Leon Bridges has what they call Texas swagger. He’s a vision in bolo ties, cattleman crease cowboy hats and horsebit leather loafers. Oh yes, Bridges is southern soul personified and he’s damn proud of it.
The Fort Worth-raised Grammy Award winner has collaborated with several Lone Star State natives on songs, including country-bred legend Miranda Lambert and Houston’s Khruangbin, who’ve released two exceptionally groovy EPs—Texas Sun and Texas Moon—with Bridges in the last few years.
“That whole thing was a blessing,” Bridges tells the Weekly. “It was great to kind of redefine what Texas R&B and Texas music means to us. I think it was a great marriage.”
And there’s always more Texans on the bucket list.
“I love Beyoncé. I love Megan Thee Stallion, another Texan. My friend Charlie Crockett, who’s from Dallas, we’ve been talking about making some music together. Us Texans, we try to stick together,” says Bridges, who will perform at the Theater at Virgin on April 25, coincidentally a day after Khruangbin performs two nights at Brooklyn Bowl.
A reunion wouldn’t be completely out of the question, he says. The duo never got to fully perform those EPs live. It’s almost as though they exist in a vacuum, during that stationary time between 2020 and 2022 as we were still navigating a post-COVID world. Those years also bookended the release of Gold-Diggers Sound, Bridges’ third and arguably best album since 2015’s Coming Home.
If Bridges’ first record introduced him as a vintage voice of the soul-stirring ’60s, Gold-Diggers Sound established him as an assertive, slick-talking dynamo of modern R&B. The singer-songwriter lived in the chic East Hollywood hotel of the same name as he recorded the album, and frankly, “the energy of that place just kind of seeped into the music on its own,” he says.
“I never really wanted my music to be boxed in, and I think it’s healthy for artists to always reinvent themselves,” Bridges says. “With my most recent album, I felt like my music wasn’t connecting with the Black community, and I wanted to shape the album as an R&B album in my own style. My next album is going to be completely different from that.”
Coming Home and Gold-Diggers Sound were both career-defining, but Bridges says he’s been writing for the past four years, searching for a new “North Star.” He’s working with Grammy-winning producer Ian Fitchuk, who co-produced Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour, this time around, and the late soul singer Roy C has been a big influence.
“I was making music that initially felt a little bit more polished and along the Gold-Diggers lines, but I put all that stuff on the back burner to make something a little bit more simplistic,” he says. “This next one is somewhat of a self portrait, a reflection of Texas, my upbringing, things I really value.”
Bridges has yet to announce a release date for the album, but rest assured, there will be plenty of entertainment at his Vegas set. Local DJ Neek Lopez will hype up the crowd for the singer. And Bridges teases playing some songs from his Khruangbin collabs. Fingers crossed we also hear his new single, “It Was Always You (Siempre Fuiste Tú)” with Mexican music titan Carin León. And while León is actually from Hermosillo, Mexico, Bridges—as a Texan—feels they couldn’t be closer.
“It was special for me,” Bridges says. “When I was growing up in Texas, Mexican culture was laced all throughout Texas. It felt at home for me to collab with Carin.”
LEON BRIDGES April 25, 8 p.m., $60-$80. Theater at Virgin, axs.com.
