Lunch was born on June 2, 1959, in
Rochester, New York, and is of German and Italian descent. She moved to New York City at the age of 16 and eventually moved into a communal household of artists and musicians. After befriending
Alan Vega and
Martin Rev at
Max's Kansas City, she founded the short-lived but influential no-wave band
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, with
James Chance. Both Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and
the Contortions, Chance's subsequent band, played on the no wave compilation
No New York, produced by
Brian Eno. Lunch later appeared on two songs on
James White and the Blacks album,
Off-White. She was in two other short lived bands before launching her solo career in 1980 with Beirut Slump and
8 Eyed Spy. In the mid-1980s, she formed the recording and publishing company "Widowspeak Productions" (also known as just "Widowspeak"), on which she continues to release her own material, from music to
spoken word. Two albums published by Lunch's label were released in 2013:
Collision Course & Trust The Witch, by Big Sexy Noise (released on Cherry Red), and
Retrovirus (released on Interbang Records); both albums are by Lunch's musical projects. She released her studio album
Smoke in the Shadows in November 2004, through
Atavistic Records and Breakin Beats, after a six-year break from music.
Nels Cline, the lead guitarist of alternative rock band
Wilco, was featured on the album.
Smoke in the Shadows was met with positive reviews by
AllMusic,
PopMatters, In 2009 Lunch formed the band Big Sexy Noise. The group features Lunch on vocals,
James Johnston (guitars),
Terry Edwards (organ, saxophone), and Ian White (drums). Johnston, White and Edwards are members of the British band
Gallon Drunk. A six-track eponymous EP was released on June 1, 2009, through Sartorial Records, and included a cover of
Lou Reed's song "Kill Your Sons", as well as "The Gospel Singer", a song co-written with Gordon. In 2010, The
Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project launched
We Are Only Riders, the first of a series of four albums featuring Pierce's previously unreleased works-in-progress. The album features interpretations of Pierce's work by friends, collaborators, and admirers, including Lunch. Lunch also contributed to the second album from the project,
The Journey is Long, which was released in April 2012. Although the Pierce Sessions Project's third and final album,
The Task Has Overwhelmed Us, was due for release in late 2012, the schedule was changed after the release of the second installment. Glitterhouse Records, the label producing the collection, instead released a third album titled
Axles & Sockets in May 2014, on which Lunch performs "The Journey Is Long" with Pierce's recordings. The label explained that the third album has become the "penultimate" full-length release of the Project, but did not name the final album, or its release date. Lunch released the album
Retrovirus (also the name of the band Lunch has played with since then) in 2013 on Interbang Records and ugEXPLODE (the vast majority of the album tracks are published by Widowspeak). Together with band members Weasel Walter, Algis Kizys, and Bob Bert, Lunch performed a show following the album's release at the Bowery Electric venue in New York City, in May 2013. In March 2022 the Center for Popular Music (CPM) at
Middle Tennessee State University named her the recipient of the CPM Fellows Award. The only previous recipients of this honor were
Barry Gibb and
Lamont Dozier.
Film She appeared in two films by directors
Scott B and Beth B. In
Black Box (1978) she played a
dominatrix, and in
Vortex (1981) she played a private detective named Angel Powers. During this time, she also appeared in a number of films by
Vivienne Dick, including
She Had Her Gun All Ready (1978) and
Beauty Becomes The Beast (1979), co-starring with
Pat Place. In 2011, Lunch appeared in
Mutantes: punk, porn, feminism, a film directed by
Virginie Despentes, also featuring
Annie Sprinkle and
Catherine Breillat. She also wrote, directed, and acted in
underground films, sometimes collaborating with underground filmmaker
Nick Zedd and photographer
Richard Kern.
Spoken word Lunch has recorded and performed as a
spoken word artist, collaborating with artists such as
Exene Cervenka,
Henry Rollins,
Don Bajema and
Hubert Selby Jr. as well as hosting spoken-word performance night "The Unhappy Hour" at the
Parlour Club. In 1998 she collaborated with the Italian group Minox (which included
Mirco Magnani) with spoken word on the EP
U-Turn and in 2001 on the album
Downworks.
Literature In 1997, Lunch released
Paradoxia, a loose autobiography, in which she documented her early life, sexual history,
substance abuse and mental health problems.
Time Out New York gave it a favorable review, while
Bookslut ambiguously concluded "It's to the reader to determine whether Lunch's study goes deeper than that, or if instead, it's a kind of literary and philosophical repetition compulsion, a reprisal of greatest hits from male nihilists, sexual adventurers and chroniclers of deviance." Additionally, Lunch has authored both traditional books and
comix (with graphic novel artist
Ted McKeever).
Other work In 2013, Lunch ran self-empowerment workshops in locations such as
Ojai, California, and
Rennes, France. In regard to the Rennes workshop, her inaugural self-empowerment event, Lunch recalled: "Every day people would come in that would have to get a hug. I felt like mother India." In 2020, Lunch appeared on the album Against All Logic "2017–2019", by producer
Nicolas Jaar. ==Personal life==