In the Deep End with … Brennen Leigh

“Everything’s bigger in Texas / that includes heartache, too,” country singer/songwriter Brennen Leigh sings on “Alone In The Lone Star,” off her latest album. Leigh, who’s a meticulous explorer of country music subgenre ought to know, after all. Her hefty catalogue and trove of personal knowledge encompass not just music history reverence and obscura, but her own wide-ranging albums. These include 2022’s Western swing soliloquy, Obsessed with The West (backed by Asleep at The Wheel), and honky-tonk instant classic, 2023’s Ain’t Through Honkey Tonkin’ Yet. Leigh’s latest, Don’t You Ever Give Up On Love, released on Oct. 3, is a set of old school country tunes that dissect the mighty country love song in its many iterations, and was inspired heavily by Ernest Tubb's playful country stylings.

Together with the many funny, defiant women Leigh embodies on the album, she slyly plays on the rules she knows so well for a set of witty songs about both women and men behaving badly, getting out of sticky romantic situations, and sometimes, just falling in good ol’ fashioned love. In the tongue-in-cheek “Dumpster Diving,” Leigh takes out the trash, including an ex-lover with abysmal tastes; she breaths a sigh of relief with “Thank God You’re Gone” (a line followed directly by “I Needed The Space”); and teases a potential lover with “Nothin’ You Can’t Fix,” singing, “My talkin’ parakeet only knows four-letter words.” By album’s end, Leigh’s protagonists are redeemed as they settle down with the right partner in, “I’m Easy To Love After All.”  

Indeed, as Leigh says, the album is really about realization and self worth. Upon the release of Don’t You Ever Give Up On Love, No Depression checked in with Leigh about her inspiration for the album and the country music she loves so dearly as part of this “In The Deep End” feature. Questions in this series start easy and get progressively deeper.