Levi Weaver

Next BIG Nashville is a 4-day festival celebrating the community of art in Nashville and showcasing emerging local talent. Levi is proud to be part of this dynamic event and can't wait to see you at the show! The festival is September 10-14...Stay tuned for the specific date/time/venue details of Levi's performance!

Next Big Nashville Official Site

No label, No management, No booking agent, No publicity agency.

Is this the new face of touring?

Levi Weaver certainly hopes so. Armed with little more than a guitar, a laptop and a loyal fanbase, Weaver is setting out to prove that if the industry doesn’t need you, then you don’t need the industry.

"I got sick of sitting at home" Weaver explains. "Here I was, fresh off of a national tour supporting Imogen Heap, and I had kind of thought ’well, this is the start, it only goes up from here’ and I made the mistake of just kind of sitting back and waiting for a call from a booking agency or a management company. For awhile it wasn’t concerning that I wasn’t getting calls; I was getting the new CD out and keeping really busy, so I just kind of fooled myself into thinking that everyone was waiting with baited breath for this new album. After about 6 months, I realized that was kind of delusional, so I started e-mailing people, and just... nothing. No response. In the meantime, I’m getting hundreds of e-mails from non-industry people, fans, just normal you-and-me people, asking me to ’please come back to _____’ and I finally just went ’you know, no one is going to make this happen for me if i don’t get out there and do it for myself.’"

Well, kind of for himself.

Weaver has taken an approach that is, in varying degrees, the old school, and the new school. With few exceptions, each city is being booked and promoted by a fan. On February 25th, 2008, Weaver posted a blog on his myspace, telling people that he was willing to play in their living rooms, garages, schools, churches; wherever they would have him, he would go. The response was surprising. "It took people a little while to realize I was serious, I think." says Weaver. "The weird thing is that once a couple of people got on board, venues started e-mailing me, or returning e-mails I had sent before, and it’s turned into a full-on tour."

Indeed it has. Hitting (at current count) 22 cities west of the Mississippi, this tour is as comprehensive as any major tour of the west, if not moreso. "Oh yeah, man. I’m hitting places I never thought I would get to play. It’s bizarre. One week I’m playing Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, and then less than a week later, I’m playing in a field by a river in Missoula, Montana. It’s insane, but I think it so beats the kind of tour where you never get to meet anyone. I’m not in a tour bus, driving off after a show and getting to sleep between cities, I’m in a beat-up ’93 Honda Accord, crashing on couches, and I’m all by myself."

Well, kind of by himself.

View the Complete Tour Schedule>

Nominated for Best Music Blog in a contest presented by Hey!Nielsen and Billboard.com, Adam's World has selected Levi as Artist of the Week. Check it.

Adam's World Music Blog >

With the (wish I would have come up with it) headline, 'Sad is the New Cute', the "You Are Home" video is featured here.

Fabulist.org >

"Affectionately known 'round these parts as a one-man musical octopus, Nashville Folk Rock singer/songwriter Levi Weaver is on the road promoting his gripping 2007 CD You Are Never Close to Home, You Are Never Far from Home. Weaver delivers honest songs stewing with southern charm, engaging storytelling and echoing vocal layers.

"I'd just moved back from the UK. I lost my job in England for going on tour with Imogen Heap in the fall of '06," Weaver says of the album. "I moved to Nashville, so here I am living in a buddy's basement. I think the general feeling behind the album is that feeling of always missing someone or something or someplace, no matter where you are or how happy you are."

A lyrical powerhouse, he's equally talented at delivery. Picture leather jackets and cowboy boots, guns and glam with Indie screaming on the side. Expect alluring stage presence from a guy who's not afraid to laugh at his crazed black hair. Expect a voice that's memorably sexy."

