73-MINUTE CD DRAWS FROM:

• LIVE AT SIN-é EP (1993),
• ORIGINAL GRACE ALBUM (1994),
• GRACE: LEGACY EDITION (2004),
• SKETCHES FOR MY SWEETHEART THE DRUNK (1998)

"Mojo Pin," "Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin," "Last Goodbye," "Grace," "Lover You Should Have Come Over," "Hallelujah," "Forget Her," "Eternal Life (Road Version)," "Dream Brother (Alternate Take)," and more

Two previously unreleased tracks: "So Real" (live & acoustic in Japan) and cover of the Smiths' "I Know It's Over" (live at Sony Studios in NY, 1995)

Liner notes written by Rolling Stone's David Fricke

"This will be the perfect CD to recommend to someone who's never heard of Jeff. For this new album, we've gathered 14 tracks from various previous releases (including the Grace EP's and two previously unreleased songs) and given the listener a well-rounded picture-window sized view of Jeff's entire catalog. We wanted to model it after the mixed tapes that Jeff would put together of a favorite artist."
- Mary Guibert (Jeff Buckley's mother)

"Even for those of us who were there at the start - at St. Ann's or Sin-é, falling for Grace on arrival, then left drunk and dazzled by what happened to those songs on the road - this performance from April, 1995 ['I Know It's Over'], taped for a local radio broadcast but never aired, is another powerful reminder of what we had for too short a time and why the holy in Jeff Buckley's songs and the heaven in his voice never seem far away."
- David Fricke, from the liner notes to
SO REAL: SONGS FROM JEFF BUCKLEY

One of rock's hardest lessons is that the impact of an artist's career is often not measured by the time he spends among us, but rather by the intensity with which his music reverberates after he is gone. Jeff Buckley yielded one original studio album on Columbia Records during his lifetime, the impossibly glorious Grace, released in the summer of 1994. It made its way onto many a fan and critic's list as one of the most important recordings of the '90s.

Buckley's "lamentably brief career," as it has been characterized by his mother, Mary Guibert, came to a tragic and untimely end on May 29, 1997 (at age 30) when he died in a swimming mishap outside Memphis by the banks of the Mississippi River, during a recording stint in Memphis. One week prior to the 10th anniversary of that date, SO REAL: SONGS FROM JEFF BUCKLEY the first official anthology of his work (including two previously unreleased performances) - "the closest Jeff Buckley - singer, songwriter, guitarist, seeker - ever comes to having his own greatest-hits record," as Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke's liner notes state.

Of primal interest to fans, collectors and completists will be the two tracks making their album debuts on SO REAL: SONGS FROM JEFF BUCKLEY. "So Real," originally the centerpiece of Grace, is heard in an acoustic version recorded in Japan - "acoustic as far as the guitars go and electric in every other way," as Fricke comments. It was previously available only on a promotional single.

The other rarity closes the album, a live version of Buckley and his band "spacewalking with elegance through the harrowing resignation of 'I Know It's Over'," as Fricke introduces this cover of the song from the Smiths' 1986 album, The Queen is Dead. The scene was a live session at Sony Studios in New York intended for broadcast on WNEW-FM on April 6, 1995. But the session was edited and the song was not included on the radio broadcast.

The remaining 12 other tracks on the generous 73-minute collection are drawn from Jeff Buckley's four principal Columbia and Columbia/Legacy catalog releases:

" "Mojo Pin" (amongst the earliest Buckley compositions, co-written with guitarist Gary Lucas, from their time together in the band Gods & Monsters) and "Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin" (homage to French chanteuse Edith Piaf, a childhood icon for Buckley) originated on the 4-song Live At Sin-é EP (originally released in 1993, and expanded to a 2-CD+DVD Legacy Edition in 2003);
" The Buckley compositions "Last Goodbye," "Lover You Should Have Come Over," and "Grace," along with his immortal rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" ("ode to the holy," writes Fricke) are all drawn from Grace;
" "Forget Her" (from the original Woodstock recording sessions for Grace, replaced on the album at the 11th hour by "So Real"), "Eternal Life (Road Version)" (recorded just hours after the band debuted it live on a Columbia Records Radio Hour broadcast), and "Dream Brother (Alternate Take)" (the Peyote Radio Theatre promo-only EP version), all Buckley compositions, were introduced on the Grace: Legacy Edition's disc two of rarities;
" "The Sky Is A Landfill," "Everybody Here Wants You," and "Vancouver," are from the demo sessions for what would've been Buckley's second album, produced in New York and Memphis by Tom Verlaine and mixed by Andy Wallace, and released in 1998 as part of the double-CD Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk.