Friday 22nd October, Salisbury City Hall support to the Oyster Band
Jackie Leven -
Songs of the Forbidden West
That walk through the puddled streets on a wet English night isn't enough to dampen the spirits of catching a set from Jackie Leven.
    Leven, of course, isn't the main act, he just shares the same management as the Oyster Band but he's pretty much in a class of his own. He's probably played in enough small bars to last a lifetime like the one I'm passing down a dark Salisbury road. A little Tudor style pub with big black beams. It is half empty but there's live music coming from inside.
    I don't see the duo but the sign outside says Ian Hallam and Jason Scroops. That tickles me. Perhaps Jason is related to Shakespeares Lord Scroop. Perhaps he's a miscreant. He's certainly got patience singing Elton John's 'Daniel is leaving tonight on a plane' to what looks like a totally uninterested small group of couples earnestly talking to themselves.
    Jackie Leven's would know the feeling. He's gathered a sizeable faithful around him in the massive, 1,000 plus Salisbury City Hall. But he's also having to contend with the beered up student types who've come to get shit faced to the Oyster Band.
    They are laughing and screaming through his set. There's a couple of gaggling girls sat next to me and Vic in terraced seats behind the sound desk. They have a severe attack of verbal diaorhea through his entire set. Talking what we English call absolute 'something' in loud voices.
    Incredibly, and I've seen, this with audiences who pay no attention to performers, unbelievably they will clap appreciatively when each song ends before putting their hands down and going back to yacking. Trained monkeys can do much the same thing.
    Jackie Leven could walk around the venue tonight amongst the crowd unrecognised. He's come out to look forlornly at just three CDs on show of his against the massive backdrop of t-shirts and gaudy Halloween inspired souvenirs of the Oyster Band and cartloads of CDs for sale.
    The Oysters have worked hard to build their following and they've never compromised their disdain of the governments of the day mixing raucous rocking songs with folk music. And even ol Terry Wogan, the Marks and Spencers Irishman is playing their music on Radio Two. That's kind of blown their hip credibility the lead singer admits from the stage but the royalty cheques must be nice . . .
    The merchandising guy, he with the James Fennimore Cooper haircut and eye catching red tuft running through the centre like someone's just split his cranium with a tomahawk, well he says he can't stand fiddly diddly, finger in the ear folk music but he likes what the Oysters have got to say.
    An Oysterfan and his wife are trying on expensive t-shirts and asking for the latest single. They are clearly devotees, but they wonder what this Jackie Leven is like. 'When's she on?' they ask. 'Ermm, Jackie's a man,' the Merchant man says quietly. 'Oh . . .'
    Thankfully Jackie Leven's across the other side of the foyer talking to a guy who has probably nervously introduced himself as a fan. Jackie Leven is too much of an imposing figure to ever be confused for a woman.
    He's a big, broad shouldered Scotsman like you get on those packs of Scot's Porridge Oats. Tonight he's wearing his traditional Scotsman shoes and long socks that go with the kilt only he's wearing a pair of long blue cotton shorts and wind cheater to hide what looks like a blue demin shirt that's been mauled by a Bengal tiger.
    He's still wandering around trying to fill in the agonising wait before his stage call. He explains on stage tonight that the Oysters are always concerned for him, 'they are the best band I've ever toured with' he will say from the stage. They've waited around after their soundcheck to hear him do his and are not sure whether they should stay here with him instead of departing back to the hotel. But he lets them go.
    Instead he's taken to wandering around the foyer in case he might bump into somebody to talk to. I ask him about the availability of The Mystery of Love is Greater than the Mystery of Death and he stands a while to shoot the breeze. Last night the tour had reached Warwick University in the Midlands.
    He is stunned at the lavishness and enormity of the place and of course no doubt the Oysters would have given those beer swilling students a good time. By the sound of it Jackie Leven caught the tailwind of that pretty good.
    He has a website but he can't remember but his wife will know and he'll shout it from the stage, he doesn't but no matter I'll find it easy enough. What interests me is that America is starting to look good for him. The Mountain Stage in Virginia sounds like the kind of gig where lots of folks can be exposed to his art.
