New York-based singer-songwriter Leslie Mendelson will perform at Dyck Arboretum in Hesston on Sunday, Oct. 15, as part of her current tour.
Mendelson’s last album, the acclaimed “If You Can’t Say Anything Nice …” was released and was followed by the 2021 EP “In the Meantime.”
Speaking from her home, she said that she recently completed a new album for release in 2024. She spoke about that upcoming album, her approach to live performance and her collaborations with Jackson Browne and the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You have a new album that’s scheduled to come out next year. What’s different between it and 2020’s “If You Can’t Say Anything Nice …”?
The material came over the last couple of years. So, it feels like a new batch of songs. It wasn’t stuff that was lingering. A lot of it was written in the last two years. The difference with this one is that I really wanted to work with a producer that I hadn’t worked with before but whose work I liked. We had this opportunity, which was amazing, to work with Peter Asher [Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor]. I had to take that opportunity. We actually worked with another great producer on some of the stuff, Tyler Chester [Madison Cunningham, Sara Watkins]. It’s all pretty much new material.
Peter Asher, wow.
He’s pretty great. He knows he’s done everything, but he’s funny, witty, sharp as a tack. He got my dream team together. I got to work with [bassist] Lee Sklar and [drummer] Jim Keltner and [guitarist] Waddy Wachtel, who I actually know because he’s a family friend. My dad and him went to high school together and were in a band when they were like 16-years-old. They reconnected some years ago though Facebook or something. So he’s been in my life a bit, so this is the first time I got to work with him. It was just amazing to play with these legends. And to play with guys that have made your favorite records? It’s surreal. But I ate it up. I loved it. Peter was doing a documentary, so there were a lot of cameras around. So, it was a little, “I’m not going to think about it.” I had to get used to it. Those songs came out great.
I’m guessing that you’ll be introducing some of that material into your live sets?
A little bit. I have three or four songs off the record that I’ve been doing, and I’ll probably just save the rest for next year. I’ve worked a few of them into my set.
You have a pretty significant body of work. How do you go about determining what will be in a live set?
I’m always working on that, depending on what kind of show that I do. If I’m doing my own show, which is a 90-minute set, I definitely have an arc. I like to put in covers that I love that I know people will recognize. Anywhere from [music of the ’60s and ’70s] to New Wave. I don’t really have a genre when it comes to covers. If I like the song, I’m going to do it. But when I open for another act, if I have a 30-, 40-minute set, the arc’s different. I always think about it, and I always think about what I’m going to talk about, too. Because I find that important to just chat it up, entertain people. Tell them some stories, get everybody involved. I like making it feel familial during my set where we can just talk it up, have some fun.
You’ve been embraced by the larger Grateful Dead community. How has that felt to have that support?
I love it. I love it because I love the songs. I didn’t see the Grateful Dead when I was younger. I kind of missed the bus. Jerry [Garcia] had passed by the time that I got into them. I was in a music scene on Long Island and people loved the Grateful Dead on Long Island. There were multiple Grateful Dead cover bands. They were always great musicians. On any given night you would be able to hear the music, I think, played in the spirit that the Dead played it in. It would be transcendent and people would dance. I heard these songs being played really well. I feel like I got it, I understood it. I would learn these songs and sing harmonies and then I didn’t for a while.
Then I connected with [filmmaker] Justin Kreutzmann [son of Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann] when I was in London. I was working with The Who’s management, and I was there, and Justin was working on a documentary about Pete Townshend. He checked me out and realized that I was a Deadhead.
We were talking and afterward I got invited to do one of the “Weir Hears,” with Bob Weir. That was a webcast that he did where he would invite singer-songwriters to come and then he would do a David Letterman-type of talk show with it, too. It was really fun. And that’s when I met Dave Schools [Widespread Panic] and Jay Lane and Steve Kimock and Jason Crosby, who I actually knew from Long Island.
[With Bob] we sang some Grateful Dead songs, we sang some of my stuff, we sang some covers that we all love. Then Bob sang on one of my records, and Steve Kimock and his son and I made a record together. Dave Schools produced it. I feel like there’s always been a little bit of our worlds colliding.
You also worked with Jackson Browne on the song “A Human Touch.”
That was a pinch me moment. Still is. It doesn’t get old. I still can’t believe that happened. That just happened very organically. I was doing a house concert in Brooklyn and a director came up to me at the end of the show and said, “I like your style. I’m working on a documentary, and I’m looking for some music. Would you be interested? Also: I’m trying to get Jackson Browne involved? You want to collaborate with Jackson Browne?” “What? OK!”
We wound up sketching out the song, Steve McEwan, my co-writer and I. We sent him the song, he really liked it, and said, “I can add to this.” We finished it in New York, recorded it in his studio in Santa Monica and it would up being in the end credits of a movie called “5B,” which was a documentary about the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. 5B was the ward in San Francisco General. It was really a beautiful story about the nurses and the doctors who took care of the patients when nobody would because it was the early ’80s. They took off their hazmat suits and gave these patients love. It was a really a lovely story. After that came out, Jackson put [the song] on his latest record [2021’s “Downhill From Everywhere”]. So it has a new life.
