Juliette & The Licks

Although Juliette Lewis had embodied numerous wild eccentrics across her film roles, nothing from those Hollywood performances hinted at the explosive intensity she would reveal as frontwoman of Juliette and the Licks. Her earliest visible steps into rock music occurred in 1994 via an appearance in the clip for Melissa Etheridge’s “Come to My Window.” The following year she delivered PJ Harvey’s “Hardly Wait” on-screen in Strange Days, yet further musical ambitions stayed largely dormant for the subsequent eight years while acting commitments dominated. Lewis paused her screen work in 2003, the same year she featured in H.I.M.’s “Buried Alive by Love” video and assembled the four-piece lineup known as the Licks.

Audiences first encountered the group’s Van Halen-meets-Iggy Pop style at Johnny Depp’s Viper Room venue, where they also heard the tracks Lewis had co-written with hit songwriter Linda Perry. Throughout the next year the band toured the West Coast relentlessly, Lewis taking the stage in spandex, high-heeled boots, and other overtly rocker outfits. Live reactions ranged from favorable to outright astonished. In September 2004 she served as vocalist and co-songwriter on the Prodigy album Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. One month later the Licks issued their debut EP, ...Like a Bolt of Lightning, through Fiddler Records. Additional roadwork, including a stretch on the tenth Vans Warped Tour, preceded the May 2005 arrival of their first full-length album, You’re Speaking My Language. While promoting that record they began composing material for a follow-up, but their drummer departed once the trek concluded; Nirvana/Foo Fighters drummer Dave Grohl stepped in, initially for demos yet remaining through the sessions that produced Four on the Floor, issued in late 2006. The accompanying Four on the Floor DVD appeared in December 2007. Lewis declared the band’s dissolution in 2009, though they reconvened in 2015 for a series of shows that continued into 2016.