November 2, 2026 WATCH OR LISTEN
Ted Canova 00:01
What a way to start another season! Hi, Ted Canova here with That One Lyric podcast, the podcast that challenges music fans to choose one lyric that has shaped or impacted their life. I'm not standing in the breach. I'm standing in the middle of the Cambridge Record Fair, looking for that one album to complete my Jackson Browne wall. Did you hear the first episode of season two? It was with Chavonne Stewart, one of Jackson's backup singers, and what an episode it was! I promised you a lot of surprises this season, and this episode continues that. It's with Greg Leisz, the multi-instrumentalist in Jackson's band, who provides that wonderful sound. Greg chose That One Lyric not for the words, but for the feeling that it brings. I hope you enjoy the episode as much as I do.
Ted Canova 00:53
Greg Leisz, it's so great for you to join us on that one lyric. What an honor to be with a Grammy winner, multi instrumentalist, member of Jackson Browne's band, among others. So thanks for being with us.
Greg Leisz 01:09
Glad to be here.
Ted Canova 01:10
Greg, I go through the list of performers that you've accompanied, whether live on tour or on albums. It's it doesn't end.
Greg Leisz 01:20
Hopefully, it'll go on for a little longer. Yeah, I'm very lucky. I mean, it really comes down to I've had a lot of I've been blessed to be able to play with so many people and and and over a very quite long span of years.
Ted Canova 01:35
Well, let's talk about the long span. Born in Buffalo, your your family moved within six months, and you went to Southern California. You were there in kind of the Laurel Canyon, folk history. Do you look at it as history, or do you look at it that it's been romanticized beyond reality?
Greg Leisz 01:52
Sure, the '60s were romanticized. I wasn't part of any kind of Laurel Canyon scene. My formative years were spent listening to the music of that era. I could sum it up. 1963, I picked up a guitar, started teaching myself how to play it out of folk music books. I did take lessons from a music store. My mom kind of, you know, insisted, "Well, if you're going to play guitar, you should go take lessons." But the guitar teacher wasn't really much of a teacher. He was one of these guys that once he realized I could kind of already play, he would just say, "What do you want to play?" And then he would start playing a song, and he'd show me, and then he would probably say, "Yeah, you just play rhythm, and I'll sit and play lead." And then we'd do the whole lesson would just be him getting to play with me backing him up, and then when I'd come home, you know, my mom would say, "How was your guitar lesson?" And I was, you know, I had a book that that had music and stuff like that. But you know, there was a lot of people learning to play guitar around that time. And you know, a year or so later, The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, and I saw that.
The Ed Sullivan Show 02:57
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight from New York, the Ed Sullivan Show. Tonight's show again stars The Beatles before their return to England. You know, discussing the day, we're all gonna miss them. They're a bunch of nice kids.
Greg Leisz 03:22
By that time, I had friends that were also playing music, and and we were putting together what basically were garage bands, and they were literally bands that would play in our parents' garages. And fortunately, by the time I could get around in a car, whether I was driving or somebody else had a license. I was able to start going up into Hollywood, which was about 20 miles away from Orange County, where I went to high school, and see a lot of these bands when they played even in clubs.
Ted Canova 03:53
Do you remember one of the the the songs that you would put the needle down on in your bedroom?
Greg Leisz 03:58
The band that I really started sort of taking apart their records and learning guitar parts for The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and The Byrds. Even before that, when I first started playing, I was listening to The Beach Boys, and I was learning surf surf instrumentals, pipeline. Walk, don't run.
Dick Clark 04:34
Here is probably the biggest instrumental record of the day: a thing called Walk, Don't Run. Ladies and gentlemen, here are The Ventures.
Greg Leisz 04:47
Baja, and I was in a band that played surf music when I was like 14 years old, so. But great songs that you were listening to.
Ted Canova 05:01
Then, as you became more of an adult, you're then performing with musicians who you used to listen to. That's right. Is that just trippy?
