Interview: Leif Vollebekk

For Leif Vollebekk, writing his 2024 album Revelation was, literally, a dream.

When the COVID-19 pandemic severed his tour in the spring of 2020, the Montreal-based singer/songwriter gave himself permission to sleep in.

“I noticed that I actually was the most productive asleep — which seems messed up, like discovering you're more erudite drunk,” Vollebekk recalls. “But it was the easiest thing ever.”

Each morning, he’d wake up and write down what the Sandman had served up in the previous night’s slumber, working quickly while the storylines were still lucid. With lockdown freeing him from the FOMO that normally kept him tethered to his phone, he cleared space for creativity by going fully screen-free before noon. 

“I'll never have time like that again,” he says. “If I couldn't figure out a song, I’d listen to it on a voice note before bed so I could hear it in my dreams that night.”

For an artist whose two prior albums —Twin Solitude and New Ways –- married meandering, flow-state musings with percussive piano playing, sinewy guitar solos, and hip-hop-adjacent drumbeats, this surrendered approach feels on-brand. His nonlinear, semi-obtuse verses often tumble into narratives that never fully resolve but always strike an emotional chord via evocative imagery and meditative, chorus-less structures reminiscent of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks,” Iron & Wine’s “Trapeze Swinger,” or Phosphorescent’s “Song for Zula.”

Asheville Stages spoke with Vollebekk from Huntsville, Ala., where he was rehearsing for the four-date Mumford & Sons-led Railroad Revival Tour, which pulls into Simpsonville, S.C., on Monday, Aug. 4. He spoke candidly about his creative restlessness, recording Revelation at the famed Dreamland Studios in Woodstock, N.Y., and how his roots as a “violin kid” paved the way to guitar and keys. 

Jay Moye: You’re about to hop aboard a traveling circus of a mini tour with Mumford & Sons and a stacked lineup of supporting players. What can fans expect?

Leif Vollebekk: Maybe we should be doing this tomorrow when I’m actually on the train! I don't know what to expect. Nobody does. I know there will be lots of surprises and lots of loose musical energy. They’ve created the conditions to experiment and play with each other with the idea to see what happens when you put a bunch of people together with a lot of cross over in the Venn diagram of music.

JM: Sounds like summer camp for touring artists.

LV: Exactly! My friend Andrew Barr of the group the Barr Brothers is drumming with Mumford now, so he'll be on the train. The last time I did a straight-up jam with him was New Year's Eve 2019 at his house, playing Tom Waits songs. We thought we’d be doing that sort of thing all the time, but the next time we’ll actually be learning and playing songs together will be on a train in New Orleans with Mumford & Sons, Ketch [Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show], Madison Cunningham, and Nathaniel Rateliff [and others].

JM: I saw the Barr Brothers play as a duo in Brooklyn back in November, and it was incredible. I think they've got a new record coming out?

LV: They do, yes. Growing up in Montreal, everyone kept talking about the early days of Barr Brothers, playing as a duo. I kept pushing them, like, “Guys, I’ve gotta see this duo show.”

JM: Feist showed up for a few, which made it even more special.

LV: She's so great. What a killer guitar player, too. Almost like a Neil Young-type tone. I love seeing her solo. And Andrew plays in her band sometimes.

JM: All you Canadians stick together, huh?

LV: I wish.

JM: Enough about them. Let's talk about Revelation. You've been touring it around the world, both solo and with your band. Has your relationship with these songs evolved on the road?

LV: I’m not sure it has. I worked on that record a long time. The songs came up slowly, forming in the quiet 2020-to-2023 years. I didn’t push any lines into these songs. I'm never satisfied with anything, which keeps me forever stuck in the tinkering. They still feel very natural and organic, and very close to me.

JM: Throughout your career, you've put out alternate versions of some of your songs, like “Rest” and “Peace of Mind.” What makes you decide to go back and re-record alternate versions of the original recordings?

LV: Some songs — like “Elegy,” for instance: I think I've recorded it eight times in different sessions with different bands. Back then, I didn't have a producer, so I wasn't really looking for colors. But I noticed the way it was sounding in my mind wasn't the way it sounded on the record.

I've got multiple fully-recorded versions of the song “Mississippi” on Revelation. I got one with Jim Keltner and a Wurlitzer, and one with J.T. Bates, who's a great drummer. But then I changed the verse, so the version on the record has no drums for almost the first two minutes, which I thought was perfect.

JM: But when those drums come in after the first verse, holy shit do they come in! That moment is what really grabbed me at first listen of the album.

LV: Yeah! Dreamland is a really old-school studio with all kinds of great gear. Jerry Marotta, the guy that runs it, is this great drummer who played with Hall & Oates. He's got, like, 40 snare drums. Drums are everything to me; they create the whole mood of the song. So I picked out his piccolo snare and was like, “This is the one.” It's so loud. I was so excited that it could be this John Bonham thing.

JM: Exactly. “When the Levee Breaks.”

LV: But a little cleaner.

JM: Speaking of Dreamland, I read that you fell in love with the first Bonny Light Horseman record that was recorded there. What specifically about the character of that recording resonated with you?

LV: It’s hard to explain. With some recordings, you listen to them and it’s almost like

being submerged in some sort of fluid. I just felt the magic of every note, fully engaged in a story, and like I was there in the room. I listened to it probably 200 times, which is the only way I listen to music. I either don't listen to something at all or over and over again. I’m not a casual listener.

