Leanne Binder Ohio’s Powerhouse Vocalist and Soulful Story Teller

Leanne Binder Ohio’s Powerhouse Vocalist and Soulful Story Tellerler

 [Speaker 2]

Leanne Binder is a powerhouse singer, songwriter, and entertainer known for her soulful voice and commanding stage presence. You'll never believe listening to this song and all her great tunes that she's done that she started out as an opera singer, believe it or not. With a repertoire that effortlessly spans blues, rock, roots, and Americana, Leanne has performed everywhere from intimate listening rooms to massive festival stages.

She's a regular at legendary New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, at least every year since 2018, and has shared bills with icons including Joe Badamasa, the Marshall Tucker Band, and the late, great Dickie Batts. Internationally, she's left her mark on historic venues like the Cavern Club in Liverpool and the Great British Rhythm and Blues Festival. And equally passionate about passing the torch, Leanne is a sought-after vocal coach and founder of SongMill Studios with locations in Ohio and Nashville, Tennessee, where she helps the next generation of artists find their voice.

Whether she's fronting a full band, delivering a stripped-down solo set, or mentoring behind the scenes, Leanne Binder continues to move, inspire, and electrify audiences around the world. And her story, and all the great things she's done and doing, and information about her brand new EP, you know what it is? It's next on The Trout Show!

I think you're the first person I've ever interviewed that started out as an opera singer. Really?

[Speaker 1]

You mean, that's not a natural, like, segue to blues and soul and rock?

[Speaker 2]

Well, you know, it's kind of, mostly I get, I started in church. That's what most a lot of, especially in the, I'm in Dallas area, so it's all the southern people I talk to are like, where'd you start? Church.

Okay, good. So, I'm reading information about you, which I always do, because before I even tell the PR people I want to talk to you, I've got to listen to your music first. Sure.

Right?

[Speaker 1]

Yeah, I don't want you to, like, hate me, and then...

[Speaker 2]

Oh, no, no. Well, I grew up as a blues guy myself, so I'm always intrigued by, and our fellow person that hooked this up, he knows what I like. Okay.

And sometimes, he knows what I like, and he knows what I'm going to do, so that's kind of the way it is. But the thing about it for you was the fact that your road to music is so different. Yeah, it's so different.

I was just watching this morning, this is kind of off the subject, but I was just watching this morning, the Rockettes in New York are having their 100th anniversary this year. I've had the privilege of going there one time to see them. And I said, and so they had four dancers they were talking to, and they said, when did you start wanting to dance?

Four years old, five years, they all were young. Yeah. So you started that, but you were only, like, started in opera, though.

Yes.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah, well, you know, yes. I always sang from the time I was a little kid. I always sang.

[Speaker 2]

Right.

[Speaker 1]

Right. But my mom and dad were worried that maybe I would be picking up bad habits because my mom and dad were both not professional musicians, but my mom was in band and my dad was, you know, played drums. And so they didn't quite know what they were doing.

So they called down to Dana School of Music at Youngstown State, was a very well-known music school, and the college was renowned for their jazz and blues and opera departments. And she was just so relentless about having somebody hear her that finally Dr. Raritan said, oh, fine, she's too young, but bring her down. I'll listen to her.

And that's kind of how that happened. They brought me in. I had to sing some scale work.

I didn't know what I was doing. They just said, you know, do this.

[Speaker 2]

How old were you?

[Speaker 1]

I was 12.

[Speaker 2]

Twelve. Okay. Sixth grade.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. No. We were in sixth grade.

[Speaker 2]

We were in sixth grade.

[Speaker 1]

Somewhere around there. Anyways. You know, he's like, well, do you have anything prepared?

And I'm like, I go, yes, I do. And he goes, what is it? And I said, it's Tomorrow from Annie.

He goes, do you know what key it's in? I said, yes, sir. It's an F major.

[Speaker 2]

Oh, wow. You were really prepared, weren't you?

[Speaker 1]

Yes. Because I was in B. I played.

I already read.

[Speaker 2]

Okay.

[Speaker 1]

Because I was a clarinet player.

[Speaker 2]

So you knew how to read notes and all that stuff. So you knew when he said what key it's in, you could tell. Yeah.

Okay.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. So when I got done, and this was much years later that I found this out, he told my parents, he said, you have an obligation to train her voice. So nothing was ever said to me.