Greg Leisz 05:10
Yeah, it's it is kind of crazy to think that that would happen. I've worked with a Beatle. I've worked with a Beach Boy. I've worked with people from The Byrds. I worked with the Keith Richards. I worked with people from The Rolling Stones. Eric Clapton, that covers the Yardbirds. Crazy to think that that would happen. Of course, I never really imagined that it would happen. It wasn't actually something that I would even consider a a dream. I got all the way through high school and didn't have a clue what I was going to do in in the world. My parents were very worried that music was something that the outcome would be bad, you know. So they always encouraged me. But the reality was, you had to do something when I was growing up, and college was something that, for one thing, it got you from it kept you from going to Vietnam for a couple of years. And then I was very lucky because I took I got they had a lottery and lottery number was it was low. I might have been drafted or had to have gone to Canada. I mean, those were the choices you had.
Ted Canova 06:16
Do you remember your number?
Greg Leisz 06:17
Yeah, it was 244. I remember it very well, you know, because I watched other kids listening to the radio who had numbers like 2, 3, 4, when their birthdays would come up, you know, and they were the next ones to go. I actually thought, well, I want to work. I'm going to not play music. I I need to be outdoors. I need to be in a profession that will maybe I'll travel. I'll get to go see the world. I'll go to other places. I had a a teacher in college that was quite enthusiastic about earth science, and I got kind of addicted to learning about the earth. And so I started. I studied geology for maybe three years, off and on. But I did drop out a number of times, and I'd go back, and I would drop out, and I was like on this fence. So when you asked me if I always knew, I think the passion for playing music was there. It's just that it was hard for me to accept that I could make a living. I had an experience when I was in high school, where I was in a band. We won a battle of the bands, and we got to split like $20 between the five of us. So that felt like I was making money.
Ted Canova 07:33
Yeah, you were a professional musician.
Greg Leisz 07:35
Yeah, but I had, and and sure, I was. That was wow! You can actually make money doing something that's this fun. It was a long time before there was much more money than that. That ultimately, what ended up happening was that I did end up getting to play in some great bands. It just sort of morphed into instead of being in one band, just being in lots of different bands.
Ted Canova 07:57
How did you transition from the guitar to these other instruments, and and was it hard?
Greg Leisz 08:04
I sort of relate everything to playing the guitar, and everything else for me has just been an extension of that. By learning another instrument, I can see how it relates to the guitar, and you have to kind of oh now the strings are going to be in different notes, different position. You just basically you absorb a lot of that stuff. I originally started moving into other instruments because I'd been seeing bands where there was a steel guitar player. I was drawn to the sound of that instrument, particularly the pedal steel.
Ted Canova 08:37
I know that you started with Jackson. You did an overdub on the Naked Ride Home in 2002, and you didn't really join the band until about 2014. So, tell me, you're living in California in the 60s. Obviously, you knew who Jackson Browne was. Did you run into him at all in the 60s?
Greg Leisz 08:57
This is something. So, Jackson Browne and I went to the same high school. He's a year ahead of me. I saw him in high school walking around, playing the guitar with his friends in the quad. I did not meet him at that time, but I certainly knew who he was. He was already starting to develop a reputation as somebody before even got out of high school, was somebody that had written, that was writing songs, and the reason that I knew that was that some of the people that were friends of mine were starting to learn his songs, and I was not in that clique or that group of people. I was aware of him, and I, you know, but these guys, Jackson Browne and his buddies, they were aware of what how great Bob Dylan was. Where I just have, I hadn't hit my radar yet.
Ted Canova 09:55
Yeah, you were late to that party.
Greg Leisz 09:57
I was late to the party. Me and my friends. We basically felt like we we were not popular, you know. There was people that were popular. We were the people that were kind of like listening to all these records in our rooms and learning how to play the songs, and then hanging out in the garage, playing the music, and maybe not going to the parties and not going to any social events and not being part of the of the experience of of that, and that's I think that's true of a lot of musicians, you know.
Ted Canova 10:28
Well, this is fascinating. Did you and Jackson even know each other's name walking in the hall?
