A life on the road isn’t for everyone, but it’s definitely for Leon Majcen. When not between motel rooms and rowdy bars, he’s in Nashville churning out enough music to label him prolific in his field. He’s released four albums since 2020 (two of which came out just last year) and there’s little sign of letting up; The Leaving Kind arrives less than a year after the excellently-titled Making a Livin’ (Not A Killin’) and if Majcen weren’t so astute at what he does, he might be taken to be worn out. The Leaving Kind is an album of country road anthems, of taking moments to lay about fishing, and of darting from town to town and leaving broken hearts in the wind. As the title suggests, he’s always the one setting off somewhere else and rarely sticking around.
In many ways this isn’t new territory for a country musician, and in most people’s hands this would be a fairly middle of the road album. Perhaps I’ve turned soft for some good rootsy country blues after being dazzled and a bit blinded by Brandon Flowers’ recent excursion into the genre, but Majcen has a severely likeable way about his music. He’s wry and hard on himself, chastising the road while thanking his lucky stars he gets to travel along it every day. His drawl sounds like that of someone almost twice his inauspicious age (27) and he has a knack for getting your foot tapping when the tempo kicks up a dust storm.
He plays the downtrodden cowboy well – and right from the get-go too. Opening track “Slowing Me Down” has him wrestling with homesickness, dazed by all the stops on the way back to Nashville. “Lord, won’t you put a curse on the man who made this highway so long / I’ve been driving so much I don’t even know right from wrong,” he pines, a sleeplessness seeping into his voice. At the other end of the album on “Long Way From Home” the ache comes to a head: “Been missing the signs / That it just might be time to go home,” he sings with a wrinkle of a croak in his throat as strings echo his melancholy. It’s all part of the job though. “This music thing requires life to move a lot more quickly than it should, and racking up fifty thousand miles a year can take its toll,” Majcen says. “But I wouldn’t trade the chance for anything.”
Elsewhere his mind is on the women, and his tone (and the music) pick up in tempo and spirit to match this. On the woozy, horn-soaked blues of “Turn Me In” he’s hopeful the apple of his eye won’t ask about his shady past as he serves up a hook other musicians would die for (“She turns me on / I just hope she don’t turn me in”). “Honeybee”, with its playful twang and swagger, is for a woman who “could leave you broke and cryin’ on the floor” while on the rustic “Keep You off My Mind” he sounds positively smitten and happy to have his mind occupied (“Cause thinking is just another early grave”). The upbeat numbers do a lot of good for the album and are the best offerings here, namely because they sweep you up so easily. The highlight of them all might be “Falling Short”, which comes doused in saloon piano, a fiddle solo that brings to mind Andrew Bird’s early days, and memorable country erudition about life as a singer (“It’s a short way up / It’s a long way down / Always outta luck / Always out of town”).
When Majcen does ease to an amble there’s still plenty to enjoy, like the bobbing ode to fishing and friendship “Float On Down” or the softly enchanting delta blues harmonica and acoustic guitar of “Road Dog Express.” The slow comes with the fast, as that’s part of living on the road. There are stories along the way, shrugs to missed connections (“Woke up too late / Missed both my flights / Alberta ain’t bad, guess I’ll stay one more night”), and wisdom to gather up. It’s all part of the journey. “I’m getting where I need to go,” he sings on the gloomy “Don’t You Cry.” When the result is music as pleasing as that on The Leaving Kind, I’d say we’re lucky to be able to be along for the ride.