My only caveat [in deciding to record at Dreamland] was that the piano had to have really good action, because it's all about the piano and drums for me. They have a mood you can't tweak, like you can a guitar or an amp. The architecture of a record is what the drums sound like in the room they were recorded in.

JM: It seems like percussion is an essential ingredient of your songwriting. You have this signature thing where you sort of scat-box and snap your fingers off-mic between piano chords, almost like you’re channeling the rhythm or telegraphing the drum parts. As melodies and structures come to you, is groove always there from the start?

LV: That’s such a thoughtful and validating question. [laughs]. When writing songs, you're trying to ride something. And how I find that works with rhythm is basically meter. It's no different than Wordsworth or Yeats. You find a meter and ride it, and hopefully it takes you to a place where you stop thinking and go into this other state where you're free to write things you're not aware of.

JM: You spent some time with Gregory Alan Isakov on his Colorado farm as you were working on Revelation. Did that help ground the process a bit more?

LV: It definitely did. Hanging out with him just helped with everything. In Canada, especially in Quebec, lockdown was really stressful. You weren’t allowed out of your house after 8 p.m. They made a caveat to walk your dog, so people were buying dogs. It was insane. So, Gregory was like, “Come out and hang on the farm.” He's such a great gardener; he has a degree in horticulture. He taught me how to increase my tomato yields. [laughs]

JM: What a healthy COVID hobby.

LV: Oh my God, yes. Also, my dream has always been to become a bit of a handyman, because I was always so embarrassed with how useless I was. So during COVID, I built a studio alone. I rented a spot, installed sound panels, painted the floors, and assembled all the gear and everything so I could finish the record. Now I know which tools I like. I’ve even got a favorite wood glue.

JM: You’re now a handyman and a gardener, thanks to a pandemic.

LV: Just barely. When you’re building a bench or a table, within days or hours you can stand back and admire it. Whereas when you're working on a song, nobody can touch it. It only exists while you're playing it. If a tree falls in the forest… if everybody stopped listening to music, it doesn't exist. Anyhow, when you build a table, you can touch it. For the first time, I felt pride. I’ve never felt proud of a record, but I felt proud to make a table. 

Back in the Sun Records days, you’d go in to record a song and within a day it could be a 45. Now you take forever to write something, then go to a different place to record, then mix and master somewhere else before distributing it — which is such an exhausting process.

JM: Making records does seem like it was more tactile back in the day. And I get that making something tangible with your hands delivers a different satisfaction than creating with your mind. 

You write and play piano and guitar, sometimes both in the same song when performing live. Do they speak to you differently, as vessels for your art?

LV: They are different, yes, but I don't know what that difference is exactly. I'm a huge [Bob] Dylan fan. I've read just about everything he’s said or written to get a grasp on how you can be that good. And he said once that, a lot of times, if you write a song on the guitar, it will want to be a piano song when you get in the studio, or vice versa. I usually can hear in my head what a song is supposed to be. I wrote “Peace of Mind” on guitar, then in the studio I was pushing to make it a Journey-style piano ballad. But the guitar kept creeping back in. I still don’t think I got it exactly right, and that’s probably why there are three versions of that song out.

The fact is, I don't understand how anything works, but I know I can't strum a piano. When I’m strumming a guitar, that’s the rhythm section, so I tend to tell the drummer to lay off the [hi-]hats. It’s all one machine, and less is always more. The more people you put in the photograph, the smaller their heads are. So I'm always trying to figure out how to play the least to get to the song.

JM: Did you start out on piano or guitar?

LV: I was actually a violin kid. I just really wanted to play fiddle like my grandpa, so I played that forever until I discovered my mom's guitar in the closet. That was a mystical summer for me. I don't remember anything besides playing guitar in my room every day, for seven hours a day. I had all the chord books and made a tab book with all Weird Al, Aerosmith, Beatles. I just plowed through it. Then one day, I had the very simple — but to me, brilliant — idea that I could play the same chords on the piano. I found each note and was off to the races. I wanted to get known as a piano player. And now I really like guitar again and am always wanting to play more guitar solos. [laughs]

JM: You've released a diverse string of covers over the last couple of years, from Bon Iver to Kendrick Lamar to The Eagles. I'm curious how you decide to record these singles, which you usually surprise drop on social media.

LV: I record lots of stuff and just put out the ones that stick to the wall and aren't complete trash. Sometimes, it's a song I just need to record — you know, something I’ve been listening to forever. I never make it better, ever, but to me it’s the next best thing to having a conversation with the artist about music. Imagine all your favorite painters getting together and painting the same landscape. If you put their paintings side by side, you’d see how each person feels about life.

IF YOU GO

Who: Mumford & Sons: Railroad Revival Tour with special guest Darius Rucker, featuring Nathaniel Rateliff, Trombone Shorty, Celisse, Chris Thile, Leif Vollebekk, Lucius, Madison Cunningham and Ketch Secor
When: Monday, Aug. 4, 7:30 p.m.
Where: CCNB Amphitheatre at Heritage Park, 861 SE Main St., Simpsonville, S.C. ccnbamphitheatre.com
Tickets: $53-$169

(Photo by Kiddihjalmur)