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MESSAGE FROM JACKIE LEVEN:
Two years ago I noticed that I was writing a lot more songs that I was ever going to record and get released, especially in these times where you can only release one studio album every eighteen months. As I am a writer of genius, this began to worry me more and more. So I went to see my Cooking Vinyl boss, Martin Goldschmidt, to ask him if I could make more records. He said no. I said to him 'look, The Beatles once released four albums in one year, and nobody said to them, hey that's too many records in one year'.Martin said 'Jackie, this is not 1967 and you are not The Beatles'. We talked some more and we agreed that I could make records under a different name - that name is Sir Vincent Lone. When I started choosing songs for my Vince record, I began to notice that Vince was not like Jackie - he was quite a different kind of guy, and, somehow, he had a lot more freedom than Jackie - freedom to record very simply at times, and freedom to talk about other kinds of things. In one song, The War Crimes Of Ariel Sharon,
Vince is thinking about something very small that might have happened
in the childhood of Ariel Sharon - maybe he was sitting in a village
square, and he could hear an old Palestinian woman weeping, and
something in the sadness made his heart go hard forever. This
is the way Vince thinks. Vince will be releasing more records
as time goes by - his favourite song on this record is Moscow
Train written on a train journey from Berlin to St Petersburg
with Bob Dylan many years ago. Bob told Vince that there was one
train in the world that he did not like and that was the underground
train in Moscow. When Vince asked him why this was, Bob said 'the
last time I was on the Moscow train, there was a woman with closed
eyes, but she was watching me'. And this gave Vince his idea
for the song.... JACKIE LEVEN |
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JACKIE LEVEN “SHINING BROTHER SHINING SISTER”
Cooking Vinyl
- Irish Released 7th February 2003
FIRST NEW STUDIO ALBUM SINCE 2001'S 'CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS'
On “Shining Brother Shining Sister”, the known and loved values
of Jackie Leven's very best previous work have deepened further, but undertones
of rockabilly, jazz, hip hop and waltz help make these recordings perhaps
his strongest work for Cooking Vinyl to date.
A new kind of energy and strength of arrangement suffuse all eleven tracks - from the short horror story narrated by American singer David Thomas, via other poetic spoken-word contributions from Ron Sexsmith and American poet Robert Bly, an album of immense artistic confidence shows a unique writer at the height of his creative power.
The album, an analog recording, was recorded at Bryn Derwen
studios in Snowdonia, Wales, but rehearsal and pre-programming took place
at Palm Cottage Studio, Napa, California, USA, in June, 2002. Jackie,
bass player Kevin Foster, singer Deborah Greenwood, and multi-instrumentalist
Michael Cosgrave played a charity concert with Lyle Lovett for the world's
premier charity wine auction (which raised $6M per day for 3 days), The
Napa Valley Wine Auction, and they were joined afterwards by drummer Steve
Jackson who had just finished recording for Daniel Lanois.
Jackie - 'We were unexpectedly together in an oasis of calm and freedom
from obligation, with a cellar full of America's greatest wines at our
disposal, so we raged through the song arrangements without the usual
introspection and fretting (no pun intended) that normally attends such
analysis. Then we were obliged to party hard at a different vineyard every
night - the things I do for my art...'
The record is full of unusual elements, like a Jackie-commissioned trumpet elegy which precedes the track “Savannah Waltz” (see album notes). This track, called “Dust Elegy” was written and played on trumpets by Geoffrey Burgon, who won a BAFTA award in 2001 for his score of the film Longitude. (Geoffrey also wrote the music for the last Forsythe Saga, Brideshead Revisited, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy etc). Jackie and Geoffrey have known each other since the 70's, when they were both members of a hard-drinking circle in Little Venice, London, which included David Gilmour, Glen Matlock and Tubular Bells producer, Tom Newman.
The songs
on “Shining Brother Shining Sister” speak clearly and well
for themselves, and in a time of rumours of war, Jackie has chosen two
quotes from the poetry of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda to express the record's
internal working:
'There's no forgetting, there's no Winter
That will wipe your name, shining brother,
from the lips of the people'
'Tyranny cuts off the singer's head,
but the voice from the bottom of the well
returns to the secret streams of the earth,
and rises out of nowhere
through the mouths of the people'
