Photographer Credit: Miller Mobley New Single “Angel Band” Feat. Brandi Carlile ALready Released
Featured Artists Include Tanya Tucker, TJ Osborne,
Travis Howard and Katie Pruitt, With More Surprise Guests
To Be Announced
Emmy-Award winner and unlikely viral sensation Leslie Jordan has announced his debut album Company’s Comin’, out April 2 via Platoon. Inspired by his weekly “Sunday Mornin’ Hymn Singin’” live stream, the album finds Jordan performing southern gospel hymns with a slew of special guests including Tanya Tucker, TJ Osborne (Brothers Osborne), Travis Howard and Katie Pruitt, with more surprise guests to be announced. The announcement comes with the first single, “Angel Band” feat. Grammy-award winning singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile, and the launch of his Apple Music Country show Hunker Down Radio with Leslie Jordan, which premieried on Sunday, February 28.
“Singing these songs, it felt like I was recapturing the joy of what this music meant to me as a kid,” says Jordan, “but without all the baggage. When I was growing up, I wanted so badly to be a good Christian, but I knew that the church would never accept me for who I was. It’s liberating now to come back to these hymns, completely at peace with myself, and sing without any hint of the guilt or shame I felt in my youth.”
Raised Southern Baptist in East Tennessee, Leslie Jordan is most known for his breakout role as Beverley Leslie on the iconic sitcom Will and Grace. His larger-than-life personality and instantly recognizable southern drawl have captured fans around the world, but it was not until he joined social media that we were introduced to another side of him. In 2020, Jordan’s hilariously relatable slice-of-life videos on Instagram went viral and his popularity skyrocketed, as he racked up more than five million followers in a matter of months. As the pandemic continued, Jordan found solace in the music from his youth, and with a little encouragement and accompaniment from Howard, he began performing the songs on social media.
“My dear friend Travis Howard and I would get together on Sundays to sing these old hymns just because we loved them,” explains Jordan. “Somewhere along the way, my business partner, Mike Lotus, took a real interest in what we were doing and started looking up and learning about every old Baptist hymn he could find. I think he realized, like we did, that the songs held something brilliant about the human condition and were a deep comfort to anyone who heard them, religious or not. He started posting our performances online, and the response was just incredible.”
In addition to releasing his debut album, Leslie Jordan is currently starring in the new FOX sitcom Call Me Kat and just announced his new book How Y’all Doing?, an unmissable essay collection with entertaining stories about the odd, funny, and unforgettable events in his life