Artists: Leslie Jordan featuring Brandi Carlile
Hometown: Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Ravensdale, Washington
Song: “Angel Band”
Album: Company’s Comin’
Release Date: April 2, 2021
Label: Platoon
In Their Words: “Brandi Carlile deserves to be accompanied by more than a single band of angels, not only for being a singular artist of our time, but also for living an exemplary life full of love and devotion to everyone she meets. … Singing these songs, it felt like I was recapturing the joy of what this music meant to me as a kid but without all the baggage. When I was growing up, I wanted so badly to be a good Christian, but I knew that the church would never accept me for who I was. It’s liberating now to come back to these hymns, completely at peace with myself, and sing without any hint of the guilt or shame I felt in my youth.
“My dear friend Travis Howard and I would get together on Sundays to sing these old hymns just because we loved them. Somewhere along the way, my business partner, Mike Lotus, took a real interest in what we were doing and started looking up and learning about every old Baptist hymn he could find. I think he realized, like we did, that the songs held something brilliant about the human condition and were a deep comfort to anyone who heard them, religious or not. He started posting our performances online, and the response was just incredible.” — Leslie Jordan
Photo credit: Miller Mobley
