Levellers: Heading to York Barbican in acoustic mode
LEVELLERS play York Barbican on March 9 as the only Yorkshire gig of their 17-date Levellers Collective acoustic tour with a ten-piece line-up.
To coincide with their March travels, the Brighton folk rock and anarcho-punk band will release a new album and DVD, Levellers Collective/Live, via On The Fiddle Recordings on March 7, recorded at London’s Hackney Empire on May 24 2023.
The film captures the spirit of the Levellers “as never seen before”, with 25 cameras being positioned on stage and around the venue to show the musicians close up as they weave a magical musical landscape for the songs, when the regular line-up was complemented by strings, percussion and vocal harmonies from additional members Hannah Moule (cello, vocals), Oli Moule (percussion) and Rae Husbandes (acoustic guitar, dobro, tin whistle, percussion, vocals).
Levellers lead singer Mark Chadwick say: “Previously when we’ve done acoustic shows, it’s just been us, with our own unique timings, but working with other musicians in particular, it’s like ‘OK, you can’t mess up’. So we don’t, we really concentrate.”
Bass player Jeremy “Jez” Cunningham adds: “As a band, we’re particularly pleased to make an acoustic show which is totally different to our electric show. It allows us to flex our musical muscles with stuff that’s really hard to play but really rewarding at the same time. The ying to our electric yang!”
The artwork for the Levellers Collective/Live album and DVD, set for release on March 7
Levellers had been contemplating an acoustic Collective project “for years”, he says. “But we hadn’t really found a way into it, until we thought about using the string section from the Moulettes, who we’ve known for years.
“After playing big-band shows with them, that gave us the idea of doing songs this way. The stripped-back thing has been done to death, but as soon as we found a way to rearrange the songs, we felt it would be re-enlightening for us, as well as for fans.
“We went into the studio with John Leckie and the Moulettes, taking songs back to the vocal line and maybe a drum beat and thinking about ‘what makes this song this song?’.
“The guys from the Moulettes came up with some left-field ideas as they’re not emotionally connected to the songs the way we are, and they’re really good singers too. John Leckie had ideas too, and as soon as we’d done the first one, it was…not easy, but less difficult, to do the rest.”
Jeremy recalls the experience of re-working the songs as “quite intense”. “Because people are so attached to those songs, not everyone welcomed it at first, but we wanted to test ourselves. It involves going back to a song’s most basic meaning, in the lyrics and the biggest musical part, mostly from the vocal and the songs always have a big hook too.
Levellers: On the road from March 6 to promote Levellers Collective/Live album and DVD
“It can be a different instrument leading the new arrangement, and if a song is strong enough, you can pull it in different directions that stand up against the original. That’s why we chose our heavier songs, so that they would now sound different.”
Jeremy, like Mark, has been part of Levellers since the beginning in 1988. “I remember it all very clearly,” he says. “I met Mark because I was trying to chat up his girlfriend, Jon’s sister [Jon Sevink, now Levellers’ fiddle player]! I wasn’t really getting anywhere! I saw Jeremy arriving, really good looking with a guitar in his hand as he’d just been out busking.
“We got talking and we talked about how we were disillusioned with the Brighton music scene. I said ‘I write tunes’; he said ‘I write tunes’! I knew Charlie [Heather], the drummer, who knew Jon, the fiddle player.”
A band was born, with that quartet at the core to this day. “I think we’re quite easy-going people for a start, and straightaway we said, ‘if we ever make it to any degree, everyone will get paid the same – and that’s what we still do. We only argue over creative decisions.
“I think, as well, that we’re aware we need each other to make the noise we make, with that noise we make being bigger than the sum of its parts.”
“People embrace our lyrics and relate to them, and then the music is great to jump up and down to,” says Levellers bassist Jeremy Cunningham. Picture: Jason Bell
In keeping with bands such as The Pogues and The Alarm, the chemistry between band and audience takes Levellers’ songs to greater heights. “I think the connection is made through the lyrics,” says Jeremy. “People embrace them and relate to them, and then the music is great to jump up and down to –and that’s a deliberate way of doing it for us.
“That’s where you can make the comparison with The Pogues. Shane MacGowan was a great lyricist and audiences bounced around to them even when the lyrics were serious. These are the songs that people feel attached to.”
After throwing ideas around by email and rehearsing at Beautiful Days, outside Exeter, for a week, Levellers will take to the road from March 6 to 25 (tickets from myticket.co.uk and levellers.co.uk).
Jeremy can’t wait for March 9 at York Barbican. “The last time we were in York was in 2023. I really like the Barbican and I really like York,” he says. “I love the history and you can’t beat the Jorvik Viking Centre. I’ve walked the City Walls a couple of times too.”
Levellers Collective: 2025 Acoustic Tour, York Barbican, March 9, doors, 6.30pm. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Levellers Collective/Live track listing:
- Carry Me
- The Game
- The Lowlands Of Holland
- Liberty Song
- Battle Of The Beanfield
- Wheels
- Drug Bust McGee
- Together All The Way
- Sitting In The Social
- Man O’ War
- Julie
- Ghosts In The Water
- Born That Way
- Haven’t Made It
- England My Home
- The Cholera Well
- The Boatman
- The Road
- Far From Home
- Hope Street
- Down By The River ‘O
- Just The One