Leon Bridges’s days of washing dishes in the kitchen of Del Frisco’s Grille in downtown Fort Worth are over. The other day jobs – clearing tables in a Tex-Mex joint and working in an eye-solution factory – are also in the past.
These days, Bridges gets to close his eyes and croon with all his might into the microphone. He wanted to sing and dance and that’s what he does. That’s how it turned out.
There’s an acclaimed debut album, a growing fanbase for that voice and poise, and the tours and venues are getting bigger and better.
But Bridges – born in Atlanta to parents from New Orleans and raised in Fort Worth, Texas – knows the value of those days slogging in kitchens and factories.
“The day jobs grounded me,” he says. “I wanted to do music full time in the sense of playing around Fort Worth and Dallas and hopefully get good enough gigs so I could quit washing dishes. I never thought that I would be able to go outside of that.
“I wanted it, of course, I wanted the world to hear what I was doing, but I didn’t know how I’d go about that. The jobs taught me not to forget where I came from and the importance of hard work, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”
Bridges may look like a star in vintage clobber from head to toe, but he also sounds like one. Clock his debut album Coming Home and you will find a singer preaching gospel, R&B and southern soul with fantastic riffs, great songs and a superb throwback veneer.
He remembers heads turning at open-mic gigs he did around his hometown at joints such as Stay Wired, The Cellar and The Where House.
“In Fort Worth, there’s no soul or R&B and so what I was doing was something different,” he says.
“What was strange was that from day one, people were responding to it really well. I knew when a song was good and when it wasn’t, I had that sense from the beginning. But even when I’d go to an open-mic night and hook up my iPod to the PA and sing over a hip-hop beat, people took notice.”
Standard
In the beginning, Bridges really wanted to be a dancer. He would watch R&B videos and try to match the moves he saw in Ginuwine and Usher videos. “All I wanted to do was dance,” he says. So it was natural that he headed to Tarrant County College after high school to study dance.
But in between classes in jazz and ballet, Bridges found his voice and began to write songs. Back then, his style was more hip-hop and R&B than soul and gospel.
“When I first decided to write, I loved Ginuwine and Dru Hill and all that, but I wanted to do something different,” he says.
“The only thing I thought was alternative to that was neo-soul and alternative R&B and folk – because I played guitar – and I tried to pursue that. I always wanted to write good lyrics and not crap and I wanted that standard from the start.”
As he played more and more shows, the soul side of Bridges began to come to the fore. Someone mentioned Sam Cooke and he went off to check him out.
He remembered the New Orleans heritage of his family and went in search of that sound. “I didn’t know a lot about the New Orleans R&B scene at first, but when I started writing this kind of soul music and moulding my sound in this direction, that sound definitely resonated with me.”
He began to play with a snazzy bunch of local musicians called The Texas Gentlemen and his sound took some more twists and turns.
“The Texas Gentlemen were kind enough to be my backing band, which was awesome because it meant I could get and play better shows around Fort Worth and Dallas.”
Lyrically, Bridges’s songs started to take shape and he began to find links to the old-school singers with their hallelujah hollers.
“I think it’s cool how I connect in my work with so many of the soul musicians of the past. I grew up going to church – I had to go to church when I was a kid because my mom made me. I never sang in the choir, but I have that spiritual side to me.
“When I got older, I found God for myself and that life for myself and a lot of that bleeds into my music. I write about certain experiences that I’ve had spiritually and I put that in my music.”
Purity
Like many soul singers, though, Bridges can also sing about more worldly experiences.
"I believe in purity within the songwriting. Of course, I can write a song about believing in God like River, but I can also write a pure song like Coming Home about coming back to the one you love. The songs are really dictated by experiences, like a time I might have messed up with a woman or talking about coming to God. All of these can go together."
It was a chance encounter with fellow Fort Worth musician Austin Jenkins from White Denim which brought Bridges to the world beyond the Texas city.
“I didn’t know who White Denim were,” Bridges says. “I met Austin’s girlfriend first. She saw me with my Wranglers on and she was like, ‘You should meet my boyfriend, he likes Wranglers too’. I told him I was a musician, he told me he was a musician, but it never went any further than that.
“A week later, I was playing solo at a bar and Austin was there. Afterwards, he came up to me and said we had to record some songs. That was the start of everything. It’s crazy to think that it was so random. He was a Fort Worth cat just hanging out who saw me playing and provided the open door for me.”
Jenkins and band-mate Josh Block got involved, produced Coming Home at their studio in around a fortnight and the word got out about this star in the making. Now, the word about Bridges has spread far beyond Texas.
Natural
The singer is happy how it’s all unfolded for him and struck by how natural it feels to go from dishwasher to soul singer.
“I never had to put out the word or go searching for a band or a recording. I always went by instinct. The great thing about Fort Worth is that it’s not got a big ol’ music scene like in Austin or Dallas. Fort Worth is small by comparison, which meant I was able to shine as an artist. I always felt that if people liked what you were doing, they would extend their help to you. It’s a fantastic thing to see happen.”
Coming Home is out now on Columbia. Leon Bridges plays Dublin’s Olympia on September 25th
