It started with a request for me to sing a few songs at the Nuart Theater for a screening of the Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me documentary. An easy yes. Hadn't sung a full set of songs before but it was a new way forward. I gave Luther Russell a call to ask if he would join me on guitar. Luther and I had met about the same time I was introduced to Jon and Ken, who've come to be close friends/brothers and a way to carry on playing Big Star songs. By the way, at the time, Jon and Ken were in The Posies and Luther was in The Freewheelers…both just getting underway with Geffen Records, circa 1992.
Once established for the Nuart show, other opportunities arose to play these Big Star songs to help promote the documentary. Our first live performance together ended up being a screening of the documentary at the Grammy Museum on a Monday. On Tuesday, Anne Litt hosted our live performance on KCRW. On Wednesday we played at Amoeba....
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It started with a request for me to sing a few songs at the Nuart Theater for a screening of the Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me documentary. An easy yes. Hadn't sung a full set of songs before but it was a new way forward. I gave Luther Russell a call to ask if he would join me on guitar. Luther and I had met about the same time I was introduced to Jon and Ken, who've come to be close friends/brothers and a way to carry on playing Big Star songs. By the way, at the time, Jon and Ken were in The Posies and Luther was in The Freewheelers…both just getting underway with Geffen Records, circa 1992.
Once established for the Nuart show, other opportunities arose to play these Big Star songs to help promote the documentary. Our first live performance together ended up being a screening of the documentary at the Grammy Museum on a Monday. On Tuesday, Anne Litt hosted our live performance on KCRW. On Wednesday we played at Amoeba. The sets were made up of mainly Big Star songs along with a Chris Bell and a Golden Smog song I had written with Gary and Jeff.
After a soundcheck for the Nuart show, Luther and I sat and talked in his car parked just around the corner from the theater. He asked me about writing songs together. "Just send me any ideas." So I did. Lyrics, melody lines were left on his voicemail to which Luther added guitar, piano, additional melodies and more lyrics. We became partners.
After the course of a few months, when the two of us had gotten up to eight or nine songs written--Luther happened to drive pass McCabe's. Connections were made with the venue and it was there we played our first gig to include these new songs. We thought, hmmm, this is going to be a good time...
I am still at Ardent Music/Ardent Studios, so Luther came to Memphis to record two of the new songs, "Lucky Guy" and "Fool of Myself." Sometime later, Luther ran into Sean Bohrman (Burger Records). Sean and I had met before. Luther mentioned our project to him and, after hearing the songs, offered to release a 7" of them. So here we are.
By the way, I had borrowed a line from a Shakespeare sonnet for "Fool of Myself." The line became the name of our band: Those Pretty Wrongs.
—Jody Stephens, Memphis, January, 2015
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