Andrew Leahey & The Homestead’s Summer Sleeves is the sound of the modern South: its cities, its open spaces, and everywhere in between. The Nashville-based Leahey recorded the songs with the Homestead, a group of childhood friends and Virginia-based musicians who added organ, harmonized guitar riffs, pedal steel, and three-part harmonies to the mix.

Last year Leahey spent most of the year on the road, driving the 600 miles between his adopted hometown of Nashville and his native Richmond, Virginia. The trips were long, taking him over the Smoky Mountains, across the Appalachians and through a handful of cities. He passed the time by listening to several albums on repeat: Whiskeytown’s Strangers Almanac, Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ Live Anthology, Drive-By Truckers’ Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, and filing away ideas for his own songs. Those ideas, inspired by the rock & roll coming from Leahey’s stereo and the landscape unfolding outside his car window, became the songs on new EP, Summer Sleeves.

Have a listen…

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