“I’m not really a concert person. I honestly usually find it boring,” confesses Odie Leigh during a recent phone chat. However, the Louisiana-born, Detroit-based singer/songwriter has been on the road pretty steadily for about a year and a half now, and has been touring behind her debut LP — Carrier Pigeon, which dropped this July on Mom + Pop (“One of the coolest things about working with Mom + Pop is how much freedom I have as an artist to create my own vision,” she tells me.) – since this summer, and she admits that it’s definitely been a good time: “The most fun part of the release has been seeing people love the songs in real life.”
Odie Leigh is kinda new to the whole music thing. In fact, apparently she didn’t even consider herself a musician prior to making a splash on TikTok during the pandemic. The song was actually made out of spite, after her rapper roommates made a bet to see who could be the first to record a song that went viral, but didn’t include Leigh in the competition. However, they did admit defeat, and two years – and a handful of singles — later Odie dropped her first EP, How Did It Seem To You?, a charmingly honest commentary on a recent situationship, whose sound she has described as, “acoustic, ethereal folk sad girl music.”
While the 2023 follow-up EP saw an evolution of Leigh’s sound, she admits to me that the aptly titled The Only Thing Worse Than a Woman Who Lies Is a Girl Who’ll Tell Truths was definitely still in the sad and dark territory, but she says Carrier Pigeon, which she began writing two years ago, was something a little different: “On this one, I was writing about things that had a bit more joy to it.” The 10 songs of the full-length, half of which have been released as singles, work as time capsules documenting Odie Leigh falling in love over the course of a year with a tourist she met at a bar in the French Quarter.
Since launching this July, the Carrier Pigeon Tour has included stops at Calgary Folk Music Festival and San Francisco’s Outside Lands in America, End of the Road Festival and Moseley Folk Festival in the UK, along with several dozen headlining dates, with shows at legendary venues like Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, Fox Theatre in Boulder, and Fine Line in Minneapolis. This Saturday, November 16th, Odie Leigh will be headlining our most fabled DIY punk venue, The First Unitarian Church. However, Leigh admits that she generally prefers not going to a venue with any real expectations… although she confesses that there are certain settings she prefers not to play: “It’s always fun to me not really knowing what I’m going into… But what I don’t really love is when a venue is seated.”
And despite her own general lack of interest in attending concerts, Odie Leigh tells me that she’s been enjoying getting to do the live music thing for, or more like alongside, her own fans: “Even before Carrier Pigeon, I wanted my shows to be interactive and I wanted people to bring up the energy… I try to keep people as involved as I can in a million different ways. When it comes to the experience of a show, it’s so much more than just me singing.” She tells me that the best shows she’s ever seen as a fan have had just as much to do with the audience as the performer, and, “a collaborative energy exchange,” between the two. And she says that her band is also an important part of the equation: “I have an all-girl band, and everyone is so incredibly talented. Every night is just a new opportunity to push ourselves and have as much fun as possible.”
Although Odie Leigh has been on tour for the better part of the time since establishing herself as a professional musician, she tells me that she’s looking forward to something a little different in the near future: “I’ve spent the whole year focusing on Carrier Pigeon… I am really excited to take some time for myself and start writing again for the first time in a long time.” But, before our chat wraps, she also tells me that there’s another 2024 LP, in addition to Carrier Pigeon, that she hopes our readers will check out: “Venus, Baby by Nussy Andrews is such a beautiful project. The album has such a unique sound and energy. I think it’s so stunning, and I want to spread the word to as many people as possible!”
*Get your tickets here.
**Listen for Odie Leigh on the next edition of Philthy Radio, 11/15 (9-11pm ET) on Y-Not Radio.
