Leah Turner

Signed to Columbia Nashville in July 2013, singer-songwriter Leah Turner’s co-penned debut single, “Take the Keys,” is set to launch at country radio on October 7. Co-written by Leah, Cary Barlowe and Jesse Frasure and produced by Jim Catino, Cary Barlowe, and Jesse Frasure, “Take the Keys” houses a heavy rock influence and showcases Leah’s distinctive vocals. Her unique mix of strength and vulnerability echoes across all of her melodic anthems, particularly her first single. A California native, singer-songwriter Leah Turner grew up in the Morongo Valley on a ranch filled with horses, goats and chickens. Her unique Western upbringing as a West Coast cowgirl, complemented by father’s occupation as a championship header in the rodeo, strongly influenced Leah’s earliest musical taste, from Paul Overstreet, Chris Ledoux, George Strait and Loretta Lynn to Trisha Yearwood, Merle Haggard, and Willie Nelson. She began writing songs when she was six years old, while coming back from church, singing a song that she wrote. “That was the start of it, I just kept writing songs, making them up, singing and performing them.” While at college at UCSB, she found herself gravitating towards music and songwriting classes when, as part of a class final, she was selected to sing in front of celebrity guest Kenny Loggins, who convinced her to move to Los Angeles as soon as possible. While working her way through the Los Angeles music scene, she encountered a by-chance meeting with Beverly Gatica, famed music-producer Humberto Gatica’s wife, who offered to play Leah’s music for her husband. After sending her demo, she began writing and working with David Foster and Humberto Gatica (Whitney Houston, Celine Dion), but after receiving the music back, she realized it was not her. “I was working with these amazing producers, which was a dream come true. But the music just wasn’t me. It wasn’t who I was.” Two weeks later, she was on a one-way flight to Nashville, and her official move came next. After a successful five-year run in LA, she had returned home to the music she loved: country. “I just kept feeling like even with the amazing producers in LA and the amazing opportunities I had been given, country music is what I was, and where I wanted to be. I stopped trying to pull out my roots, and started to water them.” Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.