...Read the entire article >

"As folkish singer-songwriters go, Levi Weaver has an unusual biography: the son of a “professional cowboy,” he traded his Texas upbringing for an extended visit to the U.K., where he perfected his songs and live performances in Birmingham clubs. He traded the country music of his early years for Damien Rice and Radiohead. He also happened to meet the reigning queen of electronic pop, Imogen Heap, who promptly asked him to join her tour. After following Heap on a loop through the major U.S. cities, he returned to the Dallas area in time for the release of his first full-length record last week. His debut attempts to bridge the chasm between the rootsy confessions of his American ancestors and the layered intellect of his new British muses.

The eleven tracks on this record may not have many tricks, but they execute their primary trick well. For strolling along such well-worn conceptual paths, Weaver’s narratives relate first-person accounts of love found or love missed with brooding intensity and nuanced complexity. And an assortment of instruments—banjo, mandolin, melodica, wurlitzer, ragtag percussion—shakes seasoning over even the less distinguishable tracks.

When Weaver is good, he’s up there with the best. Over gentle guitar and mournful violin, he whispers “Oh, you are home/And no matter where I go you’re in my bones/And no matter where I sleep/I can never rest outside the place I keep my soul” (the hushed, mournful “You Are Home). The tempo and the outlook brighten on “Sick, or Determined?,” the brief ditty that could easily be mistaken for Josh Ritter. But in place of Ritter’s religious cynicism is open-hearted faith (“What it means to be a man is to believe in something grander than his hands can hold.”)"

...Read the entire review >

"Levi Weaver is one of the brightest stars on the horizon of up and coming singer songwriters. With an integrity and creativity to his song craft that belies the fact that his new record, You Are Never Close to Home, You Are Never Far From Home, is his debut full-length album, Levi is poised to take the world by the back door. We held on to his coat tails just long enough for him to answer these questions.

Levi Weaver'll most likely be a new name to people reading this. Please introduce yourself.

"Ah, well... it's a long and sordid story involving rodeo cowboys, a trip to the border of Kosovo and Serbia, a girlfriend who broke my heart in the arms of a Frenchman, running away from home, going on tour, being kicked out of England, and marrying the girl of my dreams. This all sounds like an exaggeration, but in truth, each of those things is true, if stated a little dramatically. Most people know me as 'that guy who opened for Imogen Heap on her 2006 US tour.' or 'that one guy who covered that Radiohead song'."

Your new album's out right now. How was the recording process for that?

"This one was a little different from the last one. With 'Civil War...' I did it all myself in the office where I was working at the time, and it was a huge learning process for me - I'd never recorded anything myself before.

'Good Medicine', from that EP is literally the first thing I ever recorded myself, and it was kind of my guinea pig. (It's still maybe my favourite song I've done, probably for that reason).

This one, I'd had most of the songs written for a while, and had played them all live before, so it didn't feel like there was as much experimentation going on, from a producer's or an engineer's standpoint.

Also, for the drums, bass and most of the electric guitars, I went into a real studio with hired musicians, and... yeah, that's really where the experimentation element came from, for me; they'd never heard the songs before, they were reading from charts, and I was learning how to communicate to not just musicians, but REALLY GOOD ONES. I play by ear, mostly, so instead of using real music words, I'm throwing out things like 'uhh... okay, guys, can we make this one sound like Tom Waits' zombie stumbling through a haunted circus at midnight?' ('Of Bridges Burned') or 'Okay, I want Johnny Cash, fighting the devil, in a death match... held in an old west saloon.' ('Family Feud').

The guys were really cool about it though, I think they probably get bored with people that know what on earth they're doing. I like to think it was that rather than being annoyed. That said - a couple of the tracks ('Idioteque', 'Would We Liars Be') and all the acoustic guitars, percussion, vocals, etc... everything that puts sinew and skin on the skeleton, for that, I went back into a basement and did myself. I like that element of being able to experiment with sounds while it's not costing me $50/hour. I think the songs are better for it, even if I might get a better microphone in a studio."

...Read the entire interview >