Greg Leisz 10:34
No, no, he he. I was just a no. He had no idea who I was, and didn't and he didn't really for decades after that, but I knew he was walking through the hall. Seemed like his hair was long. I thought, how did he? How come his? We all have to get our hair cut back then. You couldn't go to school with long hair. Maybe had like a note from his parents.
Ted Canova 10:54
When did you get on Jackson's radar then?
Greg Leisz 10:57
I was in bands that he knew about, but he just. I. I just think he didn't really ever see me play. He was very aware of Funky Kings, but he didn't really know I was in that band. I know he heard the record. It didn't really ring his bell, maybe. And it wasn't until years later, when I started working with him, he didn't know that I went to the same high school he did. But I think he told me the time that he became aware of me was I was doing a tour with Joe Cocker in 1996, I think, and I was in Europe, and I think we played a TV show, and I think he was there, so he saw me play. I think I was playing Dobro. He was in the studio because there was a bunch of other bands playing on that particular show. So there was play times when he could have been aware of me. I went to his house one time with a friend of mine before his first record even came out, and I met him then. But he doesn't remember. He has no memory of it.
Ted Canova 12:21
Do you remember the call that you got to be on the Naked Ride Home song?
Greg Leisz 12:31
Oh yeah, that was from his co-producer Kevin McCormick, who was his bass player at the time. I'd worked with Kevin on records, and he I think he just recommended me. It led to me playing a 12-string guitar part, which he liked. That was reminiscent of of basically the birds because I used to play a lot of that music. So, you know, that resonated with him. And then I started recording, doing recordings with him. And after that, he started working on songs for his next album. And then he started bringing me in to work on some of those songs, which led to the next album, which led to a tour, which led to me touring with him at that time.
Ted Canova 13:09
You know, when I ask folks to choose That One Lyric, everyone says it's nearly impossible. And you are back saying, and you told me when I saw you over the weekend in L.A. that you have a song, but it's hard to choose one line.
Greg Leisz 13:24
Well, the song that came to mind is from his very first album. That album had a big impact on me when it came out, as it did many other people. I can listen to that album now, and I can sort of feel the same way that felt feels when I when I first heard it.
Ted Canova 13:40
By the way, we're dancing around the title of the song. You've said everything but it, so tell me the title.
Greg Leisz 13:46
I know the song. You know the song, but nobody else does. So the song is called "Looking into You."
Jackson Browne 13:53
About a house I used to live in, I grew up in. House I grew up in, and that I used to go back and visit after we'd moved away from there to go back there and drop in on the tenants, whoever it was that was living there. I was pretty sure that I was supposed to be living there.
Greg Leisz 14:15
It really takes me to a time in my life that sounds like pretty much was the same time in his life. I felt like wow, this is somebody that's singing about things that I can totally relate to, which I think is why some songs become massive. We did grow up for a few years in the same environment around the same time, which was really like American suburbia of the 1960s. Yeah, safe, you know, for a while when you're a kid. Then you get a little older, and then there's this sort of suburban alienation that kind of starts to kick in. Coming of age, I got to get out of this. I can't be here for the rest of my life. This is, you know, this was safe when I was. 10, 11 years old, but there's a big world out there, and there's things about where I'm from. Even though I'm drawn to where I'm from, you know, everybody wants that feeling of home is something that when you feel when you're a little kid, that's your that's your that's your world, and when you get older, that still exists, you know. In some sense, it always exists. That feeling of, and you're, and at a certain point, you get drawn back. Now, some people may just they want nothing to do with their home, you know. The first verse of that song talks about going back to a house where Jackson used to live. To me, it was like I started thinking. Well, what about the houses I used to live in, where I had friends? You know, the house that I would relate to the most was actually a house that was buried by a freeway in Los Angeles, so we had to leave it. So that house did not exist anymore. But in my mind, in my imagination, I still was emotionally connected to that house. But it was gone. It it was, and he has a later verse where he actually talks about the walls and the windows are still standing. But then he talks about how eventually the house is going to crumble, and love will not be able to rebuild it because it's just a physical thing, you know. It's now it's just something in our heart. It brought me back to this feeling of wishing I could go back to the house that I once lived in. When that record came out, even the town that I grew up in, which was Fullerton, where we went to high school, I had I basically had no friends left there, and my parents were already gone from there. So that place was all just a very important part of my life, which he would, I'm sure, agree because that was gone. When I hear the song, it emotionally takes me to a place of longing. I mean, this is not a depressing song. If you, as you go into the, if you go into this, as you go into the song and the lyrics, you see that this guy, who's singing the song, is he's he's on the journey. When he leaves that house, what is the line as he walks outside?
