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Email: smalltalk (at) jenslekman.com
Subject line: Jens Will See You Now




May 19th, 2026






JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 54

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Hi Jens

I've been thinking a lot about the lines in your new album about feeling like a midwife, always at the life transition but not necessarily a part of it. I'm a medical student myself, and studying to be an OB/GYN. I've been able to help many women give birth over the years, and I still can't get over the intimacy and privilege of being a part of those moments. When you look past the obvious sensitivity of blood and nudity and pain there is also something so special about the bond you form with someone experiencing such a huge change to their bodies and worlds right in front of you. And then, after hours of labor, they go off into their lives with a new baby and disappear from the hospital floor where I remain.

Do you feel a bond with the people you've sung for at their weddings? Do you keep in touch with them, maybe letting friendship bloom from that interaction, or do you also watch them go off into the world after the delivery?

Sophie

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Hi Sophie

How lovely to hear from someone on the other end of that metaphor. I've always felt a bit embarrassed about those lines, as if I'm implying that what I do is as important as what you do. As a great opening act I once had sang ”The paramedic thinks I'm clever 'cause I play guitar. I think she's clever 'cause she stops people dying”. Someday I'll post an extensive list of opening acts I've had who went on to become superstars after opening for me (including Courtney Barnett and Bon Iver). Isn't that also reminiscent of what we do, Sophie? One moment we're sharing the stage with a newcomer who's stumbling out on shaky legs to meet the world. The next moment they are gone to collect their Grammys.

When I made the video for Candy From a Stranger I checked in with couples I hadn't talked to in almost 20 years. Some emails bounced. Others came back with a different last name. Surprisingly many replied that they were still together but a few were not. A few were not so thrilled to share videos of what was now a sad memory. One person replied "who are you again?".

It happens that a friendship forms, that there's talk about meeting up when we're in the same city. A lot of the couples show up at my shows of course and I'm always happy to see them. Usually the connection doesn't go further than that. But I think about them. A lot. Some more than others. I wonder how they're getting along, how things went with the IVF, if the bride's mother still drinks too much, if the older relative who had a heart attack on the dance floor is doing alright. Sometimes I wonder if people understand how much they leave us with?

A few years ago I was soundchecking when an old woman approached the stage very slowly, covering her ears against the noise. She waved me over and I asked how I could help her. She took out an old photograph of a woman with a group of children and I recognized myself. She said "I am your kindergarten teacher, I've been thinking about you the last 40 years. How are you?".

With love
Jens




May 19th, 2026






JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 53

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Hello Jens,
You recently played Seattle, but once again [sigh] did not cross the border to play in Vancouver or Victoria in Canada. Will you ever play on this side of the border on the West Coast? Many of us are unwilling to cross over for fear of being locked up. We love you in Canada, too.
Stuart Mackinnon

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Hey Stuart

I hear you. I have wonderful memories of the shows I did in Vancouver in 2009 and 2012 and I would love to return. Let me clear up a common misunderstanding though - I don’t ever get to pick where I play. I take the offers I can get and I’m grateful for them. Maybe once in my career, around 2008-2009, I was able to point at a map and say ”there” but these days it’s just a question of who makes an offer and whether I can afford to go there without losing too much money. It’s hard times for most artists I know. And the venues too I’m sure. Heck, I’m sure it’s hard times for everyone.

I understand your situation Stuart. We were terrified of crossing the border too. Despite having work visas in order, despite being from a nation that’s not on any ban list. The stories that circulated seemed as irrational as horrifying. In hindsight I wonder how much the current US administration gains from people just being scared, how much we self censor and adjust without anyone asking us to, all of us who cross the border for work, school and to see loved ones. I’ve always been sceptical of cultural boycotts as I believe that culture is the last thing that binds us together. But I’m running out of excuses to play in the US when I wouldn’t play a lot of other places that are democratically questionable.

This is where your help is needed Stuart. I need you to convert more people in Canada into Jens heads and convince your venues and promoters to book me. You have to spread the gospel. As people in the US usually say: ”if things get worse we’re moving to Canada”. When that happens I need to have established myself as the new Canadian national treasure. I already wrote your unofficial national anthem, Maple Leaves, 23 years ago. Let's make it official.

Yours truly
Jens



May 19th, 2026






JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 52

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Hi Jens,

I would love to learn more about your recording process. Do you work out arrangements at home and record in studio? As a musician, I’m fascinated with how my favourite artists approach recording.

Nick from Vancouver

P.S. Thanks for an incredible show in Paris!

