Go Team: The Jeffrey Lewis & Peter Stampfel Band

Hi Jeff, hi Peter! How did your paths cross, and what sparked you to collaborate?
Peter Stampfel: [We met] at the Bowery Poetry Club at a birthday party for Ed Sanders. I had never heard of Jeff, but after hearing his History Of Punk Rock On The Lower East Side, I went up to him and did an instant fanboy gush. I found we both had a powerful comics obsession.

What did you know of each other's work before you started writing and gigging together?
Jeffrey Lewis: For a long time I had been really in love with the early Fugs recordings which Peter played on, but it was years before I got any Rounders records – I had somehow been biased against them without having ever heard them. Maybe I thought they were in the same category as stuff like the Kweskin Jug Band, like, hippies playing old timey music just to be goofy or just because it was easier than creating something. I don't even dislike that Kweskin stuff, it just isn't the kind of music I felt driven to seek out. At some later point I'd gotten my hands on the first Holy Modal Rounders album which was something of a revelation; the spirit of it really struck me and I started picking up any of Peter’s stuff I found, just one LP at a time here and there over the years.

What's the most valuable thing you’ve learnt from working together?
PS: That trying to make everything in your life better in a relaxed yet relentless way is the best possible use of one’s time.

What are the little things that keep touring exciting?
PS: Being in a band you love and playing songs you love for people who mainly love it is about as good as it gets, as far as I’m concerned.
JL: There’s a lot of great stuff that can come from touring but I do find the group-responsibility factor increasingly a source of pressure, like, since it’s my band or a tour that I’ve booked or a project that I’ve organised it all falls on me if things don’t go to everybody’s liking. We miss lunch because we have a long drive to get to soundcheck, or the place we sleep is weird or crummy, or there’s only three people at a show, any number of complaints that any number of musicians can have, and as the prime mover of this stuff happening I’m the natural focus of unhappiness if things go wrong, because if not for me everybody would just be sitting around safe at home. So if everybody’s happy I’m happy, but you’ve got to find people who want to be doing this.

Does your shared love of comics feed into your shows together?
PS: We’ll be doing a number of Jeff’s great cartoon songs, which I never get tired of watching. 
JL: And I’d better sell a lot of comics on tour this year! I just printed an ungodly amount of comic books because the printing company offered me a good deal but now my apartment is rammed with boxes.

Jeff, you've visited Manchester a lot over the years. What are your memories of the city?
JL: Hmm, being kicked while sleeping in the street, or hooligans sticking their hands in my pockets in a chip shop, or our tour car having its window smashed in our friend’s front yard overnight, all the homeless shelters being filled up and no place to sleep, great record shops, great cafes, great streets, great bands, great people. Lots of rain. Love Manchester!