MARSHALL LEFFERTS

Marshall Lefferts has been a student of Nature since the age of five when he made his first trip to a remote cabin in the deep wilds of the Adirondack Mountains with his parents and brothers. Fifty-five years later, he still goes to that cabin and listens intently to what Nature wishes to teach him, and much of what is shared in this book has come from those magical and insightful experiences. He also began studying music at the age of eight and is now a multi-instrumentalist, performer and composer.

In his first year of college in 1978, following a spontaneous epiphany of awakening, he began studying the martial art of Aikido and became inspired by the writings of R. Buckminster Fuller, having the good fortune of meeting Bucky the following year. Veering away from traditional academia into the indigenous education of the great Universe-ity, Marshall has traversed an unconventional path in service to the bigger picture of what’s going on here on planet Earth during this time of critical transition.

Along the way he became a Producer of media projects, starting with Star Trek CD-ROMs in the early 1990’s, then co-producing a short film about Mars Pathfinder for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1997. In 1998, he met Barbara Marx Hubbard and subsequently became Co-Director of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution from 1999-2004, launching evolve.org in 2000. During these same years he produced internet media projects for the Buckminster Fuller Institute, then located in Santa Barbara, CA, where he was living. From 2005-2009 he lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, immersing in the study of “pod consciousness” with the Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins, and composing, recording and producing a collaborative album of original music, called Mystery of Souls.

Marshall is a Board Member of the Resonance Science Foundation (serving as President from 2006 to 2019), as well as co-designer, writer and producer of the Resonance Academy, launched in 2014, for which he continues to serve as an Adjunct Faculty. From 2007 to 2012, Marshall served as Associate Producer for the documentary film, Thrive: What On Earth Will It Take?, which is now the most widely viewed independent documentary film, and is collaborating again with the Thrive team as Co-Director of Visual Effects and Post-Production Supervisor for Thrive II: This Is What It Takes! (coming in 2020).

LESLIE SPENCER

After years of singing backup for the world’s most prominent big bands, vocalist and songwriter Leslie Spencer is taking her place in the spotlight with an album of her very own. Drawing on the vintage jazz roots and outsize stylings of her bandleaders Brian Setzer and Louis Prima, Jr., Leslie’s debut album, Sing Out!, is a collection of eleven fiery torch songs that transform love, loneliness and heartbreak into a captivating dramatic arc. Lusty, lyrical, bursting with unapologetic emotion and just a hint of snark, Sing Out! is the heartbreak record for romantics who refuse to play it safe.   

Recorded at The Rock House in Franklin, TN., the production of Sing Out! was overseen by Leslie’s longtime friend and collaborator, Grammy winner and legendary session musician Kevin McKendree (Delbert McClinton, George Thorogood, Brian Setzer). With music industry veteran McKendree as co-writer, engineer and mixer, the album was tracked in a breakneck two-day sprint of creative synergy. Close listeners will identify what makes this album sound so distinctly alive: the tracks were recorded live, giving the performances a raw, unpredictable edge and an authenticity that reaches through the speaker with spellbinding urgency. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the album’s title track. Co-written by Leslie and long-time friend Matt Mangano (Zac Brown Band) in a spur-of-the-moment inspiration while catching up over coffee, the song encapsulates the album’s paradoxical magic, conveying the warmth of a back room jam session and the electric intimacy of a smoky cabaret. 

Along with McKendree on piano and organ, Sing Out! includes the talents of Robert Frahm (Robert Frahm Band, Big Joe and the Dynaflows) on guitar, Patrick O’Hearn on bass (Frank Zappa, Missing Persons), Kenneth Blevins (John Hiatt, Sonny Landreth) on drums, and Eric Morones (Brian Setzer Orchestra, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy) on saxophone. With co-writing help from McKendree as well as Johnny Few and Mark Winchester, the songs on Sing Out! tell a story, not in chronological order but rather like facets in a diamond, revealing different perspectives on the journey of love going down in flames. 

With searing honesty, disarming humor, and a tonal range that goes from comforting whisper to operatic roar, Leslie’s first solo effort is the heartbreak record everyone needs. Her words are bitter and sweet in the perfect proportion of a classic Old-Fashioned, her no-holds-barred performance as cathartic as a plate hurled against the wall. For anyone who has felt robbed of their voice by love gone wrong, this is the record to make things right. As far from a plastic pop ballad as you can get, these are songs made for living, laughing, sobbing, sighing, and eventually, learning to love again.