Lord Jeff—aka Lord Jeffery Amherst—is most certainly the only Valley band to lose members to Scientology, a drive-by shooting, and Katy Perry. The group has been a working concern for almost a decade, playing countless shows and releasing a string of recordings, including the recent, Lord Jeff, for the Ecstatic Peace! label.
“It’s all been a blur,” says vocalist and guitarist Sean Goggins, “I think we’ve played close to 400 shows by now, self released three albums and five tapes, toured the country four times.”
Four of the six band members—Goggins, Orion Russell (drums, vocals), Simon Thompson (bass, vocals, rapping/hype), and Mike Tebaldi (bass)—have known each other since their school days. Goggins and Thompson had been playing music together before Tebaldi joined in 2000, when the musicians were in 8th grade. They recruited Russell from a “bizarre” independent study music class at Northampton High School.
“At first there were like 10 students, but everyone except the four of us had dropped the class,” says Goggins of the course, which he claims had no actual instructor. “We would jam on two chords very loudly and I would solo over it. The principal would come by and tell us to stop, and eventually they told us to go into the storage closet, so our band started to formulate as all four of us sat in this storage closet.”
A few years later, the group began playing shows in clubs around New England, then moved—Boston to Asheville, N.C. to Los Angeles—before settling back here in 2009.
“In Los Angeles the band was initially just me and Orion,” says Goggins. “Over two years we had three different bass players and four keyboardists. One of the bass players got recruited to join Katy Perry’s band and left. One keyboard player joined Scientology, moved into the L. Ron Hubbard building and shunned music. Another bass player left because he was convinced that Orion was stealing his soul and was sending him ‘evil mind messages.’ Another keyboardist caught a stray bullet in his hand during a drive-by, and couldn’t play any more. After this happened, we decided to go back to Massachusetts, where things seemed a bit more down to earth and safe.”
Over 20 musicians have passed through the ranks of Lord Jeff, but Goggins is convinced that the current lineup sounds better than any assembled in the last decade. In addition to the aforementioned quartet, the group now includes Shane Donnelly on guitar, bass, and vocals, and David Kadden on Farfisa organ and oboe.
A lot of folks have contributed sounds and voices, but the songwriting duties fall to Goggins, who says his process is never the same twice in a row.
“Sometimes I will be writing down lots of words for several days and then edit it all together into a few songs,” he says. “Sometimes I will have ideas for chord changes, or parts that I have arranged. I write a lot of classical and jazz music and I tend to use little bits of ideas from that to make new ‘rock’ songs. Sometimes I am just making music with a computer program, or have just sat down to improvise with a guitar and a 4-track. It all depends what I am trying to do. Lately I’ve been writing stuff that is more uptempo, but with vague lyrics that vaguely imply something creepy or disturbing.”
Lord Jeff plays Nov. 20, 10 p.m., Iron Horse, Northampton, (413) 586-8686, www.iheg.com.
For more information, visit http://lordjeff.com.
