holyboy/ - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 01:03:29 -0400 (EDT) From: "Mark Anthony Miazga" Subject: Brenda on Jeff Buckley > "If he was gonna go, he was going to walk into a river and never come > back," Kahn said softly by phone from her temp job in New York City Tuesday What a fascinating article. What does this mean about the temp job? I guess I don't know all that much about the lives of musicians, but does Brenda really have to take a temp job to survive? I guess I'm just being nosy. But anyway, I heard about Jeff Buckley's death from some other mailing lists, and went out and bought his cd after hearing everyone's beautiful postings (it's really clique-ish that I buy his cd after he dies, but I did the same thing with Laura Nyro: just when someone goes, you hear such nice things about them and just get an urge to check them out). Anyway, after hearing _Grace_, I was moved to tears many times. It's an album full of passion, and it's a tragedy that he's gone. It's definitely the best album I've heard in some time... at least a year. In fact, not since I came upon Brenda Kahn's "Epiphany in Brooklyn" have I been so compelled by a musician to find other stuff and anticipate more releases... sadly, I never will. His connection with Brenda is something I hadn't heard of since recently. "Faith Salons" has always been one of my favorite BK songs, but I never thought to look and see if it was co-written by someone else. I'm very sorry for the loss of your friend, Brenda, if you're reading this. On a totally unrelated note, what is everyone's take on Dan Bern. Brenda opened for him in Ann Arbor (a show I very unfortunately missed), and he opened the next day for Ani DiFranco here in East Lansing (I saw him then). Anyway, his profile is really rising, with reviews in Spin and People (!). I think he's a superb singer/songwriter. Comparisons to Dylan are unfair to Bern, but it's hard not to think of Dylan with Bern's raspy voice. Anyway, just wanted to hear everyone's take. - -- Mark A. Miazga Michigan State University miazgama@pilot.msu.edu East Lansing, MI USA "Yeah I don't sleep, I only dream A caffeine hole burning through my spleen" -- Brenda Kahn ------------------------------ End of bklist-digest V1 #56 ***************************