Jackie Leven & Michael Cosgrave - Wayside Shrines And The Code Of The Travelling Man (2011)

By the light of the spring moon, out in the wilderness of Dartmoor in south west England, Jackie Leven and Michael Cosgrave have recorded Wayside Shrines And The Code Of The Travelling Man in Michael’s home studio, “I had felt for my last few albums, that the best work on them was the creative interplay between myself and Michael” says Jackie. “Michael is a world class multi-instrumentalist and best friend, so we decided to make the whole album between the two of us, engineering, producing and mixing, and this has resulted, in my opinion, in a very focused body of work”.

Over the years on tour in Germany, Jackie and Michael have noticed that in most German hotels, in reception and other public rooms, there are displays of flowers and art that you just don’t see anywhere else in the world. When they have asked hotel staff what these displays are all about the staff always say that they do not know, and that these displays were here before they came to work at the hotel.

“It is our feeling” says Jackie “that these displays are shrines, and in fact are pagan shrines, where pagan Germany can be seen in a small but very powerful way.”

These are the Wayside Shrines of the title…

The songs, although not about shrines, were nearly all written in German hotel rooms on tour over the last two years.

Wayside Shrines is also the world’s first homeopathic record. Jackie explains: “In the true homeopathic way, we have taken a sound – in this case a sound which represents grief – grieving is something we are not so good at in the West, and we have diluted that sound in the songs so much that you can no longer hear it, but the ‘memory’ of the sound is still there. For this reason, the more you listen to the record, the better you will feel about the real sadness in your life”.

The songs on Wayside Shrines show master craftsman Jackie at his most confident, from the hallucinations in Swine Flu Fever Blues to the ode for his brother who died earlier this year Beware Soul Brother.