Jackie Leven – Der furchtlose Songwriter

Interview on “Elegy for Johnny Cash” (2005). Leven says that both his parents died the previous year, his father after a long illness at about the time of Cash's death; only through his father's death did he come to Cash's music, and the title song “wrote itself” (self-report). He avoided country for a long time because in his youth in Scotland mainly insufferable “rednecks” listened to it; Michael Weston King showed him the way in. The songs are more about other people, for instance “King of the Barley” (the brooding Scottish pub-goer) and “Vibration White Finger” (occupational disease as a parable). Musically he worked with the sound engineer David Wrench and Lebanese musicians he had met at a festival: the drummer “Reesa” advised using drum machines so that the guitars would have more room, the bassist Mohammed played; “All The Rage” contains a rap section he wrote himself. Robert Fisher (Willard Grant Conspiracy) recites a poem by Gary Snyder and sings “The Law of Tide”; “In Memory of My Mother” is a poem by Patrick Kavanagh, for his mother, who died in October 2004. For the tour with Cosgrave he is considering a Greek viola player and a Norwegian percussionist. Leven's conclusion: he is less afraid today and writes more powerfully, now that both parents are dead.