Brennen Leigh is no stranger to good songwriting. With ten albums under her belt, her latest release Don’t You Ever Give Up On Love combines her skills as a story teller and musician with her real life love and partnership with Houston’s own pedal steel genius Kevin Skrla.
“Honestly, I couldn’t have possibly made it without him,” says Leigh from inside a car making its way through the Oregon bend with her band. “We just really hit this mutual obsession with certain sounds and I don’t know anybody else that could have made it sound like it does.”
She and Skrla will fly home to perform this Friday, December 19 at Shoeshine Charley’s Big Top Lounge with her friends the Austin based Sentimental Family Band for what can only be described as a honky tonk experiment.
“They are my favorite Austin country band and I can’t resist them,” says Leigh, adding that she’s always wanted to pick with them. For the performance all the artists will try something new as the Sentimental Family band will serve as Leigh’s band. In turn, Leigh and Skrla will join Sentimental Family band on stage for their set.
If anyone needs proof that these two make a great team, look no further than the collection of songs that is Don’t You Ever Give Up On Love, recorded at Skrla’s Wolfe Island Recording Co. where the couple live and work.
“It’s my favorite place and it’s like being inside of Kevin’s brain when you go inside the studio,” says Leigh of the studio located in Dayton, Texas.
“He built it piece by piece over the years and it’s kind of sacred. The first time I went there my reaction was like, you live here? You made this? It sounds wonderful and it’s just a really beautiful and open place to make music. It gives you a nice feeling just walking through the door.”
Don’t You Ever Give Up On Love was the first time that the couple recorded a full album at home, a warm effect felt in the album. In Don’t You Ever Give Up On Love both artists worked to create a concept album about love, loss and perseverance with each song playing out like a chapter in a novel.
“That’s what I try to do is I try to make them have little stories and be sort of a story that’s an arc and this one was a concept in another sense,” says Leigh.
Leigh historically has shown her gift for writing about characters in her stories and adding a touch of humor to their heartbreak. In “Dumpster Diving” she sings of growing a garden with a lover only to find them dumpster diving for trash, a perfect analogy for a partner who doesn’t know what they are throwing away.
“I’ve never been a writer of wrath so to speak,” she says. “I’ve never been somebody who wrote for catharsis exactly. I’m more of a subtle story teller but there are a few on here that are humorously mad and some that are even a little mean but I hope that the humor of them is the bigger thing.”
It is the humor in them that makes the stories memorable. As Leigh sings “Thank God You’re Gone” it’s impossible not to think of someone who just really grates your nerves and the psychological length of every second spent around them.
When asked about how it could possibly get awkward writing songs about love gone awry with your current partner Leigh appreciates the question. “I’m glad you asked because it is tricky.”
Though people often hear a song written in the first person and naturally assume it is about the author, Leigh admits some of these experiences came from her life whereas others did not. Some songs were even pulled from her catalog of unrecorded tunes written during her time as songwriter in Nashville.
“All of them have a center of authentic truth,” she says. “There’s something about them that’s true to me. Kevin helped me pick them. We sat down and he helped me pull the ones that we thought would fit and then through the course of the record I wrote a few more with friends but we did arrange them in sequence that matches a little story that I experienced in my life prior to knowing him.”
The duo also sought to replicate the Texas Troubadours sound of Ernest Tubb and his legendary band using Tubb as a what Leigh calls a “spirit guide” for the album.
“We wanted to get a Texas Troubadours nod so we used people that we felt understood that style and would love to play in that style and knew how,” says Leigh of the Houston and generally Texas- centric band that plays on the album including the piano stylings of Damian O’Grady.
Leigh, Skrla and the whole band understood the assignment and created an album that from start to finish sounds like all of the best elements of classic, golden age country brought back to life ending with an Ernest Tubb and his Texas Troubadours inspired instrumental with “Little Magic Wolf.”
“When I think about this record it’s got some petty little break up songs and it’s got some stuff that frankly are smaller than our whole story,” describes Leigh. “It’s really a record about not giving up on yourself and that’s what brought me to him,” she says of Skrla.
“I couldn’t over state how much he’s helped in my art and the only reason I felt like giving up in the past is I just didn’t know somebody like that existed so you know, never say never I guess.”
Brennen Leigh and The Sentimental Family Band play at 9:30 p.m. on Friday, December 19 at Shoeshine Charley’s Big Top Lounge, 3714 Main. For more information, call 713-529-9899 or visit ContinentalClub.com/Houston. $15-20.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.