- Jeff Bridges recently shared an album of previously unreleased songs called Slow Magic
- The project, released on Saturday, April 12, features an eccentric collection of songs and jam sessions that evoke a bygone era.
- In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the actor/musician opened up about the making of the record and the movie people quote to him most (aside from The Big Lebowski).
Coming from a showbiz family that encouraged his creativity, Jeff Bridges has been able to tap into an array of interests. From acting and singing to painting, photography and ceramics, he was always finding ways into his artistic pursuits.
And back in the 1970s, Bridges, 75, purchased a Malibu house that became a clubhouse for a group of close friends — Stan Ayeroff (a guitarist and author), David Greenwalt (co-producer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Matthew Bright (a bassist who directed Freeway); and Steve Baim (who auditioned to be James Brown’s drummer) — who surfed, hung out in the hot tub and played music together.
Now, Bridges is sharing some of previously unreleased recordings from that time with Slow Magic 1977-1978. The project, which Bridges worked on last year with Keefus Ciancia, Jean Sievers and Matt Sullivan features a cast of characters from the West Los Angeles art and music underground scene of the era including Burgess Meredith (Rocky, Batman) and members of Oingo Boingo, and the result is an unruly, inventive and eccentric collection of songs and jam sessions that evoke a bygone era.
“I was excited about [how] it was going to put me in contact with all these old friends that I had lost track of,” The Big Lebowski star tells PEOPLE of the album. “And sure enough, it did that. It’s been a wonderful journey, realizing these tunes in this way.”
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Bridges opens up about the process of releasing these recordings, the movie people quote to him the most and the chairs that his late brother Beau Bridges got him hooked on that he always brings to set.
PEOPLE: Congratulations on your new (old) album. What made you decide to share these previously unreleased recordings?
BRIDGES: A dear friend, Keefus Ciancia set the whole thing in motion. Keefus and I have done several projects together. We did an album that T-Bone produced, then we did another album called Sleeping Tapes and a video of the Sleeping Tapes album called Life Is But a Dream, and we made a little video series of that. Then, after those projects, Keefus said, “Why don’t you just come into the studio, bring all your music, all your things you’ve written, and we’ll see what happens?” So I brought a bunch of stuff in. One of the things was this little cassette from the ’70s, and he loved that stuff.
Without telling me, he sent it to his friend Matt Sullivan at Light in the Attic, and they specialize in archival stuff. And they called my music manager, Jean Sievers, and they asked her, “Hey, would he be interested in making an album of this?” And then that news got to me and I said, “Are you kidding? What is it? What are you talking about?” I couldn’t believe that they thought it was something worth making an album out of, but they said, “Yeah, we’d like to.” And then I agreed to it. I’ve loved working with Light in the Attic folks, all those guys. A great group of folks.
PEOPLE: Tell me about the collaborators featured on the album. What was it like revisiting the songs and having them involved?
Bridges: Well, one of the main figures is this guy named Steve Baim. We grew up together, went to grammar school, junior high and high school together. Shortly after high school, he would have these Wednesday night jams over at his house, and there was a core group of jamsters, but we’d have all kinds of people join us. And there were a couple of rules. One, was “no songs.” You couldn’t bring any songs that you were working on or play any cover tunes or anything like that. No blues was allowed. Steve and another jam member, Stan Ayeroff, were in bands together, and Steve just got tired of playing all the covers and playing the E-A-B7 blues progressions. He wanted to just do more experimental music, so that’s what would happen every Wednesday night. This went on for 15, 20 years.
During that same time, I was writing music, so what was happening in the Wednesday night jams would inspire some of my writing. And that’s what you hear on Slow Magic. There’s a couple of instrumentals on there, “Space One” and “Space Two,” that will give you a real idea of what those Wednesday night jams were like, where people were encouraged to play instruments they didn’t know how to play.
PEOPLE: Will you be performing songs from Slow Magic live at any point?
Bridges: I don’t know. I haven’t thought about that.
