Video: Jeffrey Lewis Shares 'Just Fun' Video with Joanna Sternberg Cameo

The celebrated, mind-spinning indie-rock/folk songwriter and comic book artist Jeffrey Lewis has shared “Just Fun,” the newest single from the upcoming album The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis, due for release on March 21st, 2025 on Don Giovanni Records (North America) and Blang Records (UK).

The EVEN MORE Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis was recorded in just four days in Nashville, by Roger Moutenot (long-time producer of Yo La Tengo, and the previous Jeffrey Lewis album Bad Wiring), and features the Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage band of Brent Cole on drums, Mem Pahl on bass and Mallory Feuer on violin and keyboard. Jeffrey & bandmates are on the road for 2025 live dates, SEE ALL CONFIRMED DATES BELOW, with more to come. 

The click of a voice-memo recorder begins the lo-fi solo acoustic “Just Fun.” Since his debut album in 2001 (The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane), Jeffrey Lewis has consistently staked out a claim on the optimistically pessimistic, or pessimistically optimistic; this wonderful new mini-epic zig-zags through the big topics of parents, parenting, romance and creativity, in a philosophical barrage that might leave you laughing and crying at the same time. Lewis’s ship-in-a-bottle lyric constructions may pass right by most listeners’ ears without them realizing quite why his songs tickle the soul so uniquely, but these two minutes and nineteen seconds might have more rhymes than most songwriters’ whole albums. There’s rapid-fire syllabic craftiness in the double “…Old now/ told how…” to the triple “…too grown-up to fume/ …thrown the phone across the room” to the five-rhymes-for-the-price-of-one: “first see your glowing promise as an actor or a painter / then be honest you’re a hack who knows their glow is getting fainter.” It’s not just the form of a song, it’s the content that wins hearts and minds, but Jeffrey nails both; even when recorded at the kitchen sink. 

The release of “Just Fun” is accompanied by a static timelapse video directed by Jak Kerley, which features a cameo by Joanna Sternberg among others.

According to Jeffrey Lewis: “Joanna lives in the same building-complex as my cousin Edye (& her bf Keith) who play the parents in the first verse so I figured we could multitask while filming there and go meet Joanna for a quick scene (similar "Easter egg" for fans as the Frankie Cosmos cameo in the "LPs" video from 2019). Also the snowy daytime street where I do the unclothed part is the ‘Freewheelin’ corner of Jones & W 4th St, from the 1963 Dylan album and my album.”

 

“Just Fun” follows the lead single “Sometimes Life Hits You” which accompanied the album announcement in January with a video directed by Matt (Pizza Underground) Colbourn. A squall of amp feedback kicks down the door to the full band stomper “Sometimes Life Hits You,” which comes across like AC/DC snorting too much Dostoevsky. A live killer on the band’s post-pandemic tours, this one has had whole audiences spontaneously screaming along to the “f, That Hurt!” choruses despite having never heard the song before. A clean radio edit got some pre-release national airplay on the BBC, and caught the attention of Austin Town Hall, Brooklyn Vegan, Paste, and Viking’s Choice among others upon its release. The “Sometimes Life Hits You” video has some “Easter eggs” for anyone who shares Jeffrey’s old school comic book fandom, in the form of certain stickers on Jeffrey’s guitar that get close-ups throughout the video; are you enough of an expert on comic book history to identify some of the iconic panels that get humorously repurposed?

Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage Album Release TOUR DATES

3/20 Brooklyn NY The Meadows (NYC Record Release Show) w/ Phoebe Kreutz + Shilpa Ray

3/21 Baltimore MD Metro

3/22 Cleveland OH Happy Dog

3/23 Cincinnati OH Northside Tavern

3/24 Indianapolis IN Healer

3/25 St. Louis MO Sinkhole

3/26 Kansas City MO The Ship

3/27 Des Moines IA Lefty's

3/28 Fargo ND Parachigo

3/29 Minneapolis MN Pillar Forum

3/30 Madison WI

3/31 Milwaukee WI Cactus Club

4/01 Grand Rapids MI Pyramid Scheme

4/02 Detroit MI The Lager House

4/03 Columbus OH Cafe Bourbon Street

4/04 Buffalo NY Nietzsche's

4/24 Hamburg, Molotow

4/25 Aalbourg, Studenterhuset

4/26 Copenhagen, Huset

4/27 Stockholm, Hus 7

4/28 Malmo, Plan B

4/29 Berlin, Lark

4/30 Stuttgart, Merlin

5/03 Arlon, Les Aralunaires

5/04 Utrecht, dB's

5/05 Paris, Supersonic Records

5/06 Paris, Supersonic Records

5/07 London, The Dome

5/08 Leicester, The International

5/09 Cambridge, Storey's Field

5/10 Leeds, Brudenell Social Club

5/11 Glasgow, Room 2

5/12 Newcastle, Gosforth Civic Theatre

5/13 Sheffield, Yellow Arch Studios

5/14 Cardiff, The Gate

5/15 Bristol, Strange Brew

5/16 Margate, Where Else?

5/17 Les Nuits Botanique, Brussels

Photo credit: Ilya Popenko

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