ARTIST: Jackie Leven
TITLE: Elegy For Johnny Cash
LABEL: Cooking Vinyl
GENRE: Rock
BITRATE: 185kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 0h 49min total
RELEASE DATE: 2005-09-09
RIP DATE: 2005-07-26

Track List

01. Blue Soul Dark Road             3:32
02. Museum Of Childhood             4:35
03. Elegy For Johnny Cash           5:50
04. The Law Of Tide                 2:46
05. All The Rage                    3:40
06. No Honour In This Love          6:44
07. Vibration White Finger          4:18
08. King Of Barley                  5:12
09. And You'll Never Hear Surf      6:07
Music Again
10. In Memory Of My Mother          2:00
11. Gladly Go Blind                 4:10
12. Why Log Truck Drivers Rise      0:59
Earlier Than Students Of Zen

Release Notes:

"Elegy For Johnny Cash" is a different kind of studio album from Jackie Leven,
containing elements of Americana, Hip-Hop, and a picking of bright shiny objects
from many other musical genres, all wrapped up in great and unique style by the
master musician that is Jackie Leven.

The title track, "Elegy For Johnny Cash" comes from Jackie's appreciation of the
beautiful last records of Johnny Cash, as recorded by Rick Rubin. Says Jackie,
'I admired the artist Johnny Cash but did not particularly engage with him until
I heard these fantastic recordings on which he is able to take any song and sing
it with such beauty and courage that it breaks your heart. My song, "Elegy",
which I sing as if I was Johnny Cash, imagines his last singing performance as
he passes from this world to the next, and he gives us one last picture of his
life'.

On the album, this song is followed by a bravura performance from Robert Fisher
of Willard Grant Conspiracy who also takes on the persona of Johnny Cash to sing
a song of Jackie's - The Law Of Tide.

Although the album contains bass, synthesizers, percussion, viola and accordian
played by the Lebanese and Greek musicians, the record is NOT a 'world' album.
These musicians mainly play in western stylings, although nobody in the West
could possibly play the viola solos of Greek musician Mixalis Kataxanis which
appear on "Elegy For Johnny Cash" and "No Honour In This Love".

Why Beirut? Late last year, after the funeral of his mother, Jackie was asked by
long-time family friends to sing at a world gathering of Roma singers at a
concert exclusively for Roma people, to the south east of Beirut. A Romany
himself, Jackie was honoured to be asked, and went there to sing in December.
Jackie's engineer, David Wrench suggested that, as Jackie would be in Lebanon
anyway, why not record there with some of the musicians he would be meeting?
Jackie had already decided to work with two of his long-standing Greek musician
friends, and so the project came into being.

Other highlights on an outstanding record include the hip-hop track "All The
Rage" which includes some serious rapping by Jackie's old friend, black
Ulsterman Martin Okasili.

The album was produced by Jackie and engineer David Wrench. David currently has
his own well received album on release from Storm records, "The Atomic World Of
Tomorrow".

The cover for "Elegy" is a painting by Munster-based German artist and friend of
Jackie's, Mirjam Ruckert.