Mother Of Earth

Notes

The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project is a continuing posthumous cover album series, as tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. After Dave Gahan had recorded another Soulsavers album titled 'Imposter' in 2019, he revealed to the Illinois Entertainer in 2021:

"Well, there was one song that we were going to record from The Gun Club, a Jeffrey Lee Pierce song. We were gonna do 'Mother of Earth'. And we were kind of knocking it around, me and Rich [Machin] before we went in to record, but I sort of couldn't find a place in it. So we didn't end up recording it. But just recently, it came back to me because this artist-singer Suzie Stapleton — she's Australian, but she lives in Brighton — she's got this project called The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions. And she asked me if I would do a song with her. And so a couple of months back, I said, "Well, funnily enough, I was gonna do 'Mother of Earth' for the record that I'm just about to release. Do you fancy doing that?" And so she sent me some parts, and we ended up doing it so that record is coming out next year. It's called The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions. And it's weird how things like that happen. [...]"

Suzie Stapleton wrote on her Instagram account:

"'Mother of Earth' feat. Dave Gahan is officially out today and streaming on all platforms. I'd been playing around with an arrangement of Mother of Earth in my home studio but didn't know who was going to sing on it. The lyrics are so beautiful and evocative and I wanted to see if I could take this song to a different place - a tricky endeavour when the Gun Club original is so perfect. When I emailed Dave to invite him to take part in the project, it just so happened that the Soulsavers covers record 'Imposter' was due to be released soon and he mentioned that at one point he'd also been playing around with a version of 'Mother of Earth' which didn't make it onto that record. So I showed him my arrangement and asked if he'd like to sing on it. He really liked it and agreed to take part. He sent me his vocals and lead guitar parts recorded in his studio in New York soon after. It was very serendipitous. And a testament to what a brilliant songwriter Jeffrey Lee Pierce was."

A music video for the cover was recorded in June 2023 while Depeche Mode were passing through London for their concert at Twickenham Stadium:

Dates where Mother Of Earth was played

Mother Of Earth has never been played live.