16 Historic Rte 66
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
USA
If you can picture a man in black jeans and sunglasses riding his motorcycle into the sunset with his dog and guitar strapped to his back, you can picture this soft-on-the-inside-scarred-on-the-cheeks singer-songwriter from Phoenix, Arizona.
Most recently hailing from Flagstaff, where he turned his childhood talent into solid gold skill and weird experiential repertoire, Leavy directs groups of musicians with a wicked laugh, drill sergeant focus, and no-shirk, hands-on mastery. This well-suits the wide-ranging compositions he writes for an eclectic folk arrangement…and all for the sake of love songs.
If you get to know Leavy personally, what may come to mind are the lyrics of Belle and Sebastian: “we know you are soft cause we’ve all seen you dancin,’ / we know you are hard cause we’ve all seen you drinkin.”
If you get to know him through his music, you see this way of being translates into his own work:
“When the girls got the snow up her nose she’s ready to go puttin on that one woman show/
We all look back look back eyes front eyes front, heart attack she’s on the run./
I can see the pain in her eyes cause I’m the only one not seeing the top of her head/
Never been squeezed by those thighs cause I’ve never taken them to bed.”-One Woman Show
“How did that pistol get under your bed?/
How did that girl crawl into your head?/
How did that trigger wrap round your finger?/
Why does the blood on the concrete still linger?”-$30 Pistol
Leavy’s gritty, honest lyrical writing explores the complexities and contradictions of his relationship with the world, guided by haunting, melodic, and sometimes delightfully shuffling instrumentation. If you’re lucky enough to see him play in person, you might catch Tim hammering and howling on an upright piano with his new sly bass and sax ensemble on the back of a cow trailer in downtown Flagstaff.
If you can only buy his album from afar, you’ll find a rich, moody, bluesy, sexy, love-and-loss inspired take on sound with the lyrical fluidity of Tom Waits and bursting-seam energy of the Black Keys.
Tim’s ultimate goal is to play music that makes you feel, whether you love it or hate it, to write and collaborate on strange arrangements forever, to laugh at least as much as he yells, and ride across the country with his dog in a sidecar and a guitar strapped to his back. Then retire to a porch in the south.
