Photo credit: Mary Ellen Matthews
GET YOUR TICKET TODAY! Come dance with us to the music of NYC classic Garland Jeffreys. We're so excited to announce that Jeffreys will be performing at our fundraiser!
He's been called an edgy urban poet, the sound of New York, a confessional singer-songwriter, and an explorer of the links between rock, race and rebellion whose work should be taught in schools. With songs covered by artists as diverse as punk pioneers The Circle Jerks ("Wild in the Streets") and the neo-folk band Vetiver ("Lon Chaney"), Garland Jeffreys is truly unclassifiable. Long known for his amazing roster of supporting musicians, with names such as Dr. John, Sonny Rollins, James Taylor, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Phoebe Snow, and Sly and Robbie, and forty years into his storied career, Jeffreys has no intention of slowing down.
More than a dozen years had passed without an American album from Jeffreys when he came roaring back into the spotlight with 2011's The King of In Between. Hailed by NPR as “as good a classic roots rock record as you’re going to hear from anybody," the record—which featured an appearance by old pal Lou Reed—earned raves from The New Yorker to USA Today and led to a performance on Letterman, as well as appearances onstage with everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Levon Helm. The experience fueled a creative revitalization for the rocker, whose ebullient, late-stage creative energy colors every note of his latest record, Truth Serum (2013).
“’Truth Serum’ is a kind of Rorschach, the boiled down essence of where I am today at seventy,” says Jeffreys. Sung with the most relaxed, assured delivery of his career, the lyrics express a seasoned, hard-won acceptance balanced with an unflagging sense of optimism, while the music merges blues, rock, reggae, and folk into an infectious concoction distinctly his own.
