Richard Leschen was born in Newport, Arkansas, home of rockabilly legend Sonny Burgess. Leschen's musical interests began at age 10, so his parents gave him a $9 Sears & Roebuck guitar to keep him quiet. Years later he moved to New Zealand, only to become a burden on an unfamiliar and unsuspecting society of generally nice people. He hasn't learned to be quiet and his picture is shown above.
Leschen writes songs to escape an ordinary life. Japanese call it country music, as do some critics and he writes songs like Tom Waits (sort of) and Robert Hunter (maybe) and no one plays solo acoustic guitar like him. He has played in various ensembles ranging from Hindi Pop (Dr Greg & the Gopis) to Bluegrass (Wires & Wood) and backed various folks, including world music artists Latif Bolat and Satish Sharma. Leschen is currently working on several projects including Richard Leschen & Crawfish Mambo and as organizer of the Bunker Hill Folk Review.
His first album Heavy Waters features an ensemble of great New Zealand musicians and the second album, Black Horses, is solo acoustic guitar + mouth. Both releases are a mix of what some folks call alt-country, rock, folk, Tex-Mex, and bluegrass. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.