This post is part of our occasional feature, Songwriter Profiles. If you have a suggestion for a bluegrass songwriter we might want to consider, please contact us.

Connie Leigh is what might be called the songwriter’s songwriter. So many fellow writers have great things to say about her; Mark Brinkman describes her songs as “genuine, heartfelt and powerful;” Larry Cordle says this about her song writing abilities, “She has plenty to say and I love how she goes about saying it. Her songs reflect the things she has lived and observed in this life & her way of communicating them to us is absolutely wonderful to me”; and Larry Shell describes her contributions to a songwriter session that the duo had with Larry Cordle, “She had wonderful ideas and a fresh approach to some old themes in bluegrass and country music.”

She writes from the heart and isn’t ashamed to do so and as Jerry Salley comments, “Her songs are real, the characters in them are real and they connect with ‘real’ people.” The listener can easily understand and appreciate her words.

Leigh has been intrigued by music as far back as she can remember. At the age of 10 she was writing poetry and rhyming words. When 12 she began learning to play the guitar and by 15 she was beginning to write songs.

She has always had a desire to listen to music with a mountain sound. When her family relocated from Ohio to the hills of east Kentucky, she found an album of Flatt and Scruggs at the house they moved into. Connie would play it over and over and sing along with it. It was bluegrass music that she could best relate to and it has always remained deep in her soul.

However, she devoted many years to singing and recording Gospel music and believing that to stay true to the church she should limit herself to that style of music. Two life-changing events led to Connie realizing that the church could sometimes be unpardonable and she vowed to pour her heart into new bluegrass songs.

After finding that the album of bluegrass songs wasn’t going to earn her a recording contract, Connie was persuaded to focus on song writing and pitch her songs to other artists. A handful of top bluegrass artists liked her material so much that they recorded some of her songs. That was in 2005 and since then her songs have become even more highly sought-after.

That said, Connie remains very much down to earth, literally, helping her husband on their farm at Swifton in northeast Arkansas, from where she spoke to me about her song writing ……..

Who was the first bluegrass songwriter to make an impression on you and why?

I don’t know if Hank Sr. is considered a bluegrass writer or just country, but he has a profound effect on my song writing. I haven’t really studied his life story as far as how he grew up, but there was something about his writing that lets me know he had a dark, lonesome ole soul just like me. Things happened in my life that left me with a lot of emotion, and it comes out in a lot of my songs. Other writers who I admire are Larry Cordle, Larry Shell, Jerry Salley, and Carl Jackson. When I listen to a song, if it can touch the depths of my soul with a moral that is strong enough to catch my attention and strong enough to make me stop and think, then that writer has served their purpose in writing that song. (more…)