How do you open Leif Vollebekk's Sydney show? With Melbourne singer-songwriter Hayden Calnin.
It was a stripped-back set that really tuned us into the chords. Wearing a green beanie and a white t-shirt, it was like being by the campfire singing onstage with Hayden.As the gentle strums of the guitar echoed through the venue, his lyrics – 'I'm only trying to find my way back home' – hung in the air, stirring something raw and unspoken in the listeners.
It was like hearing your own thoughts in melody form, a subtle yet profound connection through every chord. That's how you open.
Revelations come through on nights like these. It's in the air and you and everyone in the place knows it.
Leif Vollebekk onstage at the Metro Theatre in Sydney (8 May) is just magic. Not the kind you expect, but the kind that sneaks up mid-song, when your shoulders drop and your soul sighs out, 'yes, this'.
He takes the stage with quiet reverence. The white Yamaha piano gleams under the lights, and Vollebekk smiles. "Wow. It's great to be here in this beautiful city, Sydney," he says, nodding warmly to his bandmates. "It's really great to be here with my band." Just like that, we're his.
From the first notes, it's clear he's not performing at us, he's with us. His playing is intimate – like a conversation, or a confession whispered across the stage. Piano, guitar, harmonica – he moves between them with ease, as if opening drawers in a well-loved treasure chest. Each instrument holds a different piece of him, and he gives it to every one of us in the crowd.
He drops in old favourites, letting lyrics rise like old memories – crowd singing, bodies swaying. There's laughter. Then silence. Then applause that feels like an exhale. This isn't a greatest-hits show. This is something closer to the present.
It's a revelation, and he knows it too. "The present is always the present," he says mid-set, almost offhand, but it lands like poetry. I was looking for revelation, I was looking at the 'Southern Star'; telling us he wrote this song after visiting Australia, made it sound even sweeter when he played it.
Throughout the whole set, we were witnessing the troubadour's true talent, making us really pay attention to the present. He wasn't going to play another song, he says, but something calls him. Maybe it's the city. Maybe it's the crowd. Maybe it's the ghosts of songs that never leave us.
He ends with 'Purple Rain'; and I cry. Not for sadness, but for beauty. For the permission to feel it all. I don't even have time to look around. The moment is gone as quickly as it arrived. Just like he said: The present is always the present.
Then the show is over. Leif Vollebekk didn't just play a set – he played a revelation. Letting us ache a little, then handed us that memory to carry home into the ether.
