Leon Majcen Releases The Leaving Kind, an Album Built Around the Road

The Leaving Kind arrives less than a year after Making a Livin’ (Not a Killin’), and Leon Majcen has not slowed down to make it. Since 2020 the Nashville-based songwriter has released four albums, two of them last year alone. The new record accounts for where the time goes. Majcen spends much of his life between motel rooms and bars, and these songs treat that movement as both a subject and a working condition.

Homesickness runs through the album. “Slowing Me Down,” the opener, finds him worn out by the drive back to Nashville; “Long Way From Home,” near the end, brings the same ache to a head. Between those poles the tempo lifts. “Turn Me In” rides a horn-lined blues groove, while “Honeybee” and “Keep You off My Mind” trade the highway for romantic trouble. Majcen has described the pace as simply part of the job: “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. But I wouldn’t trade the chance for anything.”

The road-weary country singer is not a new figure, and Majcen’s drawl, at 27, sounds older than he is. What keeps The Leaving Kind from settling into routine is its ambivalence. He complains about the highway and keeps driving it, and the faster songs carry as much of that tension as the quieter ones.