Preview: Jackie Leven back in Egersund – concert at Grand Kjelleren for Verdens bokdag

Large preview of the concert on Friday, 23.04.2010, at Grand Kjelleren in Egersund, organised by the Egersund Visefestival in cooperation with World Book Day (Leven performs after a Bokkafé). Festival director Henning Feyling says Leven felt so comfortable at the festival in summer 2009 – he gave two concerts at Dalane Brygghus, with people standing all the way down the stairs – that he was determined to come back; after the Trondheim concert on Tuesday he will travel down and spend two free days in Egersund. It is the first time the festival has put on a concert outside its July dates, as a test of the mood; the summer programme (including Hanne Boel, Steve Wynn) was to be handed out at the concert. Feyling points to Dagbladet's review, which proclaimed Leven “Scotland's dark master singer” and gave Gothic Road five pips.

Aalbu, who by his own account has been to nine or ten Leven concerts (including Stavanger, Bryne), adds a personally coloured portrait: Leven tells so many tall stories that fact and fiction blur; this is followed by the familiar biographical stations (Romani descent, expelled from school for drugs, Doll by Doll, the 1984 mugging with a kick to the larynx, steroids, heroin, depression, self-treatment including Chinese acupuncture, a rehab clinic and the Core Trust, comeback in 1994 with Mike Scott and Robert Bly), the whisky “Leven's Lament” with a Salman Rushdie recommendation in the booklet, and Leven's quirky song titles. Leven is at least as interesting between the songs as when singing, comparable to Van Morrison, Scott Walker and John Martyn. A side column is devoted to his old shorts, always the same ones.