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Hi Nick

Another Vancouverite! Before I begin, see my response to Stuart above. Please join forces and make me a superstar in Canada. Thank you.

Ever since I realized that my dad’s cassette deck had a simple overdub function where you could record something on cassette A and then combine it with new sounds on cassette B, recording has been a component of my songwriting as important as lyrics and melody. I write and record simultaneously, chop things up, throw it around until something happens. I think this is how most songwriters work these days.

But I don’t know much about recording really. I don’t know how a compressor works or which mic goes where. And I think if I learned these things I would stop writing songs. The more I’ve been able to shape the sound of my songs, to make them sound good quick, the less I’ve been interested in the actual songwriting. What I learned early on through working with my dad’s cassette deck was how recording gave birth to accidents. Pocketful of Money for example was initially a very boring and sad piano song that I recorded to a percussion loop I had found on my Tascam 4-track portastudio. A few days later I listened to it and realized that I had failed to "arm" track 4, thus track 1-3 were recorded but track 4 was blank. Or so I thought, it turned out that track 4 already had sound from a previous recording, a sampled loop of Calvin Johnson singing ”I’ll come running with a heart on fire” set to the same tempo. The mixture of the piano and Calvin’s voice was so weird to me, it wasn’t at all how I had envisioned the chorus of a sad piano song. But I loved it and rewrote the whole song around that.

Calvin was a big inspiration for my early recordings, I listened to Beat Happening and was delighted that my own early 4-track recordings sounded somewhat similar. But by the end of the 90’s, the idea of ”lo-fi” started feeling constrained as it was easier and cheaper to download a cracked version of Cubase than to find a vintage 4-track recorder. The sound of the early 2000’s, to me, was the sound of a thousand teenagers getting access to state of the art digital recording equipment and having no idea what to do with it.

It’s getting increasingly hard to create accidents with modern equipment. Every DAW is so easy and intuitive now that they almost do the job for you. And now AI is knocking on the door. As I wrote in a reply to someone last year, I’m not against AI in songwriting. But I don’t want an AI that does the job for me, I want an AI that behaves like a clumsy cat and spills coffee over my mixing desk.

Glad you enjoyed the Paris show, Nick. So did I.
Jens




May 19th, 2026





JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 51

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Hi Jens,

I frequently see Scandinavian countries being ranked highest in the world for quality of living and happiness. I assume for a number of reasons - good social service infrastructure, health care, education access, ma/paternal paid leave, access to nature, etc, etc. I am curious about your take on these statistics having both grown up in Sweden and lived and traveled in so many countries around the world. Does this ring true for you? If so (or not) - why, and what would you change?

Your pal,
Mel in Seattle


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Hi Mel in Seattle

I got sick some time ago and one night when my cough kept me up I started watching the classic Swedish crime series Wallander, based on the books by Henning Mankell. The original Swedish version with Rolf Lassgård. In the first film, The Dogs of Riga, a Latvian detective named Karlis Liepa comes to Sweden to help with a case. As he and Kurt Wallander walk along a beach they have this conversation:

Liepa - ”Latvia and Sweden are two poor countries”
Wallander - ”Poor? No no no, not Sweden”
Liepa - ”Poverty has different faces, we still lack your extravagance in food, clothing and things. We’d like the freedom of choice. But to me it is also poverty not to have to fight for your survival.”

I don’t think any poor person would actually say something like that. But sure, there’s poverty in money and there’s poverty in spirit. The latter is harder to measure but Sweden is sometimes said to suffer from it because of our very lack of suffering. No wars for 200 years, a relatively stable economy and a strong welfare system. Lou Reed picked up on it in the film Blue In The Face: ”I get scared in Sweden. You know, it’s kind of empty, they’re all drunk. Everything works….” Lou favoured the warm chaos of New York. I lived in New York for a short while and during my stay I was constantly asked if I could play benefit shows for someone’s uninsured friend who had broken a leg or been diagnosed with cancer. I agreed to play sometimes and was touched by how people came together to help. If I had been asked this in Sweden I would've replied "why don’t they just go to the hospital?".

Sweden is a question and the question is: when we no longer need each other for survival, what binds us together then? Or: when we no longer have to fight for our survival, how do we invent meaning? Maybe our rich neighbor Norway is an even better example of this, it is after all one of the few places in the world where even Swedes feel underprivileged. I feel like every single Norwegian movie I’ve seen the last 15 years has indirectly touched on this subject, depicting good looking, healthy people living in nice homes, in spotless cities, having meaningful jobs, surrounded by nice families and access to a great welfare system and still they just have to do heroin, murder someone or take Russian pills that make their skin fall off.

