Jackie Leven - Interview

Probably one of Leven's last interviews, by telephone shortly before the release of Wayside Shrines and the Code of the Travelling Man, the joint record with the keyboard player Michael Cosgrave. Ben Howarth introduces Leven as a “cult artist's cult artist” (quoting Stewart Lee) and recounts how his father discovered Leven at the Canterbury Fayre festival before Willard Grant Conspiracy. Leven explains that the songs arose in German hotel rooms while waiting for soundchecks and were developed with Cosgrave at soundchecks; he normally records at the Welsh studio Bryn Derwen, this time at Cosgrave's studio on Dartmoor, where he deliberately gave Cosgrave free rein. He talks about Germany as his favourite country to tour, about the backgrounds of songs (“Townes at the Borderline” after an encounter with Townes Van Zandt, “Swine Fever Blues” after a bout of swine flu), about songs that are supposed to take shape only in the studio, about a fixed repertoire of stage stories and how true they are, about the “Official Bootlegs” – prompted by Cooking Vinyl so that he himself would earn from them – and about the “death” of Sir Vincent Lone. Guest tracks by other artists (here John Mayfield) are his principle. At the end: a meeting with Randy Newman after a concert in Bergen and the plan to carry on for at least another ten years.