He walked out. He looked at me and he said, I'll tell you what, if you want to be a singer and you do exactly as I say for one year with a grad student, then I will give you to Mrs. Raritan, his wife, who was a really very good vocal coach. He said, but you will do exactly as you're told.

And I don't want any fussing about it. I said, okay. And that's kind of how it all started.

[Speaker 2]

But you did that. So did you, because most everything is in Italian. So when they approached you, did you say, I want to sing opera?

Or is that something you started to listen to arias and say, I want to do this? Or how did that come about?

[Speaker 1]

I sang in nothing but Italian. I got into high school choir and then, you know, we sang in English in choir, but my studies were in nothing but opera because they felt that was the best way to grow a voice. And because my, my range was so big and I had a big voice for such a small girl at the time, I just naturally, they couldn't imagine that I would go anywhere else.

I had a couple of ideas of my own, but the, the, the circle around me was very, very classically driven. And then when I went to college, you did back in those days, there weren't options. Like you were either opera performance or education.

So that's, that's what it led, you know, that's how I ended up. I auditioned for the university when I was 16. And I was a freshman when I was 17.

[Speaker 2]

Oh, well. So you went into school early. You graduated high school.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. I did.

[Speaker 2]

So you're smart too.

[Speaker 1]

Well.

[Speaker 2]

I can say it. Maybe you don't want to say it.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I, I'm not very good in math.

[Speaker 2]

You don't need to be. Yeah. You just know what four, four is.

Two, four.

[Speaker 1]

I can do six, eight. I can do seven, eight. Like.

[Speaker 2]

You know those numbers.

[Speaker 1]

I can be above eight.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah.

[Speaker 1]

I'm done.

[Speaker 2]

So you went along and you did this. And then somewhere along your life, you said, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to do, oh, I don't know.

Let's do an Etta James tune. I mean, where, where did that kind of, the, the, the road split?

[Speaker 1]

What happened was when I got to university, I left my voice teacher who I'd had since I was a little girl. Was put into, um, classes with girls much older than me. Um, the technique that they used was very different than the Lamperti technique that I grew up learning.

And by my sophomore year, I came home to study with Mrs. Raritan and she called my parents and said, I don't know what's happening at the college with her and her voice, but there's something wrong. And I don't know that I can save it, but I guarantee you, if she goes back to school, she'll never sing again. So my parents got me out of school.

I was a mess. Cause I knew I could, I could barely talk like rearrangement technique. And I went back to Mrs. Raritan. She said, I won't give up if you don't give up. And I said, I won't give up. And through all of that, you know, by now, remember I'm only 18 by this point, right.

You know, going in, you know, the summer of my sophomore year, I might've just been turning 19, like very young. Um, but I couldn't shut my mouth and I knew opera was probably not going to be something that I went from being a very high soprano to a mezzo and I wanted to sing. Now I had always loved rock and roll.

I'd been to concerts, you know, but I never thought that was me, except I loved, you know, Bette Midler and the Rose. Like I just, you know, I just started singing and I had to sing and I started putting little, putting bands together because I wasn't in school to sing anymore and I needed, I just couldn't not sing.

[Speaker 2]

You had to have an outlet for your, your, uh, singing. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. And, um, that's kind of, I started doing that stuff and I realized that I could hit Zeppelin notes, which are much lower than opera notes.

[Speaker 2]

Well, if rock singers could sing like Robert Plant, not everybody can hit those notes. I don't know if he can either anymore, but hey, it's But he hit them once and that's all that matters. That's all that matters.

Yeah.

[Speaker 1]

You know, so I kind of, that kind of just evolved naturally. I think I was so broken and I found Janis Joplin, you know, very young and all of a sudden I knew how to do that stuff. Like it just was, it felt like if I just sang and all the hurt and the loss of all of this stuff.

Yeah. And that's how I landed in the blues really.

[Speaker 2]

Well, the blues are the blues.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]

So you don't sing about it. I got up this morning. It was a beautiful day.

I'm having a great time. I got a job. Everything's fine.

Wives and kids are, you know, that's not happening. Yeah. So it's the other way around, you know, and it was a, the thing about the blues though, and I know quite a few players in it, but, um, it's a, it's a genre that is very, it's certain things about blues.

It's like jazz. Either you like it or you don't. Yes.

Okay. Because not everybody can sit down and go, can we do those three chords again? Only this time of day.