Maybe this is what happens when we’ve solved the problem of survival. Without being occupied by the constant hustle of staying alive, maybe there’s nothing left to do but to stare into the abyss? I don’t know. I’ve stopped believing in utopias and I’m not sure how much I believe in a happiness index, humans will always find ways to be unhappy. But I do think everyone should have the right to free healthcare so we can stare into the abyss together.

With love
Jens





January 14th, 2026





JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 50

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Hi Jens,

Now that your North American tour is over, I wonder if the experience helped you learn anything new about ‘Songs for Other People’s Weddings’ (the album), ‘Songs for Other People’s Weddings’ (the book), old songs, the cities you visited, your bandmates, yourself. I imagine touring can be both exhilarating and exhausting, but maybe also hopefully enlightening.

It was really nice seeing you play in Toronto. Thanks for driving through a snowstorm and playing ‘Maple Leaves’ for us.

All the best,
Ryan


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Hi Ryan

I learned that it’s easier than I thought to find a pair of cowboy boots in Minneapolis.

That Chicago is beautiful in snow.

That The Great Hall in Toronto has the nicest staff

I learned to love the Bawstin accent.

And that Clara who I played a benefit show for in 2008 after she had been in an accident, still lives in Northhampton and is doing great.

I learned from Yeemz, by way of David, about the beta paradox as we discussed the story's trajectory backstage in Philly.

And at a wedding in Hudson I learned that I may be a pretty good wedding entertainer but I’m nowhere near the band I shared the stage with that night, Shorty Long and The Jersey Horns.

In Brooklyn I just had a blast. You don't have to learn something every night.

In DC I learned that when Trump is president, the opposition comes together. People are kind in times of unkindness.

And in Durham I learned about the ICE raids that had taken place in the city the same day. Fuck ICE.

I learned that if you dedicate a song ”to all the lovers” in Asheville, half of the crowd will start making out.

In Atlanta I learned through my drummer that if you get a haircut there, the barber will show you his gun collection. And that The Earl is still one of the best venues in the world.

I learned that Nashville has it’s own Parthenon. And while sitting there, falling asleep against one of it’s gigantic columns, I learned that a tour like this really needs at least a day or two off for rest.

But we had to get to Texas on time. In Dallas the exhaustion caught up with me and took out my voice. I learned that my audience will carry me when I’m out of breath.

On the way to Austin, I asked Marem Ladson to play us some of her favourite spanish songs and I learned about the boy with the sad eyes.

I learned that when the trains pass by the Motel 6 in Van Horn, TX, the rooms literally shake.

I didn’t learn this time either what Thanksgiving really is but I did enjoy the pumpkin pie in Tucson.

And I learned that if you just spontaneously take a left on the highway on your way to Phoenix you’ll end up in the Sonoran Desert which is where Arizona looks like Arizona.

I learned in LA that the most probable cause for my future tinnitus is not playing with a band night after night but rather a packed Lodge Room with 600 people screaming with joy simultaneously.

On the way to San Francisco I learned that I got a grant that I had applied for, which made me happy. Later I learned that despite the grant and despite playing weddings on the off days and despite selling out almost half of the shows and staying at the cheapest hotels and working round the clock for months to make it happen, the tour still lost money.

But in Portland I learned from something I heard someone tell their child on the street: You can choose to have a good time or a bad time. And I chose to have a good time.

In Seattle I learned that my band were really sad to go back home.

In NY I learned that I was too.







January 14th, 2026






JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 49

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Jens
Q: What is loneliness to you?
Best,
Jeff

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Jeff

I remember working at Färdtjänsten, a taxi service for people who are unable to use public transport. Maybe it’s called paratransit elsewhere? Mobility service? I sat by a computer, took calls and coordinated the drives. I liked my job and often worked on Christmas and holidays because the pay was good, everything was calm and I liked talking to the people who called. The calls I would get those days were often from old people who just wanted to talk. They sounded ashamed and apologized for calling. I said it was fine and we talked for a bit. At the end of the call I asked them if they wanted to order a taxi and they said ”sure”. ”Where to?” I asked. ”I don’t know” they said. Their voices still echoed in my mind as I took the tram out to my parents at the end of the night, where a warm meal and christmas gifts were waiting for me.

