Juliette Lewis steps to the mic
By CHRIS PAGE
Get Out

Juliette Lewis knows what you’re thinking.

Another actor trying to give it a go in a rock ’n’ roll band. As if film fame wasn’t enough.

Lewis, 31, realizes her fellow acting peers haven’t fared so well in bands: Gina Gershon, Keanu Reeves, Jared Leto, Billy Bob Thornton, to name just a few — all have tried it with varying degrees of suckitude.

But the actress best known for films such as “Cape Fear,” “Natural Born Killers” and “The Other Sister,” now fronting a raucous band called Juliette and The Licks, wants you to come to her live show anyway. Wants to prove you wrong.

“The lower your expectations, the more you think we’re going to suck, the better,” says Lewis. “Because we’re just going to hit it out of the park.”

She’s bringing The Licks to Phoenix for a Sunday night concert at The Old Brickhouse, two days before the release of her band’s debut full-length album, “You’re Speaking My Language.” (See CD review, sidebar.) The first hint that Lewis might take a stab at the whole rock music thing was in 1995’s “Strange Days,” an altogether pointless sci-fi flick punctuated by one captivating moment: The actress, wearing a vaguely see-through mesh dress, taking to the stage in a gritty nightclub, lipping up to the mic and turning a standard-issue PJ Harvey song into a sonic, spastic freakout.

“But music’s always been a part of me,” Lewis says. “Nobody’s known how much a part it’s been.”

A decade after “Strange Days,” Lewis assembled a band of hired guns, put out a cheap and gritty six-song CD (“...Like a Bolt of Lightning”) as a calling card, toured on the Warped Tour and earned fans both stateside and overseas — ultimately landing spots at England’s major Reading and Leeds rock festivals this summer, after her band finishes a spring-summer tour here in the States.

Under Lewis’ guidance, The Licks have crafted a brand of rock that wears its influences on its sleeve: A manic, high-energy live show that puts Lewis in line with fellow stage spazzes Iggy Pop and Andrew W.K., and a band that borrows vibes from late-’70s, early-’80s rock — the Pretenders, Tom Petty, Joan Jett — with just a dash of old-school punk and ’90s grit. (Listen to Lewis’ scratchy croon and try not to think L7.) Lewis isn’t afraid of the actor-turned-rocker curse, mind you, mostly because she downplays her career on the big screen.

“I’m not some movie star. I’m not some billion-dollar megastar. I’m just a working actress,” she says.

She still has a slate of film projects this year and into the next (she’s set to co-star with Jennifer Garner and Timothy Olyphant in “Erin Brockovich” screenwriter Susannah Grant’s 2006 romantic drama “Catch and Release”), but insists she’s serious about her new gig as a rocker. After touring for this album, she hopes to sign the band to a major label and put out a more polished album. For now, she’s being picky about film roles.

“That’s deliberate. I’m only going to do a movie if I think it’s really special,” she says. “I want to give everything to this band. If I tried to do it half-ass, nothing would happen. I’m fulfilled doing music.”