'I didn't do this album because I felt like I needed to make a record – it was to stop myself going mad'

Telephone interview with Michael Weston King about his first solo album in ten years, The Struggle (2022, recorded in Newtown, Wales, mixed with Colin Elliot in Sheffield). Two songs concern Jackie Leven directly.

The Final Reel was written about Leven, in the style of a “Celtic soul singer” who was strongly influenced by Van Morrison. Weston King tells how it came about: in the week before Leven's death he was on his way to a concert in Perth, drove past Loch Leven, stopped, walked along the shore and phoned Leven, who by then was in hospital and was not to leave it. They chatted and laughed; it was their last conversation. The song draws on that scene and their years together as wandering singers – they played “hundreds” of concerts together. (The song had previously also appeared on the tribute album The Wanderer, 2021.)

Theory of Truthmakers is based on unpublished Leven lines: Leven wrote them on a journey they made together and gave them to the Glasgow painter Allan Black, whose picture he had also used for an album. Black kept them as a souvenir and sent them to Weston King, who set them to music. The song was originally meant for the tribute album he curated but was not finished in time. Musically, for the chorus he aimed at something “big” like Heroes or a Scott Walker song.