Jackie Leven – Fairy Tales For Hardmen (Tower Arts Centre, Winchester – 1997)

Enthusiastic report on a solo concert in the small, sold-out Tower Theatre in Winchester at the time of Fairytales For Hardmen. Plumbley celebrates Leven as a Celtic bard and storyteller, describes the percussive guitar playing (the guitar, a Gallagher, once belonged to Doc Watson, according to Leven) and relays Leven's Clapton anecdote (Clapton listens during the recording of “Call Mother A Lonely Field” and afterwards only wants to show off his coat). Leven refuses encore rituals, takes requests, reads forgotten lyrics from a fan's CD booklet and, at the insistence of the Doll by Doll fans in the front row, plays “Main Travelled Roads”. With the complete setlist (19 titles, from “Farm Boy” to “Gylen Gylen”).