Levellers: Returning to York Barbican on Thursday. Picture: Steve Gullick
BRIGHTON folk-rockers Levellers are celebrating the 35th anniversary of landmark second album Levelling The Land with an 11-date autumn tour that visits the sold-out York Barbican on Thursday (29/10/2026).
Playing songs from the platinum seller, alongside further fan-favourites from their extensive catalogue, Levellers opened their travels in Köln, Germany, on October 16, coinciding with the original release date of 16/10/1991.
On the road until November 21, Levellers will be sure to perform the hit singles One Way, Fifteen Years and Far From Home, plus the incendiary Battle Of The Beanfield.
In fact, the set list for Holmfirth Picturedrome on October 21 featured all 11 Levelling The Land songs in track order, taking in The Game, Liberty Song, Riverflow, The Boatman, Sell Out, Another Man’s Cause and The Road, complemented by Hope St., a cover of The Devil Went Down To Georgia and Beautiful Day.
“We’re playing the album from start to finish, then coming back after a break to play some greatest hits,” says bass player Jeremy Cunningham. “That’s what people are expecting. I just think it’s the best way: give people what they want. It’s not rocket science! Come and see us again next year and it’ll be a different set.
“Usually we’re used to building things up, slowing things down, with peaks and troughs in a live show, but when you’re playing the whole album you can’t do smoke and mirrors because the audience know what’s coming next and they’re excited by that.
“On some of these shows, we’re also going to have a string section playing with us to beef up the really big tunes.” It is not known whether York Barbican will be one of those nights.
“I didn’t realise Levelling The Land would go on to have such significance as our most recognisable album,” says Levellers bassist Jeremy Cunningham (third from left). Picture: Steve Gullick
Looking back to the gestation of Levelling The Land, Jeremy says: “It was quite easy to make. We started writing it almost immediately after the first album [A Weapon Called The Word]. We wrote the first song, Liberty Song, then Alan [original bassist and mandolin player Alan Miles] left and Simon Friend joined, bringing some songs with him, like Battle Of The Beanfield, which was a particularly important to us.
“The album came quite quickly to us, which was remarkable since we were touring so much. In a couple of years’ time, in our 40th anniversary year, we’ll be doing 40 shows, but back in the day we were doing 100 shows a year.”
Jeremy recalls riding down to the sea front, listening to Levelling The Land as he cycled. “I thought , ‘wow, we’ve made a better album than the first one’, but I didn’t realise it would go on to have such significance as our most recognisable album,” he says.
During that summer of 1991, Levelling The Land redefined the UK’s musical landscape by providing the counter-cultural soundtrack for a society fed up with Thatcherite politics and the post-1980s, pre-grunge music scene.
“I think it was a certain time and a certain place. It captured the zeitgeist of that time and place very well,” says Jeremy. “That’s why it did well, but now it sustains because it’s full of banging tunes and the lyrics unfortunately still resonate as much as they did back then. If you write great tunes, they will last forever.”
Levellers took their name from a radical political movement in the English Civil War. “Back in Thatcher’s Britain, they were political times when you could still get a political song to number one,” says Jeremy. “People weren’t afraid to wear their heart on their sleeves and to declare their beliefs, whereas now they’re more timid.”
Levellers’ legacy runs deep, whether in contemporary folk music, grassroots political movements or the evolution of British festival culture, encapsulated in their Beautiful Days Festival, whose 23rd instalment in Escot Park, Devon featured Madness, Super Furry Animals and Levellers in August.
Two thirds of the band still live in Brighton, including Jeremy. “It’s hard to leave,” he says. “I moved here at 19 to go to art college and I never left.
Jeremy Cunningham’s artwork for Levellers’ frontman Mark Chadwick’s 2026 solo album Ouse Dragon
“I do all the band’s artwork; since the start I’ve done all the record covers and T-shirts – I’m doing some T-shirts for the tour. I’ve also done the cover for Mark’s solo album [Mark Chadwick’s Ouse Dragon, released on August 21]. The River Ouse runs through Lewes, where Mark lives, so it’s an album about his adopted home.”
This year too, Jeremy held an exhibition in Lewes, at the Star Brewery Gallery, where he showcased a year’s collection of artworks in Edge Of No Control, reflecting a journey back to health after a mental breakdown in September 2025, moving away from his gig posters and album sleeves for Levellers.
Now his focus is on the Levelling The Land tour, where Battle Of The Beanfield will ring out loudest once more. “That song tells of a piece of underground British history, which we told six years after it happened and were amazed that no-one had written about it in those six years, especially some of the underground punk and political groups that hadn’t touched it,” says Jeremy.
“But we did write it and got to commemorate the event as part of the underground folk history, and now it’s above ground as one of the big events of 1985.”
Levellers, Levelling The Land 35th Anniversary Tour, at York Barbican, October 29, supported by Essex punk duo The Meffs; doors 7pm. SOLD OUT.
Did you know?
LEVELLERS last played York Barbican on March 9 2025 as the only Yorkshire date of their 17-date Levellers Collective acoustic tour with a ten-piece line-up.
