ROCK REVIEW: Jackie LEVEN: Celtic Connections interview – Aug 1999

Doug Anderson, who runs the fan site Rock Review, reproduces a session he happened to record in late August 1999 from the programme “Celtic Connections” on BBC Radio Scotland – his first contact with Leven’s music. The presenter, whose name he does not remember, played five live tracks: “Stranger on the Square”, “I Saw My Love Walk into Clouds”, “Call Mother a Lonely Field”, “The Crazy Song” and “Single Father”. In between came a longer conversation, which Anderson retells at length and partly transcribes.

Leven says he is still hung over from the gig “the other day” in Edinburgh and explains his high rate of releases – 14 albums by then – with a burst of creativity brought on by two months each year on a Greek island; he wants to record everything before “something terrible” happens to him. Songwriting, he says, has become easier with age. He writes on behalf of other people, not just about himself. At length he retells, in what he calls a “cleaned-up” version, the anecdote of the Australian customs officer in Perth who made him explain the meaning of a line from Man Bleeds in Glasgow and then had tickets for his concert.

Leven also says he has become a kind of representative of Scotland in the WOMAD world (Australia, New Zealand, Bali, South Africa). In Britain he plays solo because audiences want the stories; in Germany he plays with a band. Cooking Vinyl lets him make one solo live album a year; The Wanderer is in progress. He names Chet Baker (as a singer), Nat King Cole and Ani DiFranco (“Untouchable Face”) as role models, plus an interest in old, traditional music and the guitarist Martin Brown, with whom he had played in Aberdeen the year before. An addendum from 2001 dates the Edinburgh concert mentioned, using the Fringe programme, to Saturday 22 August 1999.