Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.
“This is a song some of you have probably never heard…most of you,” Jeff Buckley told his audience during a July 1995 performance in France, introducing “What Will You Say”—a haunting midtempo song that became one of his most frequently performed unreleased pieces. The performance was later included on the 2000 live album Mystery White Boy. Having released only one studio album in his lifetime (Grace in 1994), Buckley regularly supplemented his lengthy tour sets with covers and new material, with “What Will You Say” becoming a particular favorite that typically ran 7 minutes or longer.
“What Will You Say” was primarily written by one of Buckley’s closest friends, Fishbone keyboardist Chris Dowd, with Buckley and drummer Carla Azar (Wendy and Lisa, the Waterboys) also receiving songwriting credits. Another recording from a 1994 performance at Wetlands in New York, released on a 2019 live album, features Buckley and Dowd singing the song together.
Despite Buckley performing “What Will You Say” roughly 100 times between 1994 and 1996, a studio recording of the song has never surfaced in decades of posthumous releases. It evidently wasn’t among the many tracks he worked on for his unfinished second album before dying in 1997, which were compiled on 1998’s Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk. Dowd and Buckley worked together extensively in a band called the Seedy Arkhestra, but there’s no indication that “What Will You Say” was part of that project—a different song they co-wrote, “Despite the Tears,” appeared on the only Seedy Arkhestra album, 1997’s Puzzle.
In a 2011 solo performance at Arlene’s Grocery in New York, which has been archived on YouTube, Dowd performed “What Will You Say.” He also talked about how Buckley wrote Grace’s closing track “Dream Brother” about him, and reciprocated that gesture with a song he’d written about Buckley called “Long Live the Chief.”
Three more essential Jeff Buckley deep album cuts:
“She Is Free” with Gary Lucas
Buckley wrote two of his greatest songs, “Mojo Pin” and “Grace,” with Captain Beefheart sideman Gary Lucas. A collection of Buckley and Lucas’s collaborations called Songs To No One 1991-1992 was released in 2002, with legendary jazz guitarist Bill Frisell recording additional overdubs on the standout “She Is Free.”
“Calling You”
The Jevetta Steele song “Calling You” was nominated for an Academy Award after appearing in the 1987 film Bagdad Café. The expanded 2003 edition of Buckley’s debut release, the Live at Sin-e EP, featured a gorgeous rendition of Bob Telson-penned ballad.
“I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted To Be)”
Sketches For My Sweetheart the Drunk is largely comprised of polished studio recordings that Buckley made with his backing band. The set’s second disc, however, features a few 4-track recordings Buckley made alone in his rental house in Memphis that are truly more like sketches than songs. The most striking of those lo-fi recordings is “I Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted To Be),” which feels remarkably fully realized despite a scratchy rhythm track that sounds like it may have been Buckley just tapping his fingers on a microphone.
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