I remember hearing that terrorist Anders Behring Breivik had sued the Norwegian state for his isolation in jail. I heard that he was isolated from the other inmates in a dedicated section in the prison with several rooms of his own, a gym, a kitchen, Xbox, huge flatscreen TV. He wasn’t allowed to see anyone except the guards but he had three budgies. I wonder what he named them. I remember back in 2011, just after the shooting at Utøya, that someone suggested that his punishment should be to never be allowed to read another book in his life. An absurd punishment but I shivered when I read it.

I remember reading Days of Loneliness by August Strindberg a few years ago, in which the narrator (probably Strindberg himself towards the end of his life) wanders through Stockholm in the early 1900’s and finds comfort in his solitude. He’s separated himself from the idea of what a life should look like and instead has found freedom and meaning in his inner world. He watches a couple with their baby from his window but in contrast to his younger self he doesn’t feel jealousy or cynicism, instead he has come to terms with his destiny - this is his life and that’s theirs. I listened to it as an audio book on my evening walks at a time when I felt disconnected from people and life. And it made me feel less lonely.

I remember seeing an article about the top 10 creepiest places on the internet and one such place was apparently a Buffy The Vampire Slayer forum that only had one user. One person who posted tens of thousands posts. It seemed to be one woman talking to herself. After it was named one of the creepiest places, a haunted house of solitude, people couldn’t stand its existence and decided to storm the forum with mean comments. Turns out it was a place that functioned more like a news portal, not a forum. There were actually other users but they weren’t meant to participate, only follow. They had their community. After it was stormed, the place closed permanently.

I remember a moment in my music career when a fan who I had been avoiding for years, a person who didn’t understand boundaries, suddenly revealed that they had been communicating with me through multiple fake aliases over several months. I suddenly realized that the majority of the correspondence I’d had during this time was just this one person. Almost no one else had been writing.

I remember a dinner with friends where a conversation made me realize that I didn’t know them and they didn’t know me. I remember sitting in a couch with a partner, me on one side and them on the other, feeling like the couch was a billion light years long. I remember an older woman at a wedding dinner telling me about her marriage and how it had fallen apart. "Is there anything lonelier than a lonely marriage?" she said and I immediately asked if I could put that in a song.

What is loneliness to you, Jeff?








January 14th, 2026







JENS WILL SEE YOU NOW # 48

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Hi Jens

I was catching up on Smalltalk before I see your show tonight and saw the story about Calvin and Black Cab. I was moved by that story because my baby is four months old and I sing her Maple Leaves as a lullaby. She loves it. I wanted to know, what song of yours do you think makes the best lullaby? Or would you go with another artist?

Jamie

P.s. it is hard times in chicago right now. Thank you for coming to our beautiful and resilient city.

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Hi Jamie

That's interesting that Maple Leaves is the one you chose to sing as a lullaby for your daughter. I'm equally surprised when people want to hear it at their weddings, always makes me wonder if they know what it's about. But I'm guessing they and you know exactly what it's about and that you've chosen it for a reason, consciously or not.

There's an old song of mine called It Was a Strange Time In My Life that starts with a recording of me as a child. The melody young Jens is singing is the opening theme to the TV show Unser Sandmännchen, a popular children's show from DDR / East Germany. The show was about Sandmann (The Sandman) who goes on adventures, travels to space (and showcases cool socialist technological achievements such as flying cars and rocketships) before sprinkling sand in the eyes of the children so they go to sleep.

The animated show was based on H.C Andersen's fairytale Ole Lukøje, where the Sandman is a dream god that visits a young boy each night to tell stories and help him sleep. He has two umbrellas, one filled with wonderful dreams and the other filled with no dreams at all. On the last night he takes the boy to the window and shows him the Sandman's brother, who is also known as Death. He tells the boy that his brother only comes once in your life and takes you on a sleep that never ends.

When I was a kid my parents used to sing the Sandmännchen theme song for me as a lullaby. And they would sing the typical Swedish lullabys, often traditional sailor songs about grief and the loss of a dear one. They were always in a minor key and incredibly sad. And I would imagine that my bed was floating in the middle of the ocean on a stormy night, the cold waves tumbling around me but my bed was warm and safe. I could sense that there were horrific things in the world that I did not know about yet, that I couldn't yet understand. I could sense that in the contrast between my parents soft voices and the sadness of the song there was something at stake. But that this, whatever it was, was also what made life worth living.

One song I sometimes listen to when I wake up at 3am and can't go back to sleep is this. But you have to choose your own lullaby, Jamie. And I think you have already.

J
x







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