Late musician Jeff Buckley's Memphis home remodeled into 'tribute' Airbnb: A look inside

Long a site of pilgrimage for fans from around the world, the modest Midtown cottage that was the last home of singer Jeff Buckley soon will be available for more than social-media photo ops and sidewalk-shot YouTube videos.

“I want this to be in homage to him, but not like a hipster’s Graceland,” said David Lorrison, a real estate agent and longtime concert booker who is working with developer Eric Goode to make the property again available for occupancy.

Purchased for $143,800 in March by Goode Development, the somewhat dilapidated, roughly 900-square-foot house at 93 N. Rembert is being repaired and restored, for use as an Airbnb or for possible sale, with serious Buckley enthusiasts the most likely patrons. The house should be ready by Thanksgiving, developers say.

“Nobody in Memphis was paying attention to the house,” said Lorrison, noting that the 1920 two-bedroom home had been unoccupied for about a year and left to molder, without gas, water or electricity. “But when you look online, you see people are coming here from all over. They drive for miles to make videos of the house and trace Jeff’s steps in Memphis.”

The project comes at a time of renewed media interest in Buckley, in recognition of the 30th anniversary of “Grace,” the only studio album the singer completed and released before his death. Meanwhile, growing numbers of young listeners are discovering and celebrating Buckley's music on TikTok and other digital platforms, attracted by the haunting quality of the singer's ethereal voice and intimate lyrics.

'A singular talent'

The son of tragic folk/pop star Tim Buckley, who died of a drug overdose in 1975 at the age of 28, Jeff Buckley drowned in the Wolf River Harbor — essentially, a channel of the Mississippi — on May 29, 1997, after wading into the water to swim near the Mud Island monorail, in an apparently exuberant mood. He was 30.

Buckley’s body was found in the Wolf River on June 4. He apparently had been caught in the wake of a passing tugboat. The Shelby County Medical Examiner ruled the death an accidental drowning.

Inspired by his friendship with the Grifters, a local postpunk band, Buckley, who grew up in the Los Angeles area, had been in Memphis close to a year, working on new material, recording at Easley-McCain studio, and performing regular but unadvertised shows at Barristers, a punk club in a Downtown alleyway.

“Jeff Buckley was beautiful to behold" and "a singular talent,” but “Memphis allowed him a chance to be a pretty regular guy,” wrote music historian and documentary filmmaker Robert Gordon, in a chapter about Buckley in his 2018 book, “Memphis Rent Party.”

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According to Gordon, Buckley came to Memphis “to be free” from the “heat” of music-industry pressure. “Jeff Buckley had fame and came here to lose it,” wrote Gordon, who befriended the musician.

Instead, the singer’s fame and popularity have increased almost exponentially since his ultimately tragic Memphis residency.

"Grace,” which stalled at 149 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart during its initial release, has sold some 2.5 million copies since 1997. It was ranked No. 147 on Rolling Stone magazine’s most recent list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”

Released as a single on the 10th anniversary of Buckley's death, the singer’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” reached the top spot on Billboard’s digital charts. In 2013, the Buckley version was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.

Last week, Forbes reported that Buckley is reaching new heights via that vaunted seismometer of the zeitgeist, TikTok. According to the business magazine, Buckley’s recording “Lover, You Should Have Come Over” is “surging in popularity” and has entered the TikTok top 20 for the first time, "as users on TikTok have been choosing the tune to soundtrack their short-form videos." Also last week, BBC released a new documentary, "Jeff Buckley Forever," narrated by Guy Pearce, with recollections from Patti Smith, Robert Plant and Chrissie Hynde, among others.

Destination home

Both Goode and Lorrison (a Realtor with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices/Taliesyn Realty) are long-connected with the local music scene. Under the name "Eric 'The Hit Man' Goose," the 56-year-old Goode — who still plays in bands — was half of the alternative-rock deejay team on radio's "The Buzz & Eric Show," found on various stations in the 1990s. Meanwhile, Lorrison, 54 — a sometime chef as well as music promoter — was significant as the founder and original owner of the Hi Tone Cafe, booking such national acts in the club's original location near Overton Park as Iris Dement and Jonathan Richman, along with numerous local bands.

So, the two men are aware that some fans and Memphis acquaintances of the singer might object to the commercialization of the house. But while the profit motive is undeniable, Lorrison says the refurbishing (the Jay Alan Schwartz Electric Co. restored the power) is both a "tribute" to the singer and an acknowledgment of the fact that the home — even in a state of disrepair — was a magnet for Buckley enthusiasts and music tourists.

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Also undeniable is the fact that many people are attracted to the homes of the notable departed, especially when the deceased person — whether Elvis or James Dean (lionized in his childhood town of Fairmount, Indiana) or Edgar Allan Poe (whose student room at the University of Virginia has been preserved) — died at a relatively young age.

Situated among several eccentric dwellings on an eclectic block of Rembert, the former Buckley house makes sense as a music-tourist destination. It's not far from the historic Overton Park Shell (the still active music venue where Elvis made his public performing debut in 1954 ), Ardent Studios (where such artists as ZZ Top, Alex Chilton and the Replacements cut records), and the clubs of Madison Avenue.

Lorrison plans to furnish the interior with period-appropriate furniture, although the only piece now inside the house is a long church pew. That might be incongruous in some circumstances, but it seems appropriate for a singer whose most popular album is "Grace" and whose voice and visage frequently are characterized as "angelic."

Of course, furniture wasn't particularly important to Buckley. “He just kind of camped out in there,” said Memphis music writer Andria Lisle, who hung out with Buckley, along with such other Memphians as Gordon, David Shouse of the Grifters, and David’s wife, Tammy Shouse.

“The house was really spare,” Lisle said. “It was a tiny, wonky, Midtown house, typical for that neighborhood. He borrowed a gorgeous Victorian couch from David and Tammy, but other than that he kind of just had a phone, an answering machine, and a mattress. He always had a pile of books and CDs. He moved from room to room, following the sunlight."

On a recent weekday morning, sunlight bathed the front room, illuminating the newly uncovered pine floors and three framed portraits of Buckley that Lorrison had spaced along the church pew. The single-story home's blue metal roof and freshly painted blue-and-white exterior glowed.

Resting on top of a small hill, the building boasts such a basic, rectangular design, with its center doorway flanked by large windows, that it might be the house in a children's drawing.

Lorrison said he was aware that Buckley had become more than a cult figure in the years since the singer's death; even so, he was not expecting the torrent of Buckley-connected "content" that has appeared in the months since he and Goode began working on the house.

The online enthusiasm for the singer feels like a good omen, he said. "It's been almost serendipitous, in a way," he said. "Every day, it seems like there's another article or another video."

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Late musician Jeff Buckley's Memphis home remodeled into 'tribute' Airbnb: A look inside