Levi Weaver at the Spanish Moon

• By RACHEL JONES
• Special to 2theadvocate.com
• Published: Dec 5, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 p.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

When you picture the son of a professional cowboy who grew up listening to Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Johnny Cash, you probably imagine his music to reflect his roots. However, Nashville-based Levi Weaver has taken his country origins and his discovery of bands like Radiohead, Ben Folds, and the Clash to create his own unique musical style.

This folk rock, independent musician has been surrounded by music since childhood and his early experiences gave him the opportunity to finally play professionally.

“As a kid, I took piano lessons and played drums throughout junior high and high school,” Weaver said. “After high school, I decided I was tired of being the kid in the back that everyone just told to ‘play quieter,’ so I picked up a guitar and started playing. I didn’t really consider doing it as a profession until I started a band in Texas.”

Weaver’s band eventually went through a bitter break up that left him burnt out on the music business. He soon decided to fulfill his dream to live in England, where he rediscovered his passion for playing. “I didn’t know what I was going to do besides just live in England,” Weaver said. “I had also broken up with a girlfriend and music is just a way to get all that out.”

Weaver began to toy with different sounds as he started to play shows again, but music was always second to his first love -- writing. He claims to have always been a writer, but doesn’t just stick to one approach.

“It’s a different process for each song. Some people have a tried and true method, but for me, it’s varied,” Weaver explained. “Sometimes I’ll tinker around on the guitar and find a chord progression I think sounds cool and write something to fit that. ‘Good Medicine’ is the first song on the EP and I wrote that on a bus from London to Rome. I didn’t have music for it, I just wrote the whole thing out and put music to it later.”

His trusty guitar is used for writing and can be heard on most of his songs. However, he plays a variety of instruments including a melodica, keyboard, pan flute, harmonica, mouth trumpet, and, of course, the drums.

“It’s all out of necessity,” Weaver said. “I hear a sound that I want to hear on the record and it’s like ‘I don’t know a violin player, so I’ll see if this violin bow works on my guitar.’ I picked up weird instruments from where I’ve traveled and have 15 or 20 instruments lying around my house. I don’t know how to play any of them very well, but just enough to lay down a part here and there.”

Weaver was able to record a portion of an EP in the spring of 2006. That fall, he went on a North American tour with Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Imogen Heap, despite his lack of backing from the music industry.

“It was the first, and so far, the only thing that I’ve ever done of that level. I had no management, no label, nothing. The crowd response was great and I sold tons of CDs and t-shirts, so I thought I’d just sit back and let them come to me. I didn’t know that wasn’t how it worked. I finished the tour with no labels, nobody. I thought I’d finish the full-length album because people must be waiting to see what I can do. That took me over a year, and by then, all the buzz had died down from the Imogen tour so I started over from scratch.”

Back in Nashville, Weaver started the ‘You Are Home’ tour where he played wherever the fans requested him. No big schedules, no tour buses, just Weaver driving his 1993 Honda Accord across the country, playing anything from open fields to college campuses to living rooms.

“It’s entirely different from the Imogen tour where you show up for sound check, then play in front of a few thousand people before going to the merch table to meet a few people for about 10 seconds at a time. Now, I’ll show up for dinner and then people’s friends come over and I’ll play a show for 25 or 30 people and then hang out and it’s more like a house party.”

Weaver will be playing in Baton Rouge on Dec. 5, at the Spanish Moon. He not only wants people to connect with his music and lyrics, but to leave his show with a memorable experience.