Tucson singer-songwriter Leigh Lesho was thinking about more than her music when she recorded her latest CD โAkashaโ earlier this year.
She was thinking of her 9-year-old autistic son, Rylan, whose biggest challenge is communicating. If she could get him excited and involved in the record, perhaps she could break through.
Rylan was nonverbal until he was 4, and even then his speech was limited, Lesho said. But once he started working with mom on the album, he started to blossom.
โIt was really exciting to see him react to the process of this album. He is very proud of this music and he knows the words and he knows the songs,โ Lesho said during an interview to preview her CD release gig Friday, Oct. 19, at 191 Toole. โHe knew the order of them before I ever told him what it was.โ
Lesho, the standout softball pitcher from Flowing Wells High School in the late 1990s who went on to play for the University of Nebraska and a short stint in professional softball, knows a little about the difficulties of finding your voice.
As a kid, she would write songs and sing them to herself just waiting for the day when someone in her family would ask her to sing out loud. Lesho grew up in a musical family; her uncle is Arizona Blues Hall of Famer Tony Uribe and she remembers seeing him perform at the old Cafe Sweetwater that later became Flycatcher on East Sixth Street.
โI feel like my whole life I was always training as a vocalist, but all of this was in private,โ she said. โI imagined myself doing that as an adult, but I was an athlete and I played basketball as well and my dad was my coach. I was always a kid waiting for somebody to say, โHey, would you like to play music?โ But it never happened, so I was always kind of โhuh, maybe thatโs not what I should be doing right now.โโ
After her softball career, Lesho returned home to Tucson, married and opened a yoga studio. She continued teaching yoga and tiptoed back into music after she and husband Billy welcomed Rylan.
When her son was 2, she and her husband learned that he was autistic. Caring for him and running the studio, which had as many as 1,000 students at it peak, soon became overwhelming. So she closed the business and focused on her son.
Watching Rylan struggle to communicate was a wake-up call of sorts.
โIt became so ridiculous for me to feel self-conscious in any way to use my voice after experiencing his experience,โ said Lesho, 38. โEven if somebody criticizes our voice or whatever, we should be so proud and so free with our voice and feel that we can be empowered with it. He made it so easy for me to get over that fear.โ
Lesho wrote all of the songs on โAkashaโ except for two covers: John Loudermilkโs โThis Little Birdโ and โBlackbirdโ by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
The record has flashes of country courtesy of her collaborators Joe Novelli on lap steel guitar, Thoger Lund on upright bass and Oscar Fuentes on mandolin. Gabriel Sullivan, Heather Hardy and Brian Lopez also contributed.
The biggest star of the album, Lesho said, is probably her son, who contributes speaking vocals.
Lesho would love to feature Rylan at Fridayโs concert, but 191 Toole is a 21-and-older venue.
Would Rylan be down to take center stage?
Absolutely, his mom said.
โThatโs one of the beautiful things about people with autism is that they donโt have that awareness of self-conscious,โ she said, the irony of her own insecurities not lost on the singer. โHeโs pretty amazing to watch.โ
