Warren Jackson Hearne and Le Leek Electrique

Warren Jackson Hearne: When I first came to Denton I had come from Missoula, Montana which had a real varied and vibrant scene at the end of the 90’s. Denton made me feel completely at home because of that. There’s nothing worse than going to a town and everybody sounds alike. In my twelve years (off and on) I’ve lived here, that has never been the case. I’ve always met and seen bands that don’t really seem to care what anyone thinks about them or if people even are into what they are doing creatively. This encourages an interesting energy in a small town and under the right cohesion can create a great music scene. I know that a lot of cities wish they had the Denton energy and the Denton spirit, but it just isn’t the norm. There is also a better camaraderie in this town, where in other big music towns it just seems to be a huge competition. Fortunately for the Denton music scene those people usually move elsewhere.

Warren: Tex Bosley and Dan Dockrill were in a previous incarnation of the Gloomadeers with me and I loved playing music with both of them. Zach Landreneau had offered to be a hired gun with that band as well, but since the band was traditionally a band of acoustic instruments and his rig was through a laptop, I turned him down. He was perfect for this project though. For bass I had Ryan Williams in mind and fortunately he wasn’t too busy. When it was time to add a trumpet player the guys had played with Mike Shields before and Matt Moore was recommended by him for the tenor sax spot.
There are many differences between Le Leek and other acts before. I really had only one rule for the Gloomadeers was that it was to be an all acoustic band. Also, traditionally the main melodic instrument was the violin; of course in Le Leek we rely on the trumpet and tenor.
The main difference for me is that while Le Leek is structured, there is room for improv. Maybe that is why a lot of people site us as a jazz band, which I don’t see as completely true. We have a foot in jazz, but we have a lot of feet between us.

Warren: When we first talked about producing “Eleutheros!” the only way that made sense to us was to record it live. It brought a level of spontaneity that we felt would be lost if doing it one track by track. The core of the album was done at Echo Lab live, including vocals which was a nice experiment for me. More or less, we took around three takes of the ten songs then mixed them at Zach’s Wire Tree Media. We also did some over-dubbing there as well, so the record wasn’t completely “live.”
Justin Collins was an obvious choice for me to track the record, because I had worked with him previously. He’s recorded everything I’ve done in Denton in fact. He was the engineer on the first Spitfire Tumbleweeds album, the only other time I’d worked at the Echo Lab. That put a bug in me to take a group out there to play my music. We did all ten tracks, multiple takes, in one day. Writing, rehearsing, recording, and packaging ten songs I believe for anyone is a great achievement in itself. It is the first record I’ve ever made that I’ve been satisfied with. As long as we can keep traveling with it and people listen to it I’ll be content, though to make that happen is sometimes a struggle.