Ted Canova 17:33
I step back outside to the gray morning sun. I heard that highway whisper inside.
Greg Leisz 17:38
Lyrics make you think. Music has it creates emotions and makes you feel. So what happens in a great song is that the lyrics make you feel. So the feelings that I have, I think, are connected in this very broad sense to growing up in this town where I was feeling increasingly alienated from the generation before me, which was my parents' generation, because the '60s. So you still had this connection if you had a strong foundation, home foundation, which I I did. But you're being pulled away from that. You're being severed from it by what's happening in the world, by your desires, by your music, and your desire to get out of town. Ultimately, because you know there's a bigger place. Like by that time, I'd gone into Hollywood. The reason that I picked the line that I picked is because it's the most incredible use of of language, you know, it it's the fact that like somebody that's like 20, I don't know what he would have been like 21, 22 when he wrote the line.
Ted Canova 19:14
Read the line, Greg. Tell us what That One Lyric is from "Looking Into You."
Greg Leisz 19:18
Now here I stand at the edge of my embattled illusions.
Jackson Browne singing
Now here I stand at the edge of my embattled illusions. Looking into you.
Greg Leisz
Now that's the line right there. That full line. What does that mean? That line, you know, it doesn't even matter. But if you put yourself in the situation of somebody that has illusions, embattled illusions. Now here I stand at the edge of my embattled illusions, and of course we were all going through this, trying to understand at that point in our lives the nature of we had wars. We were all being exposed to alternative religions. You know, or investigating, you know, Buddhism and and and you know, it is like the search for truth. There was also the use of psychedelic drugs. That period of time kind of kind of blew everybody's mind open in a way to the possibilities, and so people, a lot of times, would have like these grandiose thoughts. The song eventually becomes about the search for truth. Now he's going off into the world. He's like looking for his his truth.
Ted Canova 20:33
Well, and he dipped into his past to try to find that truth.
Greg Leisz 20:36
He dipped into his past to try to understand where he was coming from. Then he looked into the wider, you know, world, you know, for for truth to see what everybody else is doing. Of course, there's the whole verse about the prophet that came through here, which is which is Bob Dylan. He says, you know, I was among those that called him a prophet. He was the song traveler that that came through.
Ted Canova 20:58
Can you categorize what it's like to be part of this band with such a wordsmith?
Greg Leisz 21:05
The fact that I get to play with this guy and that I can call him a friend at this stage in my life is like you know I it's it's a blessing that you know I can't you know I can't say enough about you know it's like I really feel I'm really grateful to play music with this guy, but when I'm playing music in general, I think it kind of comes back to that thing where you're actually feeling the words. I'm not thinking about the words when I play music with people. I don't. It it enters in every once in a while, but I feel what the lyrics mean. Yeah. By the delivery of the singer, by the way that they're expressing themselves, and that connects me to the song. When I first heard that song, that line didn't jump out at me. You know, the feeling of the song jumped out at me, and the way it made me feel. So the fact that he was writing lyrics like that at that point, I mean, it blew everybody's mind in the music industry. That's why he was signed, and that's why people like David Crosby were, you know, going on and on about him, you know, before people even knew who he was, because they realized that these were incredible songs.
Ted Canova 22:21
Can I let you in on a little secret about this song?
Greg Leisz 22:24
Sure.
