We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Luigi Leone a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Luigi, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Working on my first record “Petrichor” was an incredible experience. I’ve recorded a lot of songs across many bands over the years, but this was the first time I worked in a professional studio with a real producer. The album is cohesive and each song has a purpose. It wasn’t just “oh, this is what I have right now, so let’s record this one”. It was really important to me that I approach making “Petrichor” as if it was going be the only record I ever make, so Tim Franzkowiak (my friend and producer) and I experimented and tried out whatever came to mind randomly. If it worked, it worked; if it didn’t, it didn’t; but at least we tried stuff out and didn’t have to say, “Man, if only we tried this out. Too late, I guess”. Making the record also brought a lot of people I care about into the mix. Jacob Dadisman (of Waking Paige) and Sarah June provided vocals on a few songs. My best friend Church provided the photos for the cover and back tray art. The opening track even has a recording of one of my dogs making his little sleep noises. Along with Tim producing and playing on the record, it didn’t feel like this was just some piece of marketing collateral used to promote myself. It was a collaborative thing with people I genuinely care about.

Luigi, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started playing guitar and writing songs when I was 14. Over the years I was in and out of bands, none of which did much other than record a bunch of low quality demos. Eventually I started a solo folk-punk thing and played quite a few shows, but there was never any return on investment. It kind of defeated and I retreated from playing music entirely. I moved to Portland for 18 months, then came back to Phoenix. Shortly thereafter, I joined a band, which broke up due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the beginning of 2023 I decided I wanted to get back into things and started playing both solo and in a band. I left the band by that summer, but my solo stuff was actually making progress, so I kept going. Honestly, the music that I make now is the first time I’ve been really proud of what I’m creating. When I was younger, my ambition was to become some sort of “famous rock star”, so everything I wrote was a poor attempt to appeal to what was popular at the time and follow trends. At this point in my life, I don’t care about that. I’m happy where I am, and I just like playing live and writing songs that I like. If it doesn’t appeal to the masses, that’s fine. But I’m happy with what I create now and don’t feel embarrassed or ashamed of what I put out there.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Each year I make a list of goals I’d like to achieve musically, which really steers the direction of what I’m doing. Like, yeah, I want to play X amount of shows and write some new songs, but then I have these bigger goals that I’m working towards before the year’s end. Last year, I just wanted to record some songs in a professional studio, and that turned into making a full-length record. This year I knew I wanted to headline an album release show, and it happened back in March. Now I’m playing venues this summer that are bigger and that I’ve never played. Because of this, I have a band together now and writing new material that really focuses on collaboration and creating a fun environment for my bandmates and the audience. A lot of my songs slow and work towards a crescendo that takes a long time, but that was because it just me up there and I was playing cafes and dive bars. Now I can try out different things since I have band and we’re playing more appropriate venues. Having those goals really pushes me to go all out now.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I’ve played many MANY shows that were sparsely attended. Even now, I don’t get dozens of people showing up for me at gigs, but while that used to devastate me when I was younger, now I see it more as – whatever. I’m here. I’m still going to play music whether it’s for two people or 50 people. I’m here to put on a show for the ones that showed up and are expecting something from me. I put on a show at Trunk Space in late 2023, and I was super excited about playing with the artists I booked and having a diverse roster only for about four people to show up. It hurt really bad, and it made me feel like I was a failure. I was super apologetic to the other artists, but they didn’t care about that. They were just happy to play somewhere. I think that really put things into perspective for me. Yes, an audience is preferred and the bigger the better, but they can’t all be winners, and you still need to give it your all no matter what.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @luigileonemusic
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/luigileonemusic
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6qWJDrj4eKYgZ17GobfYp2

Image Credits

Drew J. Gooden
Anton Orleans