UPDATED RELEASE DATES FOR GUN CLUB AND JEFFREY LEE PIERCE RECORDINGS NOW JUNE 12 & July 17

MINKY RECORDS UNLEASHES UNRELEASED GUN CLUB AND JEFFREY LEE PIERCE RECORDINGS

FOR RECORD STORE DAY (JUNE 12 & JULY 17)

 

Updated release dates:

 

Early Studio Versions of Miami Album Tracks “Fire of Love” and “Bad Indian” Exclusive 45 RPM Single
Out June 12 

 

Outrageous, Unhinged All-Star Session Soulsuckers On Parade Out July 16 (Full-Length CD &
All Digital Platforms), Colored Vinyl Exclusive Out July 17

 

  

 

Los Angeles independent label Minky Records is issuing two crucial, hitherto unheard slices of music recorded in the ‘80s by the late L.A. punk rock legend Jeffrey Lee Pierce and his band the Gun Club.

 

On June 12, the company will release an exclusive single version of the Pierce original “Bad Indian” and a cover of Jody Reynolds’ “Fire of Love.” Versions of both songs appeared on the Gun Club’s 1982 sophomore album Miami, but the 45 will feature the unreleased original studio recordings, produced by Chris D. (Chris Desjardins) for the band’s debut LP Fire of Love, released on Slash Records’ subsidiary imprint Ruby Records in 1981.

 

The Minky 45 will be accompanied by an even more impressive vault discovery: Soulsuckers On Parade, a full-length 1984 Pierce solo recording drawn from an abortive session for the cowpunk compilation LP Don’t Shoot, first released by Zippo Records in the U.K. The vocalist is supported by an all-star unit comprising guitarist Dave Alvin, drummer Bill Bateman, and the late pianist Gene Taylor, then of the hot L.A. roots combo the Blasters, and bassist Jack Waterson of Green On Red; Chris D. (who also produced the date) and the Gun Club’s Kid Congo Powers guest on background vocals.

 

An expanded version of Don’t Shoot will be released by Minky Records in the near future.

 

Featuring covers of songs originated by Willie Nelson, Big Joe Turner, and Creedence Clearwater Revival, a wacky, profane blues Pierce improvisation called “New Way of Walkin’,” and a rampaging, demented 17-minute original, “Walkin’ Down the Street (Doin’ My Thing),” the album will be issued as a limited edition Kelly-green vinyl LP on Record Store Day (June 12), and an unlimited expanded CD package (with studio chatter and improvised vocals and jams) on the same day. Both the uncut CD version and the LP tracks will be available digitally.

 

The Minky releases continue an exploration of Pierce’s unheard music that began with a pair of 2020 releases: Blixa Sounds’ expanded CD and LP reissue of Miami, originally produced by Blondie’s Chris Stein for his Animal Records label, which featured unreleased demos, and the first issue of music by Pierce’s pre-Gun Club band, the pop-oriented trio Red Lights, as a five-track 12-inch EP by L.A.-based In the Red Records.

 

Desjardins notes, “Jeffrey’s notoriety, and his presence on social media, has only increased over the years”

 

The numbers heard on the Minky single features the same lineup heard on both Fire of Love and Miami: Pierce, guitarist Ward Dotson, bassist Rob Ritter, and drummer Terry Graham.

 

Producer Desjardins -- who designed the artwork for both the single and the Soulsuckers CD/LP, as well as the cover of the Gun Club’s debut LP -- says of the Fire of Love outtakes, “We had some extra time and tape during the session, and we recorded those.”

 

The material on Soulsuckers On Parade has never seen the light of day until now – somewhat miraculously, considering that the live recordings (many of dubious legality) that have appeared since Pierce’s death in 1996 are so plentiful that their number is almost impossible to compute. In fact, the Soulsuckers session, cut at Control Center in Hollywood, remained so obscure that it sat unmixed until Desjardins readdressed the tapes for the current release.

 

Pierce and his cohorts’ putative mission was to record a cover of Willie Nelson’s “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way,” a song first heard on the country singer-songwriter’s 1974 concept album Phases and Stages. It was to have been included on Don’t Shoot, a compilation helmed by Anna Statman (a onetime member of Red Lights, and then an A&R staffer at Slash Records) and Susie Wrenn that spotlighted country-styled material by such L.A. punk musicians as John Doe of X, Steve Wynn of Dream Syndicate, Dan Stuart of Green On Red, Maria McKee and Tony Gilkyson of Lone Justice, and Divine Horsemen, a new band that would feature Chris D. and his wife-to-be Julie Christensen.

 

Desjardins and Pierce’s band mates sat around the studio imbibing until the vocalist arrived about an hour late for his session. “He was three sheets to the wind already,” the producer recalls, “and he had obviously been drinking other stuff besides beer. Kid Congo showed up sometime later. I think he came in after we’d been going a couple of hours. It went on until 1 or 2 in the morning, if I’m not mistaken.

 

“I just was letting the tape run, because Jeffrey was on. He was extemporaneously ad libbing, and he was so f__king funny I let the tape go.”

 

Dave Alvin recalls, “Chris may have screamed, ‘Don’t cut off the tape!’ Or ‘Don’t stop recording!’ Which may have been the most brilliant thing of the night.”

 

Loose but hot, the date careened through the Nelson tune, “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “New Way of Walkin’,” and a little of Taylor’s boogie woogie on the 88s. But the highlight of the session was undoubtedly Pierce’s scabrous, sacrilegious, off-the-wall “Walkin’ Down the Street (Doin’ My Thing),” something like an excursion directly into the dark center of its author’s brain. A rumor since a fragment of its lyrics appeared in Pierce’s posthumous 1998 book Go Tell the Mountain, the song was covered in highly edited form by Lydia Lunch (with an assist from Alvin and Powers) on the 2010 Pierce tribute album We Are Only Riders.

 

“Me and Bateman and Gene and Jack just started f__king around,” Alvin says, “and then Jeffrey Lee got on the mic and just went for it, for whatever it was, 15 or 20 minutes long. And it was great! One of the best things about Gun Club live shows was the spontaneous stuff between the songs, or even in the songs. He was being spontaneous Jeffrey, and some of it is in extremely poor taste – even at the time, drunk as I was, I was thinking, ‘Oh! Ow! This one’s gonna kill all our careers.’ It’s pretty profane. I’m surprised we weren’t excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

 

“We just kept going for it, and every time there would be an instrumental break, we were figuring, ‘We’ll fade out on this,’ and then Jeffrey would come back in with something else. The stream of consciousness was flowing.”

 

Desjardins adds, “Jeffrey was in really good spirits, and he knew that all of us got him – we got his sense of humor, we got his weird, surreal lyric thing. We all had a blast, that I remember. We were having a lot of fun. It looked for a while like it was never going to see the light of day.”

 

Finally unearthed after nearly four decades, both the Fire of Love outtakes and the Soulsuckers On Parade adventure further burnish Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s freewheeling spirit. 

 

- Chris Morris, February 2021, Los Angeles