So it's not everybody wants that, but those people that are really good at it. I had a privilege. I've been a year and a half now go, um, but a guy's guitar tech.

Oh, nice. And he's now working for John Fogarty, but, um, and a buddy guy's like 87, 88 years old. Um, but he knows that, I mean, he doesn't have to do much anymore because he's got his style, but that, that blues thing.

The other thing is the great thing about blues too, is the fact that there's no age limit on it. Absolutely. So I have a young man, I have three, I interviewed a lot of young people.

I like to do that. One's in Mississippi, one's in Nashville. They're both 18.

I think now I'm 117, 18. They're going to be blues giants. And then on the other scale, you talk about buddy guy.

That's, you know, in fact, it was funny. I'd tell you, the young man that I know called Rel, Rel Davenport, interviewed him a couple of times, but he had a picture the other day. It was just fantastic.

He was sitting next to Charlie Musselwhite.

[Speaker 1]

Oh, wow.

[Speaker 2]

And I, and it was just him and Charlie sitting in the chair. You can actually, I think I put it on Instagram. Rel was sitting there with his guitar at 18 and Charlie sitting there listening to him at whatever, 80, you know, and it had all this memorabilia on the back.

It was just like a, it looked like an album cover. And I told him, I said, dude, that's a great picture. I mean, look at this, 18, I mean, and you're both doing the same thing.

So that's the thing I like about it a lot is the fact that you can continue going. And like pop music, if you're like, you're 20, oh my God, get out of the business.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah, you're done. You're too old. Sorry.

You're done.

[Speaker 2]

But the other thing too, I think was interesting about your bio is the fact that you still give, I don't know if you still do, but do you still give people music voice lessons? You still do some of that?

[Speaker 1]

Yeah, I do. I teach. When I'm done with you, I head to my studio and teach a couple hours tonight.

[Speaker 2]

And I teach that in Nashville too. Oh, okay. And what age group is that that you usually see?

[Speaker 1]

I have clients from the age of like seven up to 80.

[Speaker 2]

And they have different reasons they're doing.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. Some of them are just little kids that they want to sing in the school musicals and the little community theater stuff. Some of them want to be rock stars.

I have some singer songwriter people that I work with that want to be artists and they want to be able to play and sing and do that. And then I have little church ladies that just want to be able to sing in choir for their Christmas concerts. And then in Nashville, I work with professional up and coming artists that are looking for some longevity.

And it was a gift that I got from actually doing the losing, having the damage. There was no damage done to my voice. It was a technique switch around.

So I had a laryngoscopy and the vocal cords and everything were fine, but this technique was so different. And then once you get in your head, I don't know if that happens with guitar players, it stops you from doing things. Like your body just shuts it down.

It's very weird.

[Speaker 2]

But also the thing that you're doing now with the blues soda, sort of rock blues, I don't like to honor people. You have to be able to be able to. The one thing I've always thought about was interesting is the guy that sings for ACDC.

Brian Johnson. Yeah, Brian Johnson. So I'm thinking, how does he keep doing that without blowing his voice out?

It's the same way with you. You're up there. If you're out there, you know, doing the gravelly stuff, you're going to be able to do that, but then not blow your voice out at the same time.

And I would imagine your training helped you probably control that or not screw up your voice.

[Speaker 1]

It absolutely did. It was something, you know, vocal fry wasn't a thing when I started doing this. It was just I knew the singers that I loved.

You know, I love rubber plant. I love Janis Joplin. I love Freddie Mercury.

I love Steven Tyler. I love Etta James. You know, I love Aretha Franklin.

So, you know, and all of them have a certain amount of that whiskey that, you know, they know how to bring it in and take it out. So I just started with my technique that I brought from the conservatories, from opera. I started playing with it.

Like, well, how do I do this and not hurt? And I kind of just formed this my own way of doing it. And that has led me down a road that I didn't realize it would lead me down as far as people come to me to learn how to do that.

But it still all starts with a very, very solid opera base. And then you add the other stuff with it. But you've got to learn the clean stuff first.

And then add. Because that's the way you keep doing it. Because you're not singing down on the vocal cords.

[Speaker 2]

You're in a situation where you can just say, hey, if I never run the road, I don't do another gig. I could teach people how to sing. Because that's never going to stop.

