nairobi in flames

«Avery Morgan: I’ve found that there’s kind of a weird cultural obsession with DIY right now. I’m not asking you to be the determiner of the definition of DIY, but I’m curious what changes you’ve seen throughout your years as a DIY musician? Do you have any stress of upholding a sort of idealized identity of being Do-It-Yourself, when it’s just the practices that you need to do to get your work out there?

Jeffrey Lewis: Okay, Avery. So, I think things have changed quite a lot in the sense that when I used to tour, I would come home with piles of stuff. Piles of stuff that people would give me at the gigs.

Avery Morgan: CDs and stuff?

Jeffrey Lewis: Yes, CDs, zines, all sorts of physical media, and that has really gone out of style because here I am, I only have one gig left before the end of this tour, and on the whole tour, I’ve been given one CD and maybe one zine. And that’s maybe more than some other tours because I think nowadays people have the opportunity to just put stuff on Instagram and Bandcamp and whatever other, SoundCloud, Spotify, etc. But one thing with doing all of those methods of current modern digital distribution for whether it’s artwork or music: the fact that I just had to say a bunch of corporate names is problematic to me. If you just give me a zine or a CD, you’re really operating in a free open zone where anybody can just make anything, do anything, and pass it around and it’s not being monetized by some CEO. It’s not under some kind of format controlled by somebody else. Whereas nowadays, these things are accessible but they are also owned spaces. Or you have to say, “Check out my Instagram, trademark, copyright, Instagram, blah, blah, blah, blah… Check out my SoundCloud, check out my Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp”. Everything is taking place in a corporate space. It’s a defined space that has parameters defined by that business and monetized by that business.​​​​​​ ​​Sending somebody else to my Bandcamp, or to my Instagram, to my TikTok, I’m advertising somebody else’s business in addition to my own work, whereas if I were to just give you my comic book or a record that I make myself, I don’t have to mention anybody’s freaking company name, I don’t have to send you to their companies, see their advertisements, be part of their algorithm, have them get your information in anyway or shape.

So the fact that there are these opportunities now is great, but it also is a little weird that there isn’t as much of a really autonomous zone of culture that’s completely like… Uh, “DIY”, to use that phrase. There’s something special about something that is genuinely just off the grid essentially. We’re in a weird cultural phase where that’s the current situation, not that it’s necessarily a bad thing because people are doing amazing, creative work, so people will continue to be creative and amazing regardless.

My own methods have always just been whatever works. I have an email list out here at my gigs where people are using a pen to write down their email address, and at the end of the tour, I have to go home and type it in, and I’m like, “What the hell does this say? Is that a J or an L or an I or a Q? Let me type it in four different ways and send an email to all four of them, and maybe one of them will reach this person”. It’s a very clunky and out-of-date way to keep in touch with fans, but I find it very effective, because if somebody wants to hear about my gigs or my comic books, that is a very direct way, and it doesn’t rely on, it’s not like making a TikTok post where maybe somebody will see it, maybe they won’t. Maybe TikTok gets banned by the government, and then it’s gone. Maybe it’s an Instagram post, and I have a certain number of Instagram followers, but when Instagram stops being popular, then all those followers are gone, and my email list is kind of like a direct connection between myself and the people that want to hear about my stuff.»