Singer and songwriter Brennen Leigh tells the story of growing up on the Minnesota—North Dakota border with two parents who raised her “on Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris, traditional tunes like Wreck of the Old 97, and weekend airings of Austin City Limits.”

It wasn’t even called “country music” in her house, she says. “It was just music. I didn’t understand probably till I was 10 that there was other music besides country.”

“My dad would entertain my brother and me by playing guitar and singing,” she recalls. “I didn’t have a chance. I was totally indoctrinated from a very young age.”

The Bluegrass Situation also notes the influence of home in Leigh’s music, as demonstrated in the tune Don’t You Know I’m From Here.

On Prairie Love Letter, her full-length paean to her homeland on the Minnesota-North Dakota border, Brennen Leigh demonstrates a visceral, evocative grounding — just as (Dolly) Parton constantly speaks of her Tennessee mountain home: with a glint in her eye, and a sorrow in her heart for knowing she had no choice but to leave it. Leigh stakes her claim on both the wide, expansive plains and Nashville all at once, asking her audience “Don’t you know I’m from here?” As if to remind she’s as at home in bluegrass and country — and Music City — as Dolly herself.

Leigh has also had a long love affair with Western Swing, “a multilayered genre rich with history, dating back to the 1920s. Elements of jazz, blues, polka, and rural country music make up a sound that has had many lives” and is best known for its founder — Bob Wills — and his chief acolyte, Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson.

Leigh lived in Austin for 15 years before moving to Nashville. During that time in Texas she got to know Benson and they discussed the possibility of recording together. However, it wasn’t until 2021, after she was living in Nashville, that Leigh wrote the tunes and all the stars aligned for the album Obsessed With the West, a collaboration with Asleep at the Wheel. I love In Texas With a Band, which came off that album, as well as the odd little ditty If Tommy Duncan‘s Voice Was Booze (I’d stay drunk all the time), performed solo in the live version below.

Brennen Leigh has been singing and writing songs for a long time, often in recent years in collaboration with Noel McKay. Puttin’ Up A Front is classic country, while Only Other Person in the Room is a beautiful duet from their Before the World Was Made album.

Leigh’s classic country voice comes through in much of her music, but nowhere is it better than in her haunting Outside the Jurisdiction of Man from Prairie Love Letter.

Lying in the wagon bottom looking out over the side 
At that great wide open Western land
Not another soul in sight for miles and miles around 
We’re outside the jurisdiction of man 

So let my remaining time all pass
On a blanket of swaying prairie grass
And then won’t you bury me ‘neath the work of God’s own hand 
Outside the jurisdiction of man

Lovely, just lovely. As Marty Stuart likes to say, country has broad shoulders.

More to come…

DJB

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UPDATE: Apologies for misspelling Brennen Leigh’s first name in a couple of instances in the original post. I’d blame it on the spellcheck, but that would be too easy and inaccurate as well.

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Photo of Brennen Leigh courtesy of BrennenLeigh.net.