Leslie Mendelson

Drawing inspiration from 1970s figures Carole King and Joni Mitchell, singer/songwriter Leslie Mendelson first attracted notice in 2005 through her self-produced debut, Take It as You Will. She carried that classic-songwriting approach forward on her third album, the 2017 release Love and Murder, which featured interpretations of material by Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison.

Born on Long Island, Mendelson absorbed early lessons from her father, a music educator, and developed a deep interest in songcraft while still young. Her initial recordings appeared as the vocalist for the funk ensemble Mother Freedom, whose six-song effort This Is Mother Freedom came out in 2002.

That same year she relocated to New York City to concentrate on her craft and joined the New York Songwriters Circle. Her first solo project, the independently issued Take It as You Will, began to extend her audience past the local scene. Jazz producer and label executive Joel Dorn became an early supporter and secured her a deal with Rykodisc Records. Mendelson then collaborated with songwriter Steve McEwan and the Spin Doctors’ Aaron Comess to craft her follow-up, 2009’s Swan Feathers, which Dorn co-produced.

A Grammy nomination arrived for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, yet Mendelson soon encountered a series of setbacks that included Dorn’s passing, the end of her label and management relationships, and an album that remained unreleased. She later resumed work with McEwan while contributing vocals to recordings by James Maddock and Willie Nile.

Issued in 2017 on Royal Potato Family, her third full-length Love and Murder contained seven original songs plus covers of Bob Dylan, Jimmy C. Newman, and Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou,” the last performed as a duet with Bob Weir. Another duet, “A Human Touch” with Jackson Browne, appeared in 2018 in connection with the documentary film 5B. Mendelson again partnered with McEwan on the album If You Can’t Say Anything Nice; released by Royal Potato in 2020, it was co-produced by bassist and engineer Lorenzo Wolff.