news

Jeff has been taking a break from touring, staying home to renovate his house and enjoy his young son while ruminating on future music plans. These include The Crooked Jades annual Northwest Tour in August with the current lineup (San Francisco, Arcata, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles and Winnemmucca NV) and reuniting with original Crooked Jades vocalist Lisa Berman to record a duo album in late Winter 2010.

Jim Swenson and Doug Williford have been filming The Crooked Jades for the last 5 years and have put together a short preliminary version of a documentary film (work in progress) which will be previewed on San Francisco Cable Access Channel 29 on Tuesday 3/3 at 9:30PM and Saturday 3/7 at 8PM. It may also be used as filler overnight and in the mornings. accessf.org/guide/schedule Please check it out if you live in San Francisco or tell your friends who live here. We’re looking forward to greater viewing access in the future with the final project. What we’ve seen so far is artful and insightful and gives a good overview of the band evolution (all three generations are featured) with plenty of live performances filmed at The Freight and Salvage in Berkeley and Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco as well as an up to date interview with Jeff Kazor filmed in January of this year. Let us know what you think! A final cut should be ready in time for the documentary festival circuit in 2010.

The Crooked Jades are honored to be featured on the cover of the Jan/Feb 2009 double issue of the prestigious UK magazine fRoots devoted to the new Americana:

• Devon Sproule
• Carolina Chocolate Drops
• The Crooked Jades
• Rupa & The April Fishes
• Corey Harris
• Seasick Steve
• The Pine Leaf Boys
• Lissa Schneckenburger

Shining Darkness glowingly reviewed by fRoots editor Ian Anderson: “’Americana’ seems to be pretty much off the boil and resting, worn as a flag of convenience by too many chancers and exhausted by fringe rockers whose connection to the roots was as thin as their originality. The Crooked Jades are something else though. Grounded in tradition, old-time string band music and mountain blues but with open horizons that take them, subtly, to other parts of the planet, they have a haunting spookiness, an organic pulse, and most importantly a clear vision… Instrumentally they’re truly inspiring, getting original textures out of conventional stringband instruments and mixing them with (in this context) oddities like bass ukulele, harmonium, mbira, cello and Vietnamese jaw harp and bau zither. Vocally, they have that lonesome white blues sound which has its ancestry in Dock Boggs and the Carters but again they take it somewhere else…a consistently startling and addictive album.”

Coming in July Jeff’s dream comes true of the first all-original Crooked Jades album: “Shining Darkness.” With this project the band continues to look for light in the shadow and explore the alchemy of art and darkness. Recorded in Fantasy’s famous Studio A by Bruce Kaphan and co-produced by Jeff and Bruce the album features the current lineup and more eclectic instruments including harmonium, bao (Vietnamese one-string box zither) and mbira. We’ll follow up with a west coast CD release tour in August and a month-long tour in Europe and Ireland in September/October. More news soon.

We are proud and excited to announce that Erik Pearson’s original tune “Fork and File” from the latest Crooked Jades CD “World’s on Fire” is part of the soundtrack for the amazing new Sean Penn film “Into the Wild” .

Penn’s fourth filmmaking effort, “Into the Wild,” is his most accomplished yet, a sign that for all the accolades labeling him the finest actor of his generation, directing could be his real calling.

Adapted by Penn from Jon Krakauer’s best-seller, “Into the Wild” combines grand American vistas with the heartbreaking real-life story of a fierce young idealist whose two-year trek of abstinent adventure ended in tragedy in Alaska.

Christopher McCandless was a rebellious spirit who came from a fairly privileged background yet was drawn to the ascetic tenets set forth by such writers as Leo Tolstoy, Jack London and Henry David Thoreau. He set off on his quest with an aim to repudiate material society and live on his own terms.

For more info about the film go to: www.intothewild.com

As they say in the trailer for the film, “If you want something in life, reach out and grab it”