[Speaker 1]

No, that is my day job, yeah, for sure. It's something I'm passionate about because I like to help people keep their voices because I know what that walk feels like to try and do something. And it doesn't work.

And I think that what I teach is different than what most people teach. And it really works. And it really helps.

And I've had a lot of success with, you know, singers that have had problems coming in and being able to straighten some stuff around for them because they're going at things the wrong way. But, yeah, when I got divorced and I had to stand on my own, you start thinking, like, wow, you know, I need more income than what gigs pay sometimes. And, you know, you need the consistent.

And a friend of mine, actually, the girl that her house I'm sitting in, she was working at the time. And she's like, hey, the basement of my insurance company is empty. Put a studio in it.

Start teaching. I'm like, thanks. It wasn't really even a thought.

So I moved in there and I started. I was working before that a little bit for producers around Ohio, Pennsylvania, that kind of stuff. They'd bring me in and I'd work with artists in the studio.

But actually opening a studio and teaching wasn't something that I had thought ever about doing. And the sheer panic of, you know, what am I going to do?

[Speaker 2]

What am I eating tonight?

[Speaker 1]

And it has worked out and it's been a good kind of companion to my own career.

[Speaker 2]

Well, and it's also, you know, on stage is one reward. Students are another reward. Completely different.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]

I mean, we all love the fact that I'm a lead guitar player. So we all want people to go, yeah, go for it. But then when you get a seven-year-old that you see, and I see this now with the young people, they're going up.

And you just see them get better and better and better. All you can do is say, well, I was at the beginning. You know, they took it to the next level.

But I was at the beginning and I saw. And somebody probably said to you or to your parents or something like you said earlier, somebody saw what you had. Sometimes we don't see it.

We don't see it. But I also believe everybody that is a creative source, doesn't matter what it is, everybody starts young. You're born with this thing.

You get it. And you're not going to get rid of it until you're dead.

[Speaker 1]

I always say if you have to ask yourself if you should be a creative or a musician or an actor, you shouldn't be it.

[Speaker 2]

That's right. You know.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah, I didn't have a choice. I never felt. It wasn't something that was forced upon me.

It was something internal that I couldn't deny. You know what I mean? So no matter what I was going to go through, at the end of the day when I get to write musician as my occupation, I take so much pride in that.

And to see my kids, like now I've had them, you know, they get accepted into big musical theater colleges or, you know, I have two of them that are releasing their own albums that I started them songwriting and signed them up for their, you know, BMI or ASCAP or whatever, you know. I found them like, come on, this is what we need to do.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah, you need a pro number. What's that? You'll learn.

When did you start on this project? Did you have an idea that you wanted to bring another album out like maybe a year ago or you've been working on it? How did this project that just got released get started?

[Speaker 1]

You know, it was a little bit of fate. I was up here. I have a couple albums out and the industry, it's changing so fast all the time.

[Speaker 2]

It's crazy.

[Speaker 1]

With everything now that was singles, singles, singles, singles. Everyone's like, no, just do singles. And by a way of a friend of a friend, I ended up down in Nashville with Lee.

So I started coming in with Lee and I really liked being out of my element and out of my creative bubble that I had been in, it seems like for eternity. Right. And Lee and I started just writing and recording and I would come down.

[Speaker 2]

He's the producer, right? Yeah, Lee's my producer.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah. And I was working out of his studio with some of his clients vocally. We had just like this nice working relationship.

So I was coming in and out of Nashville once a month. For a couple of years I did that. And we would just write, record.

And we finally found a sound that felt very true to who I am because I'm not just a blues person.

[Speaker 2]

No, I could tell.

[Speaker 1]

I'm not just a rock person. And I'm not just like I am very much a hybrid artist, I think. There's always blues in what I do, but there's always rock in what I do, too.

[Speaker 2]

Right.

[Speaker 1]

There's no denying. Yeah. And that was the bookend of both of them.

And we started hitting on this, you know, we started bringing horns in, which was like a game changer for my sound.

[Speaker 2]

Well, I love horns.

[Speaker 1]

Me, too.

[Speaker 2]

Last year I helped produce a song for a Nashville artist.

[Speaker 1]

Oh, did you?

[Speaker 2]

Yeah, he just won Nashville Song of the Year. And he came and he says, I got this song, I need some horns on it. And went to my friends and said, OK, you write them, I'll produce it.

