Listening In preview: Allen Levi

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: a preview of this week’s Listening In.

Singer-songwriter Allen Levi often jokes about his microscopic following. But those followers include some big names in Christian music: Bebo Norman, Ed Cash, and Andrew Peterson among them.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Still, when he goes to play a gig, Allen Levi knows most people in the audience don’t know who he is. On this week’s Listening In, host Warren Smith asks him what’s that like.

WARREN SMITH: You’ve got this way with a crowd and, um, and, and I can understand that you walk in, nobody knows you. What is this guy going to be any good or not? And yet I know because I’ve seen you perform many, many times that that goes away real fast that they get or I mean…

ALLEN LEVI: Thank you. I hope so.

SMITH: You’re beautiful stories and wonderful music  really neutralizes that anxiety pretty quickly. But it does take a minute. It’s not like they come in necessarily anticipating that.

LEVI: Right. You know, I figure most nights when I go to play, the people who are in the room don’t want to be there. They are invited by a neighbor or someone from their church or whatever and they don’t really want to be there. And my task is to make them glad they came. And fortunately most nights I think that happens a lot. But, but I don’t know. I don’t know really why I don’t like being in front of people, but I don’t like being in front. I’m a wreck. I’m not a recluse, but I am very much an introvert as we understand the term, most of us, I think.

(Photo/Allen Levi)

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