Jim Leverton & Geoffrey Richardson
Deal Folk Club.
2008-05-23
Jim Leverton & Geoffrey Richardson
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The Canterbury Discography
(http://calyx.club.fr/mus/leverton_jim.html) :
Jim Leverton only became associated with the Canterbury scene quite late in his career, as he joined Caravan for the sessions of The Battle Of Hastings in the spring of 1995, taking over from Richard Sinclair following the early 1990s reunion of the original line-up
The Canterbury Discography
(http://calyx.club.fr/cantdisco/R.html) :
Geoff Richardson joined Caravan in September 1972, and supported Frank Zappa with them on a tour of the USA in 1975. He has been a member of The Penguin Café Orchestra since 1976.
MySpace URL:
www.myspace.com/geoffreyrichardson .
Geoff Richardson has recently finished eight months on the Rouge Sang tour of France, Switzerland, Belgium and Canada with Renaud, playing violin (Mittenwald), viola (Honore Derazy), mandolin (Epiphone), ukulele (Alvin Keech), guitar (Martin), flute (Rudall Carte), whistles (Susato).
My view of them at Deal was restricted, so only poor photographs I am afraid.
KIF 5539 Jim Leverton + Geoff Richardson
At Deal Folk Club Geoff demonstrated his mastery of these and other instruments, giving a new (outsized) guitar its first outing. Jim Leverton's wry humor spiced the introduction to a number of great songs. These musicians are 60 and over, but showed a fresh enthusiasm for the music that made the lads that started playing so many years ago just shine through. However the music showed their experience, they played a set of numbers selected from a range of styles over the last few decades with skill and mastery.
I mentioned to Geoff that Patrick Street, who had just visited the Gulbenkian the previous weekend, had chosen to end the first half with the (to me quite remarkable) Penguin Café Orchestra piece : "Music for a Found Harmonium" - but appeared to be un-aware of its Canterbury connections.
I asked Geoff about the origins of this piece of music - he recounted that the harmonium in question was actually found by them on a Tokyo pavement (during a tour), along with a pile of rubbish. Simon Jeffes hunkered down and started trying some chords and scales which were running through his head at the time, and that eventually turned into the piece of music in question. They rang the Tokyo Polygram music company, who sent a van to collect the harmonium, which was taken to their archive show-room - where Simon continued developing the structure of the piece.
Jim Leverton & Geoffrey Richardson have a new combo called The Puffins playing acoustic, folksy R&B. They have been touring recently, and still have a number of gigs left, mainly in the South East of England - so do try and catch them :
