Jeff Buckley

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OCTOBER 22, 2002

THE RARE JEFF BUCKLEY EPs OF 1994 TO '96 - AVAILABLE IN THE U.S. AFTER NEARLY A DECADE

THE GRACE EPs 5-disc slipcase boxed set gathers Peyote Radio Theatre, Last Goodbye, So Real (aka Live At Nighttown), Live From the Bataclan, and The Grace EP

19 tracks include live performances, edits and album versions of "Mojo Pin," "Grace," "Dream Brother," "Last Goodbye" and "So Real"; plus covers of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," Van Morrison's "The Way Young Lovers Do," Hank Williams' "Lost Highway," and Big Star's "Kanga-Roo"

Liner notes written by Buckley's mother Mary Guibert and original band members enlighten long-awaited collectors' edition, to arrive in stores November 26th

"If you are an avid Jeff Buckley fan, a driven completist, or are working on becoming one - this one's for you." - From the liner notes written by Mary Guibert

Following the release of his debut album Grace in the summer 1994, the first limited-edition EPs by Jeff Buckley began to appear in various foreign territories of Sony Music. Five and a half years after his tragic death in 1997, these discs have taken their rightful place as some of the most rare and collectible import CDs of the '90s. For the first time, the five most sought-after of these discs - Peyote Radio Theatre, Last Goodbye, So Real (aka Live At Nighttown), Live From the Bataclan, and The Grace EP - have been assembled together at last. Packaged in five cardboard sleeves enclosed in a slipcase boxed set, THE GRACE EPs will arrive in stores November 26th (9 days after what would've been Buckley's 36th birthday) on Columbia, a division of Sony Music.

Manufactured in extremely small quantities, usually for promotion-only purposes (and in some cases for commercial release), the EPs variously included straight-ahead album tracks and special edit versions, unreleased studio and rehearsal pieces, and a generous amount of live performance material. THE GRACE EPs liner notes include detailed background on each disc written by Buckley's mother, Mary Guibert, who is the executor of his estate and was closely involved in the creation of this boxed set. Insightful recollections of key tracks and live performances are also provided by original band members Michael Tighe (guitar), Mick Grondahl (bass), and Matt Johnson (drums).

Gathered together are five treasures that will fill in the gaps in any Jeff Buckley fan's collection (track by track details are provided elsewhere in this release):

• Peyote Radio Theatre (promotion-only, Europe and later U.S., July 1994)
• Last Goodbye (commercial release, Japan, January 1995)
• So Real (aka Live At Nighttown) (promotion-only, Holland, June 1995)
• Live From the Bataclan (promotion-only, France, October 1995)
• The Grace EP (commercial release, Australia, February 1996)

All five CD EPs have been digitally remastered at Sony Music Studios in New York and are issued in their original format and sequence, with the exception of The Grace EP, which adds a bonus track, "Tongue." The 11-and-a-half-minute track "was recorded to a used cassette by Paul Wilke, the band's soundman at the time, during a rehearsal at Montana Studios in New York City."

Comprising a total of 19 tracks, THE GRACE EPs boast more than two and a half hours of music in total, with discs ranging in length from 19 minutes to nearly 37 minutes. 13 of the 19 tracks are album versions, edits and live performances of six songs introduced on the Grace album that became touchstones of Jeff Buckley's repertoire: "Mojo Pin," "Dream Brother," "Last Goodbye," "Grace," "So Real," and his cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." There are also covers of three other songs that Buckley loved to perform: a live version of "The Way Young Lovers Do" (Van Morrison); and studio recordings of "Lost Highway" (Hank Williams) and "Kanga-Roo" (Alex Chilton/Big Star).

One of rock's hardest lessons is that the impact of an artist's career is often not measured by the time he spends among us, but rather by the intensity with which his music reverberates after he is gone. Jeff Buckley's brief recording career yielded one original studio album on Columbia Records during his lifetime, the impossibly glorious Grace, released in the summer 1994. It made its way onto many a fan and critic's list as not only one of the top albums of the year, but one of the decade's most important recordings as well.

Over the course of the next two years, Buckley's admirers in the U.S. and around the world grew into a fanatically attentive following, as a result of the band's vigorous touring throughout Europe, the Far East and Australia. Both the artist and his record company's offices in several of these territories had the foresight to satisfy fans' cravings for non-album music by issuing a number of different compact disc EPs which became virtually instant rarities. Jeff Buckley's life came to a tragic end in 1997 (at age 29) when he died in a swimming mishap at Wolf River Marina, during a recording stint in Memphis.

Posthumous Columbia releases by Jeff Buckley began the following year with the double-CD Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk, which included the bulk of the Memphis sessions. In 2000, Columbia issued Mystery White Boy - Live '95-'96, which consisted of DAT recordings from the touring that came after the release of Grace. Last year Sony Music International released Live at L'Olympia (available only as an import in the U.S.), culled from soundboard cassette recordings of his two-night stand in July 1995 at the famed Paris theatre. On October 15th, the Knitting Factory's Evolver label issued Songs to No One 1991-1992, a collection of early recordings dating back to Buckley's brief stint with guitarist Gary Lucas' band Gods & Monsters. The disc includes original versions of "Grace" and "Mojo Pin," which they co-wrote.

"Jeff called a break and took a walk," Tighe relates of the song "So Real," and the sessions that led to its creation. "About thirty minutes later, when we got back to the studio, Jeff was already there, recording the verse - he'd written the whole thing during the walk. He recorded the whole song in one take. In that moment I knew I was part of something &ellip; you know, that moment when you know something has opened up that's beyond you, bigger than you."

THE GRACE EPs by JEFF BUCKLEY (C5K 87077):

Disc One - Peyote Radio Theatre (originally issued as promotion only in Europe and U.S., July 1994) - Selections: 1. Mojo Pin (Grace album version) • 2. Dream Brother (Nag Champa mix) • 3. Kanga-Roo. (Studio recordings)

Disc Two - Last Goodbye (originally issued as commercial release in Japan, January 1995) - Selections: 1. Last Goodbye (edit of Grace album version) • 2. Mojo Pin • 3. Kanga-Roo • 4. Lost Highway. (Studio recordings except track 2, recorded live at Wetlands, New York City)

Disc Three - So Real (aka Live At Nighttown) (originally issued as promotion only in Holland, June 1995) - Selections: 1. So Real • 2. Grace • 3. Dream Brother. (Recorded live on February 25, 1995, at Nighttown in Rotterdam, Netherlands)

Disc Four - Live From the Bataclan (originally issued as promotion only in France, October 1995) - Selections: 1. Dream Brother • 2. The Way Young Lovers Do • 3. Medley: Je Rien Connais Pas La Fin/Hymne a L'Amour • 4. Hallelujah. (Recorded live on February 11, 1995, at the Bataclan in Paris, France)

Disc Five - The Grace EP (originally issued as commercial release in Australia, February 1996) - Selections: 1. Grace (edit of Grace album version) • 2. Grace • 3. Mojo Pin • 4. Hallelujah (tracks 2-4 mastered from soundboard tape recorded live on February 28, 1996, at Palais Theatre in Melbourne, Australia) • Bonus track: 5. Tongue (recorded on cassette during rehearsal at Montana Studios, New York City, at height of Grace recording sessions)

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