What have you done in the past couple of years? If your answer was not “have brain surgery and then record an album with Ken Coomer,” I’m betting that your time was less insane than Andrew Leahey’s. 
The singer/songwriter and frontman of his group, Andrew Leahey and the Homestead, knew something was wrong last summer when he was suffering from relentless migraines and passing out randomly. Diagnosed with a brain tumor, a 12-hour surgery was the only option to save his life. The operation was successful, but as is frequently the case in medicine, recovery was a bitch.
Bedridden and stagnant, Leahey, used to living life on the road out of van, found solace in his guitar, and he was soon spending his days writing new songs about the highway, the heartland, and of course, being alive.
Andrew continued to recover, and as he began to play live again (with such locals as Darrin Bradbury, Samantha Harlow and Lucie Silvas) the tunes started to turn heads, including that of Ken Coomer, the former drummer of Uncle Tupelo and Wilco and award-winning producer.
Soon there after, Leahey was recording his third album Skyline in Central Time, in Coomer’s East Nashville studio. The LP drops on August 5th, and it marks Leahey’s first release with Thirty Tigers – the label also home to Jason Isbell and responsible for the release of artists like the Jayhawks, Luke Bell, Parker Millsap, Andrew Combs and Aubrie Sellers. “I want this record to be raw and real,” says Leahey. “This is a real snapshot of what I went through, and who I went through it with.”
Needless to say, if Skyline makes you feel like lowering the windows, blasting the speakers, and hitting the open roads of the U.S.A., then missioned accomplished. This album is written, after all, by a guy who knows a little something about being, and feeling, alive.
Here are two samples,”The Good Life,” and “Little In Love,” filmed at the delicious Lockeland Table. Enjoy.
– Joe R.
Lockeland Springsteen 