Jeffrey Lewis at Radio Bean

I’ve been following Jeffrey Lewis anti-folk jams since the mid 2000s. It’s lo-fi, catchy, emotionally honest, and punk. He’s also an accomplished comic artist, publishing memoir comics and contributing chapters to anthologies — including a piece on Tuli Kupferberg (The Fugs) in The Beats: A Graphic History, which he researched by interviewing Tuli in person. The two sides of his creative output both get showcased at his shows.

This was the second time I caught him live. He’s a full DIYer in the most literal way: no tour bus, no hotel. Nope, he asks fans to put him up for the night at each stop on a tour. There’s something endearing about that committment to couchsurfing.

He did a Yiddish-influenced song — rhyming, rhythmic, leaning into the New York accent with obvious delight. He’s been doing this long enough to have his own vernacular.

The comic performance the crowd picked was on the Cuban Missile Crisis. He hauls out his oversized comic — large hand-drawn panels held up one at a time as the song moves through the crisis: Turkey, Cuba, October 14th, 1962. It’s funny and tense and completely unique.