Ted Canova 22:25
So it was 2011, and my life was going through transitions, and I was going to see Jackson in Minneapolis, and I wrote a letter just before I left the house, and I brought it to the security guard, who was real gruff and goes, "I don't know if he's ever going to see this." I go, "Just do me a favor, just try." And I mentioned I'm sitting in like the fifth row, and I requested that he sings this, and I laid out what he has meant to me in my life. And all of a sudden, he goes into this song, and he, I think he looks out into the audience, and he sings the song. And he hadn't really played it a lot in in in concerts. So I waited, you know, by the bus or backstage, and he came out and he was so gracious. And I reintroduced myself from the many times I've waited by the bus, and I said, "Thank you for playing Looking Into You" and he goes, "Oh, that was you. Oh, that was you." Those four words, Greg, told me that he got the letter, yeah, and he read it.
Greg Leisz 23:35
Sure.
Ted Canova 23:35
And whether that's true or not, I don't care. I'm I'm holding on to that story. Oh, that was you.
Greg Leisz 23:41
No, I no. He. I know him. He. That's not something he wouldn't say that was you unless he saw the letter. You know, he saw the letter and he and he and he did the song, and he wouldn't have done the song if he didn't feel like doing it. I can also tell you that. So it wasn't like he did it at all. I I I should do this song because somebody requested it. I mean, it was partly that, but he he did it because in that moment he felt like he could sing that song. I mean, he's he has sung that song a number of times with me in his band, and usually when he's done it, he nobody else plays on it.
Ted Canova 24:18
Wow!
Greg Leisz 24:19
It's not something that's in a set. It's something that he sometimes, and he, you know, the the other thing about that song, which, you know, we haven't mentioned, is that it's the only song on his first album that has pedal steel on it. And the guy that played pedal steel on it was somebody that I had seen play many times. I was a big admirer of his playing. His name is Pete Kleinow, Sneaky Pete Kleinow. So he's the guy that plays on played on on looking into you. And when the pedal steel starts in that song, it's right where where he says, you know, he's ready to fly. You know, that's when the pedal steel comes in. Emotion behind the pedal steel part is a huge part of the song. Of what happens after part of the song where he's in the house and he's now walking outside. I don't know whose idea was to have the pedal steel come in right then, at that point, but it was it was very effective. That is part of what connects me emotionally to the song, and I wore that record out. But the pedal steel playing on it had a big part of me going, God, I loved. I wish I could. Maybe I can just meet somebody that does that. I don't have to. I don't have to be the guy. But if I if I could be in a room, if I could play music with somebody, I could hear that sound, and I became the guy that played the instrument.
Ted Canova 25:50
Greg, I'm so grateful for your time. I'm going to ask you one more question about this song, and again, it's not the feeling; it's something factual. So maybe you you you haven't gone there, but when he says that, as I stepped back outside to the gray morning sun, there are times I wonder if he came into the house at night, and they invited him to sleep over, rather than him showing up in the morning.
Greg Leisz 26:16
Could be. I mean, either that he or he went there awfully early in the morning. From my experience, Jackson is not an early riser. I never really thought about that with the lyrics, but I do feel like, in my imagination, he's like a traveler. People travel; they're usually weary travelers, means they've been traveling all day. So, so they're travel. They're they're knocking on the door in the evening. The thing is, there was children playing on the floor, so couldn't have been too late at night.
Ted Canova 26:49
When I invited you on That One Lyric, it was going to be for what 15 to 20 minute conversation, and you've been so gracious with your time.
Greg Leisz 26:56
It's a nice day for me to just be relaxing and talking, and and it's getting pretty hot here in in California. But so I'm really I'm looking forward to go back into my other part of my house that's air conditioned.
Ted Canova 27:11
Oh no! Oh God, Greg, thanks so so much, and really appreciated your insight. I appreciate your talent and the musicianship that you add to Jackson's band.
Greg Leisz 27:25
All right, thanks.
Ted Canova 27:25
Thanks so much.
Greg Leisz 27:26
All right, take care.
Jackson Browne singing 27:41
“Looking into you, and that's true.”