    Lost in a chat with me he suddenly realises it's five minutes to stage call and has to excuse himself and get back there. Vic and I make our way in to the big hall. Our tickets are taken by smartly dressed theatre staff of the old school. Most look like retired army officers in black blazers and ties, perhaps they don't appreciate the music but they are friendly all the same.
    Vic and I first saw Jackie Leven in London when he staged a whole week of concerts to raise money for the Core Trust. Leven headed the charity then. Heavily funded by Mike Scott of the Waterboys the Trust used homeopathic medicine to help cure drug addiction.
    I went to two gigs that week. Vic managed one. The first with Robyn Hitchcock had Jackie Leven get up and sing an accapella traditional Scottish song called Lord of Moray, which I now have on a Leven single. We had no idea he was an artist then. The next night was the first of two performed by Townes Van Zandt.
    It was the first time I'd ever seen Townes and it confirmed all I'd ever thought about his music, that the man had astage presence and a way that was mesmeric. So too Leven who got up to perform about four songs that night with just an acoustic guitar. What he played stunned me and had me going straight into the record shop to find some CDs.
    Maybe I should have asked Jackie Leven about Townes. Maybe I will get the chance soon because he's playing the tiny Ashcroft Centre in Fareham where I saw Darrell Scott and Tim O'Brien. The delightfully named Genivieve Wilkes, has booked him for a gig there
    So Vic has never heard Jackie Leven perform with a guitar in his hand. He's come out into this big auditorium and bravely sat down in the middle of a mass of amplification and throbbing lights and cooly insulted the audience for not giving him a proper welcome.
    Then Vic's glasses have misted up as he does the kind of guitar work to rival Bert Jansch. Leven always sounds like he's a band, got several rhythms and interplays going on at once.
    He'll be picking crafted patterns with his thumb and fingers as good as anyone I've seen and allowing his fingers to fall into chord patterns up and down the fretboard mometarily before suddenly darting down and pulling an amazing zonking note from the 8th fret. He'll follow it with a chugga chugga rhythm on the top strings. Jackie Leven is a one man band and a half. Whistling through songs like a battalion of soldiers, beating a pattern on the soundboard, then hitting a power chord that sounds like a scythe ripping through corn.
    Jackie Leven will then sing in that powerful Scottish voice of his, one that he can take down to a whisper and up to a roar. What songs tonight, Stranger in the Square, Call Mother A Lonely Field ('Like Irish men in English bars the song of home betrays us'), Universal Blue, Marble City Bar, Pourtown and Jim O'Windygates.
    As usual there are tons of stories. Jackie Leven is a Scots wag, a soul brother to Billy Connolly. Like Connolly he's come from the hard side of the tracks. Jim O'Windygates he explains was written for a friend when he worked at the Hague Whiskey factory in Fife. During the 60s he and the other workers would wait in the yard for their pay on a Friday afternoon.
    In those days the men got a pay packet and a half bottle of Hague whiskey. They stood and drank it in the yard before going home. Leven got what was called a 'Hague Over'. He'd never heard the term 'Hangover' till much later when he left his native Fife and thought they must mean a 'Hague over'.
    The story that silences the entire audience is after the first song. Leven can handle the most uninterested crowd. Half the joke here tonight is a dig at the Brummie accent. Those from Birmingham in England's industrial heartland have a much maligned accent which is the butt of jokes.
    Leven does the brummie accent off to a tee and explains he has been interviewed by a guy at Wolverhampton radio o 'Cloooive Loooive' (Clive Live). Cloooooive has asked him a series of questions to which Leven has answered with his head bowed and barely a mumble of agreement.
    Jackie your whole life has been a failure? Hmmm yes . . .
    Now then Jackie Leven you've had three wives and they've all left you? Hmmm yes . . .
    Jackie, you were strangled in a street attack, you lost your voice and couldn't sing or speak for two years and you became a heroin addict? Hmmm yes . . .
    Jackie, you've made 14 albums that no one has ever heard of and noone ever will? Hmmm yes . . .
    Jackie, now what do you think of Wolverhampton? . . .
    Crash of a guitar chord and into the next song nearly deafened by laughter. If this guy gets on that Mountain Stage in Virginia try and catch him, he is unique, if this wasn't so long I'd tell you something about the Oyster Band but that will wait cus we got them coming to the Isle of Wight to play a little gig for us on Sunday.
Mike Plumbley