American singer/songwriter LEVI WEAVER talks in depth about his music and life.

I did some of the recording in Scotland with a guy named Simon Fisher, who just basically showed me how to get the thing to work, and then the rest of it I did in the office where I do the mentoring work; they let me come up through the night and record. So I would work from 9a-5p, then go home and sleep until about 9-10p, then come back and record from then until work the next day. Over the weekends, I would work about 24-30 hours straight, and then just drag cushions into the office and sleep there for four to five hours at a time, subsisting on coffee and whatever I could wrangle out of the snack machine. It was totally unhealthy, and I don't recommend that approach to recording. I think "Kid, Way To Go" was really inspired by just the utter exhaustion and borderline insanity that comes along with doing a recording in such a fashion. Hopefully next time I won't feel like I have to be that driven, and I'll take my time and be more patient with it.

The title comes from a line in the first song, "Good Medicine" that goes "My heart will not forgive me for this unwilling extraction of your love from its controlling grips; this unpardonable action will wage civil war between my heart and mind..." That song has been so cathartic for me, it's my favourite one on the record, and one of my favourites that I've ever written. The girl I had broken up with back home... I was just... it took me a long time to get over her. Probably because I didn't want to. Neither of us really did, so it kinda dragged on for a long time. It was on again/off again for about a year or so, and it was just this battle... my heart was still stuck there, and I loved her. I still love her, I think a part of me always will, but then my mind was going "Dude. Stop. This is not the right way to go about this. You're not supposed to be together, so stop making it difficult for all parties involved and just end with it." This song, in my mind anyway, just captures the essence of that whole unreasonably difficult process on a number of different levels. It says what I want it to say, lyrically, but more than that, it's almost a representation of the relationship itself. It's long and drawn out. It's really wordy. It invokes a number of different emotions. There's that paradox of "I'm happy to listen to it because I feel like it's a strong song, and at the same time, it's a really sad song. So I'm sad." That clash of the titans was where that song, that lyric, and subsequently the CD title came from.

It was weird, actually, how this whole process was almost a mirror of the relationship that spawned a good number of the songs. It started off as a great idea, and it was like, "Hey! This is wonderful!" and then at some point, it took a turn for the sinister and it became this really unhealthy thing where I wasn't eating for days at a time, and not sleeping, and this thing that I loved was really causing me to be unhealthy. And in turn, because I wasn't in top form, I think the quality suffered. Whereas if I had gone, "No. It has to be like this. I must maintain a healthy balance," then it would have been better for all parties involved. But every time I would try to go home, I just couldn't leave. So then I get everything recorded and it's only then that I realise that the EQs were balanced for headphones and sound terrible in the speakers. So I have to go back and re-mix the whole thing. And every time I would think, "Okay. It's over," there was something else I would feel like I absolutely HAD to go back and fix. Eventually it just got to the point that I had scheduled a CD release show and I had a deadline and I just had to put it in an envelope and send it and think, "Okay, it's never going to be perfect. I will not be able to fix it. It ends here and this is the legacy it leaves, for better or worse." (I have forgotten, at this point, if i am writing about the relationship or the CD...) So I get it sent off to the duplication place, and there are just truckloads of problems there, too. At one point, my American bank sent the specified amount in US Dollars, when I had specified British Pounds. So I send them a letter explaining what happened, and they end up sending the remainder in HONG KONG DOLLARS. It was just ridiculous. When I finally got closure... *ahem*...uhhh... I mean a copy of the CD in my hand, it was a little hard to believe that there wasn't something else I had to do.

Tony: Do you intend to stay in the UK?

Levi: As long as they'll let me stay, I think I will stay. Eventually, I would love to have dual citizenship or dual residency or something that just allows me to go back and forth freely as I wish. I totally miss my family, especially my brother. and my parents... and grandparents. But at the same time, I am really happy here. I had a dream the other night that I went back home and I was just distraught that I had left here. I was inconsolable! And then I woke up in my bed here and kind of went, "Ahhh. Okay. So I'm not ready to move back there. Not yet." I tend to think I will end up here on some sort of permanent basis...

Tony: Is there a full album on the way?

Levi: Not this year. Not yet. But yes, I already have a handful of songs picked out and hope to have a pool of about 20 to choose from by the time I start. Right now the plan is to do as many shows this summer as possible and then start the record once school starts up again in September. This time, I'll probably do a couple weeks of recording, and then do shows for a week or two, just to keep the mindset fresh and keep my perspective, which I totally lost on this EP. The plan is to really take my time and make something absolutely quality that will measure up with the Josh Ritters and Ryan Adamses of the world. Who knows? Maybe I'll actually go into a real studio this time... Anyway, I hope to have that finished and ready to go by early-mid spring of next year, and hopefully at that point start getting on with making a full time career out of this.

Tony: What plans for the future?

Levi: I have visions of myself sitting in front of a fire, reading Kierkegaard and sipping tea, and then retiring to the office to write for an hour or so a day, buuuuuut ...come on. That is so unrealistic. I could do that now, I have the time. I just don't do it because I keep myself busy. Eventually, and I feel like this is actually foreseeably within my grasp within the next two to three years, I would like to be fully employed by my music. I have loved all the various other jobs I have had throughout my life, but it would be nice to be able to sit back and go "Okay. Cool. My job is to write songs, and then play them." Eventually, I would love to start a school that teaches other artists who feel called into the secular music industry to use their art as a form of ministry... not necessarily to the crowds, but to the other bands they are touring with, to club owners, promoters, label execs, etc, etc. That's really always been the long term vision, but to do that, I feel like I need to go have that experience first and learn what works and what doesn't. Where are the pitfalls? How do I avoid them? How do I maintain a relevant relationship with a godless industry and still maintain the righteousness that God demands from me? Is it possible to maintain a family, or should I wait until I am on the back end of a music career and it calms down a bit? Those and hundreds more... there are thousands of huge, huge questions that I don't yet have the answers to, but I hope to someday. And when I finally do, I feel like it would be a travesty not to share those answers with other Christians who have the same questions.