Nick Cave, Blondie‘s Debbie Harry, Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell, Warren Ellis, Lydia Lunch and more are all set to appear on ‘The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project – The Journey is Long’ album, a tribute to the frontman of cult 1980s alt.rock band The Gun Club, who died from a brain haemorrhage in 1996.
The compilation album will be released on April 9 and features versions of previously unreleased and unfinished songs by Pierce. It follows 2009’s similar ‘We Are Only Riders’ record. A third volume, called ‘The Task Has Overwhelmed Us’, will be released later in the year.
Nick Cave duets with Debbie Harry on ‘The Breaking Hands’ and Cave also sings the album’s opening track, ‘City In Pain’. The Jim Jones Revue also feature on the album. For a full list of those taking part, see the tracklisting below.
Pierce’s one time collaborator Cypress Grove has said of the album: “The idea was that, these are not our songs, we merely interpret them… In some cases the artists have had to finish the songs, so there can be no nonsense about this not being as good as the original version as these are the original versions! It’s a musical collective of artists who have come together to interpret or complete skeletal, unfinished material by Jeffrey. Where possible we have used Jeffrey’s contributions, so he actually appears posthumously on this album.”
Of the collaborative approach the artists took to the album, he added: “I like to think of it as being like Josh Homme’s ‘The Dessert Sessions’.”
‘The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project – The Journey is Long’ tracklisting is:
‘City In Pain’ – Nick Cave
‘I’m Going Upstairs’ – Hugo Race
‘From Death To Texas’ – Steve Wynn
‘The Breaking Hands’ – Mark Lanegan & Isobel Campbell
‘The Jungle Book’ – The Amber Lights
‘Rose’s Blues’ – Bertrand Cantat, Pascal Humbert, Warren Ellis, Cypress Grove
‘Zonar Roze’ – Thalia Zedek & Chris Brokaw
‘L.A. County Jail Blues’ – Cypress Grove
‘I Wanna Be You’ – Barry Adamson
‘Sonny Boy’ – Mick Harvey
‘Book of Love’ – Vertical Smile
‘Body and Soul’ – Astro-Unicorn
‘The Brink’ – Lydia Lunch
‘The Breaking Hands’ – Nick Cave & Deborah Harry
‘In My Room’ – Tex Perkins & Lydia Lunch
‘The Jungle Book’ – Tav Falco’s Panther Burns
‘St Marks Place’ – Mick Harvey
‘Ain’t My Problem Baby’ – The Jim Jones Revue