by Ryan McLean Davis / DJ Bugs
A Paloma-induced account of Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage at Felton Music Hall:
February 20, 2026. 7:45 p.m.
Jeffrey Lewis stands silently over there, behind the merch table.
Boyfriend buys me a Paloma at the bar. I wonder what I’d ask Jeffrey, if given the chance. Boyfriend suggests the questions: watt’s going on with you? and, what about the current? (…) The supporting band, Pacing, goes on. This San Jose-based, anti-folk, indie-pop project of Katie McTigue hones a sound that has the quirkiness of early Rilo Kiley and the confessional, intimate lyricism of Kimya Dawson. The band features an upright bass and the occasional violin. Katie is funny. She prefaces a song she wrote about The Sopranos. She says she used to listen to Jeffrey Lewis on her iPod when she was younger. Jeffrey likes to give the little guys a chance. He did the same in October when I saw him play at The Grand Social in Dublin; there, he was supported by local Irish indie-rock band Softdrink Millionaire, who were awesome!
Taken momentarily out of my reminiscence, I look behind me to see
Jeffrey Lewis still standing silently, over there behind the merch table.
In Dublin too, he’d lurk around the venue during the opening set, blending in and out of the shadows. I almost didn’t notice him then, standing in front of me in the audience the whole time. Only when the openers finished and he strolled on up to the stage did I realize how close I had been to reaching out and touching his signature hat and classic flannel–which, he again, wears tonight.
I just met a group of young people also from San Jose. They dance hard and beautifully over there by the stage now. Katie bids the rest of the band farewell; left alone on the stage, she starts the next song that begins “I’m starting to give up on the band” and ends “I’m giving up on giving up on the band.”
Jeffrey Lewis stands silently, still, over there behind the merch table. He’s like a proud dad, passing down the comedic, anti-folk wisdom of his time onto a new generation…
Jeffrey Lewis now stands at the back of the crowd!
I look back at him but he backs away, dispersing like an elusive fog. Where are you going, Jeffrey? I’m just a journalist–you don’t need to run away from me! But Jeffrey’s genius lies in his elusive nature and his existential, yet hopeful and romantic poetry. Pacing’s set ends and Jeffrey floats up to take their place. I speak to Katie at the merch table during the transition. She drew all their CD covers and sewed each hat’s patch on by hand. She’s excited to continue supporting Jeffrey and the band in their next two shows. As all great shows are, this one proceeds to be a blur. Jeffrey shows a comic short film he made (he makes those) and speaks a poem. He plays many great songs, notably “Movie Date” from their newest album, “The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis.” I cry as he sings about watching movies with a lover who keeps falling asleep before the endings–doubling as a recollection of a relationship in which passion has faded but love stays, ending on a beautifully bittersweet, romantic yet lonesome sentiment:
…It used to be we’d rarely get through movies/’Cause loving passion swept away our patience/Epics or shorts, we still couldn’t get through these/We’d miss the end, whatever their durations
Till with more time spent at work and less for kisses/I thought at least we’d now watch movies till the end/But sad to say, that’s still the part she misses/I guess we wouldn’t even get through them just as friends
We love to be together, that’s for certain/There’s deep communication in our hearts/But when each morning we discuss Hitchcock or Bergman/We only talk about the way each movie starts
‘Cause that head starts swinging with that same old motion/And it’s hardly even half past nine o’clock/Soon you’re bobbing far away out on the ocean/And I’m left lonely watching movies on the dock
His lyrics shock me in how they are able to be existential, hopeful, hilarious, and melancholy at once. He shows another comic short film about the fall of the Soviet Union. He plays “Inger,” another one off the new album. I cry more than I did before. It seems as Jeffrey gets older, his music gets more melancholy–though it was always there, it seems to be coming more to the surface now.
I didn’t talk to him after the show. A part of me wanted to retain the elusiveness I have attributed to him in my mind. I allowed my body to back away and the music to appear in the space between us–an invisible string connecting our different times, spaces, and experiences, joining together through the common network of humanity.