Jeff Buckley was 30 when he passed away in Memphis is 1997. Jeff’s sole album ‘Grace’ is also now 30.
On Friday, 23 August 2024, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of ‘Grace’, Jason Singh and band performed Jeff’s ‘Grace’ album from start to finish, with ‘Forget Her’, the song from the sessions left off the album as the encore.
As the story goes, Jeff’s record label wanted to release ‘Forget Her’ as the single. Jeff objected and left it off the album, adding ‘So Real’ in its place. ‘Forget Her’ remained unreleased until the 2004 ‘Grace: Legacy Edition’.
‘Grace’ featured two covers. ‘Lilac Wine’ written by James Shelton in 1950 and first covered by Eartha Kitt in 1953. The other was Leonard Cohen’s 1984 song ‘Hallelujah’, also covered by fellow Canadian k.d. lang in 2004.
The tradition piece ‘Corpus Christi Carol’ is an English hymn dating back to between 1506 and 1536.
At the time of Jeff’s death from drowning in Memphis on 27 May, 1997, ‘Grace’ was his only album. In May, 1998, marking the one year anniversary of his death, Columbia released an album of recording made in 1996 and 1997 titled ‘Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk’.
In 1996, Jeff was recording with Tom Verlaine of Television on album potential second album Jeff had anointed ‘My Sweetheart The Drunk’. The album was discarded and Jeff went to Memphis to start afresh on a new record where he met his fate on 29 May 1997 while swimming in the Mississippi River.
After Jeff’s death, when Mary discovered Sony was planning to release the Verlaine ‘Sweetheart’ album without her permission, she issued the company with a cease-and-desist letter. Mary then worked directly on what became ‘Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk’ featuring songs from the Verlaine sessions as disc one and Jeff’s demos as Disc two.
The Jason Singh tribute to ‘Grace’ featured the album in its original track order.
-
Jason’s ‘Grace’ Band was:
Drums – Spyder
Bass – Gavin Pearce
Guitar – David Jones
Guitar – Mitch Cowan
Keys – Jeremy Diffey
Vox – Amalia Foy
Guest – Tim Rizoli
-
Setlist 23 August 2024
Mojo Pin
Grace
Last Goodbye
Lilac Wine
So Real
Hallelejah (with Tim Rizoli)
Lover, You Should’ve Come Over (with Amalia Foy)
Corpus Christi Carol
Eternal Life
Dream Brother
Encore:
Forget Her
After the show Jason Singh posted, “What an incredible thing we did and what an amazing audience you were, thank you so much to all involved. You know who you are, I think this one is way too good to be just a one off performance. Now that it’s done I really want to do it again, Jeff Buckley 30th anniversary of grace live at @memomusichall August 23 2024”
Stay updated with your free Noise11.com daily music news email alert. Subscribe to Noise11 Music News here
Be the first to see NOISE11.com’s newest interviews and special features on YOUTUBE and updated regularly. See things first SUBSCRIBE here: Noise11 on YouTube SUBSCRIBE
