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Disgraceland has always been a profoundly original podcast. Since it’s first episode February 3, 2018 about the dangerous and out-of-control lifestyle of rock n’roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis, host Jake Brennan has tapped into something elemental about these stories of larger than life musical figures and he just started the year as the winner of the Best Music Podcast at the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards.
He’s been teasing something new for a while, at least since I talked with him last September, but yesterday the first episode of that new show, 27 Club, an iHeartRadio original podcast arrived.
With similar music and Jake Brennan at the helm, the bones of 27 Club make it feel just like an episode of Jake’s other show; whereas Disgraceland is an anthology series with each episode about the excesses of a different musical star, 27’s entire first season is focused on just one man - Jimi Hendrix.
Music lore has long been about myth making, urban legends, and plain ol’ superstition and while Jake leaned into that a fair deal with Disgraceland, he’s made it front and center with 27 Club, the title itself a reference to the age at which a number of iconic musicians passed away. The idea started when Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix all died at the age of 27 within a few years of each other between 1969 and 1971 and became a cultural force when Kurt Cobain took his own life at that same age in 1994.
Jake’s speaking style on the show is in a slightly hushed tone as if he’s giving you privileged information that he came by personally, and his words back it up opening with 27 reasons why Jimi Hendrix who died at the age of 27 “lived a life unlike any other.” There’s music and poetry in Jake’s voice when he lists the musicians who wanted to quit when they heard Jimi play, combined with top-notch storytelling when he tells you what Jimi was thinking, what he wanted, and what was driving him.
Obviously a lot of it is conjecture, but that comes from filling in the holes in what is I’m sure a staggering amount of research and makes the details come alive in a way that Wikipedia can’t do and the old show VH1’s Behind the Music could only dream of. It’s intimacy, that’s what you’re buying in these stories, the chance to feel what your musical hero’s felt, the ones you’ve spent your whole life listening to and idolizing.
The first episode in a 12-episode season details some stories that are quintessentially Jimmy, from his jealous rage with girlfriend Carmen Borrero for talking too much about Eric Burdon of The Animals, to going on a joy ride in Seattle in the car of a backstage fan he just met. For Jimi, his wild creative freedom and success led to bad decision making in other parts of his life. Was that his crack pipe and powder the Canadian Mounties found in his bag? Jimi couldn’t remember and thought it was a present from a girl who was out to get him. Everyone wanted a piece of the legend that absolutely shredded the Star Bangled Banner at Woodstock.
It makes for an engrossing tale as we’ve come to expect from Jake Brennan, and I expect things to get pretty deep with 12 episodes to work with.
New episodes premiere weekly every Thursday and the second season will focus on Jim Morrison. The show is produced by Jake Brennan for Double Elvis Productions in partnership with iHeartRadio.
