Leslie came to songwriting the way he comes to everything, by taking a thing apart to see how it works. He learned a little guitar in his twenties from a hymnbook and a chord chart, then left it in the corner for decades while he canned peaches and built raised beds. A few years back his wife started humming half-remembered songs from her childhood, and he tried to finish one for her. That was the crack in the door.
He doesn't have music theory proper, and he'll be the first to tell you. He knows what works by ear and by trial. He teaches so this doesn't quietly die out.
