In 2007, Leslie and Steve moved to Rochester, New York from the Boston area where together they ran The Mozaic Room coffeehouse for eleven years. In 2003, they started recording and performing together as a duo. Their music combines their backgrounds in traditional, country, Americana, and gospel music with their taste for contemporary singer / songwriters. Their performances feature simple but tasteful arrangements of timeless melodies. Steve's guitar is often supplemented by other traditional instruments, but the focus is always on thoughtful lyrics and beautiful harmonies.
When Steve and Leslie return to New England, they are sometimes accompanied by multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Seth Connelly, who also engineered and produced all their albums. In New York, they sometimes perform with SAMMY Award-winning musician Perry Cleaveland (mandolin, fiddle, and harmony vocals).
Leslie and Steve have also provided harmony vocals onstage for Joe Crookston, The Dady Brothers, Maria Gillard, Greg Greenway, Joe Jencks, and Brooks Williams. In 2011, they added backing vocals to the song, "A Friend Like You," featured on Joe Crookston's album, Darkling & the BlueBird Jubilee. They have opened shows for Brother Sun, Kim and Reggie Harris, Danielle Miraglia, Bill Staines, Michael Troy, and Chris Wilson. They have shared festival workshop stages with Scott Ainslie, Reggie Harris, John Kirk and Trish Miller, Bruce Molsky, and Dana and Susan Robinson.
In 2011, they wrote the song, "One Great Hour to Share" for the One Great Hour of Sharing organization, which assists individuals and communities around the world who suffer the effects of disaster, conflict, or severe economic hardship. The song has been used to promote the One Great Hour of Sharing offering in churches throughout the country. Congregations have shared videos that the song accompanies as well as sung it in small groups or choirs. Sheet music is available on our Sheet Music/Lyrics page.
Leslie was born in southern California and grew up in the Kansas City, Missouri area. She earned a BFA in Commercial Art from the University of Central Missouri. Although relatively new to the world of folk music, Leslie has been surrounded by music since childhood. Her dad always kept a guitar around, and when he wasn't teaching her how to play a slide version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb", he picked out tunes by Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, among others.
Leslie's introduction to folk music came when she created the artwork for Steve's first CD, Waiting for the Sun. She went on to design the packaging for all their CDs as well as CD packaging, posters, flyers, banners and other artwork for musicians including Brother Sun, Joe Crookston, Guy Davis, and Brooks Williams. In 2003, she stood behind the microphone for the first time to record the vocal tracks for Steve and Leslie's debut (sold out) album, Recovered.
Steve was born and raised in the Finger Lakes region of New York. He moved to Germany with his parents as a teenager, then returned to the US to complete his schooling. He graduated from Stanford University in 1979 and Princeton Theological School in 1986, where he once accidentally shot Brooke Shields with a rubber band. An ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches USA (they are the Baptists who will still talk to you even if you disagree with them!), he currently serves as pastor of the Greece Baptist Church in Greece, NY.
He has been involved with music most of his life from childhood lessons (piano and trombone), through years of singing with choral groups, to his midlife debut in folk music. In the mid-90s, Steve performed as one half of the acoustic folk duo Arnold+Gretz, recording four CDs together. One of Steve's songs, "My Dad Told Me", was selected as one of five finalists in the 2003 Boston Folk Festival songwriting contest. Another song, "Who Taught These Idiots to Drive?", was featured on NPR's Car Talk radio show and appeared on their compilation CD, Car Tunes Volume 2: Born Not to Run.