So it just was so cool to listen to that. But didn't you also bring in background singers, too? Am I thinking that you did that, too?

Because as soon as I heard that one song, I go, I've always wanted that.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]

Was that a thought? And you said at the very beginning was that you were sitting there with your producer, you were listening to it, you know what would really sound good on this? How did that come about?

[Speaker 1]

I always think about BGVs, background singers, when I'm writing because in my earlier stuff, I couldn't afford them or I wouldn't pay the money for them. And it starts sounding like the Leanne Tabernacle Choir because my voice is my voice. Even if I change a little, it still has my DNA in it.

Right. So I didn't want to do that. And, you know, when you're in Nashville, there's a billion great background vocals.

[Speaker 2]

Oh, sure.

[Speaker 1]

Well, Lee's wife, Tiffany, is an artist and a singer in her own right. But she's a really high soprano. And we started just sitting, we were just sitting there singing and I'm like, would you track on some of my stuff?

She's like, yeah. So that started it. And then she has some background singers that she really liked.

And we started just bringing people in, depending on the song, which background vocalists would be part of it. And that's how that whole thing started. I was like, now I can't live without them.

I'm like, I always said I knew I would make it the minute I could afford Joe Cocker's background singers. Because that's what I wanted, that, you know, a little help from my friends. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Well, there's something to be said about that. What's really cool is live, two of my students are my background singers.

Oh, that's cool. And they're really good, you know. And it's funny because I've trained them since they were young and now they're adults.

You know, they're. Right. One's 19 and one's 21.

We breathe the same. We sing the same. We know we have our same language because I got to kind of mold them.

And we can do stuff broken down with just a bass, a guitar and them. And I can strip stuff down to just BGVs and lead vocal. It's so cool.

[Speaker 2]

Three part harmony is the answer to everything. Everything. And you said, OK, I'm going to do an album and that's it.

And then what were you going to do? Well, once you got it done, because you had a great producer. I mean, I read his bio a little bit.

He's been working with. You got to go out and support it like we still everybody still does that to a certain degree. What was your goal when you did it?

I just I need to do it for myself. I want to I want I don't care about the streams because I'm never going to have a million streams. You're not going to make two hundred dollars off that anyway.

[Speaker 1]

You know, I do. I do care. I'm one of those forever optimists that think that somehow this is all going to work out and that's how it's going to be.

But I would create music no matter what. Right. You know, and I was thinking I was a little bit like Tedeschi trucks, you know, where it's like we got a single, we got a single, got a single on pretty soon.

I'm like. No, but we got an album, we got at least an EP.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah.

[Speaker 1]

And I wanted to have merch for sale because I, I play, you know, either solo or with the band. I do almost two hundred dates a year.

[Speaker 2]

Oh.

[Speaker 1]

Um. So I needed that kind of stuff. And I didn't really think much about where it was going or how it was going to to get out into the world.

I just wanted to find who I was. Finally, a collective thought. I think I've been searching for a sound my whole life.

And when I met Lee. And started having the Nash, my Nashville guys and the horns and those things, I'm like, wow, like I'm finding that thing that has been in my head. So I wanted to put it together and I played it for a friend of mine.

That's a that's in with some of the big radio people here. And he looked at me and he goes, why isn't this out there? He goes, Leanne, I think there's something really in these songs.

And that gave me, you know, even a little bit bigger feeling to like, I really need to get this collectively put together.

[Speaker 2]

Right.

[Speaker 1]

Get out there. It's just throw it out. Let's see what what happens.

He goes, no harm, no foul. And and I did. And it started just snowballing.

Like, I think it's really true. Like when you have the songs, if you can get it in front of a couple of the right people.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah, that's a lot.

[Speaker 1]

It starts. It starts rolling for you a little bit.

[Speaker 2]

It's it's I talk about it a lot about how bad how weird the music industry is now. Mm hmm. And if somebody came up to me and say what to do, I'd go.

I don't. What do you want to do? You know, it's like, OK, do you want to ride on the tour bus and sit in a, you know, upper deck?

You know, or I mean, do you want to do that? I'm not asking you that, but it's like, you know, or do you want to play a few? What do you have?

I mean, it's a hard thing to decide because if you want to be a musician, you have to go out on tour at least. And like you said, if you're doing 200 dates a year, you got to have merch.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]

Because people want the merch.

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