PEOPLE: You recently sang on Japanese Breakfast’s latest album on the track “Men in Bars.” How did that collaboration come to fruition?
Bridges: Well, Blake Mills worked on an album that I did with T-Bone Burnett, and I’m a huge fan of Blake’s. I love his music. He was producing an album of Japanese Breakfast and he said, “Hey, you want to sing on this tune?” I heard the song, I liked the tune, and it was a chance to hang with Blake. So I jumped on board.
PEOPLE: You have some Big Lebowski screening and Q&A dates in Los Angeles coming up. What can people expect from them?
Bridges: Well, they’re going to see the movie, and I [will] give a Q&A that’ll be centered around photographs that I took while making that movie. I take pictures with a wide-lux camera that they don’t make anymore. My wife Susan and I are in the process of recreating that camera. So that’s what the Lebowski thing will be about. I’m biased of course, but it’s still one of my favorite movies. And it’ll be centered around the photographs that I took during the making of that.
PEOPLE: Aside from The Big Lebowski, what movie do people quote to you the most?
Bridges: Maybe Starman. It’s about an alien who’s trying to be as human as possible. And he comes to a stoplight, and Karen Allen’s character is next to me and she says, “Stop. Stop.” And I go through the light and she says, “Did you see that light?” He goes, “I watched you very carefully. Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.”
PEOPLE: The Old Man was canceled after two seasons in December. What was your reaction to the news?
Bridges: Well, I was kind of surprised we were canceled. We were nominated for all these awards, but I understood that it was a very expensive show to make. And there were several reasons that people talked about why it was canceled. My big disappointment was not getting to work with those people. Amy Brenneman was so great to work with. John Lithgow. The showrunner, Jon Steinberg, was terrific. It was a great team.
PEOPLE: A friend of mine worked with you on a set, and I heard that you used to bring your favorite chair to every set.
Bridges: Yeah. We have these chairs. I’m sitting in one right now. It’s called a Lafuma, but there’s a bunch of ripoffs. But the Lafuma is the one that, my brother Beau [Bridges] turned me onto maybe 20 years ago, and we’ve been using them ever since.
PEOPLE: Are you still bringing your favorite chair to set?
Bridges: A couple, yeah. One for my trailer, one for the set, and I usually give them away, too.
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PEOPLE: Do you have a dream role you’d like to play at this stage in your career?
Bridges: I am more of a counterpunch in that way. I’m fortunate in that material comes my way, and I can say, “Not this, do this.” And my MO is, I kind of resist doing s— a lot because I know what it takes. It takes me away from doing a lot of other stuff that I might want to do. I don’t even know what that stuff is right now, but I’ve experienced that, where you’ve agreed to do something and then something else happens right after that you can’t do. It’s time away from your family. I’ve got four grandkids now, and raising my kids, I was away a lot. So now we’re so fortunate to have them all in Santa Barbara living with us. And all the grandkids, so I’m just steeping in that.
PEOPLE: Slow Magic is full of older recordings. Would you record new music or a new album?
Bridges: I might. What I did while I was sick and had some downtime, something came to the surface that kind of surprised me. But I said, “Yeah, I’m 75. You’ve got all these tunes that you want to [release], and you can polish these up.” And I said, “I’m not going to polish them. Why don’t I just release them in a rough form and put a visual aspect to them?”
So I released something called Emergent Behavior. This is in the same spirit as Slow Magic in that it’s all rough — either stuff that I did with my band The Abiders or songs that I just did on GarageBand. I might put out more of those. It was something [where] I said, “Well, the whole music thing is so different now. What do you charge?” And so I decided [to] just have people donate to No Kid Hungry and the Amazon Conservation Team, two organizations that I’m very much a part of. So I don’t know, life just seems to have its way with me doing these weird projects that I enjoy. You were talking about The Old Man being discontinued. The upside of that is now I’ve got some time to do all these weird little things.
Slow Magic 1977-1978 is out now.
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