Album Notes

Leslie started playing guitar at the age of eight. Under the impression that singing other people's songs was stealing, she started writing soon after learning her first chords. She studied classical guitar and voice through high school, and at 18 was tapped by hit songwriter Mort Garson ("Our Day Will Come") to write lyrics. Famed Broadway coach David Craig put a polish on her performance skills, and she was off on a journey around the world playing music. Along the way, she performed in L.A., New York, England, Japan, Thailand, Paris, and even sang devotional songs in an ashram in India.

During those years, success proved elusive. So called industry *experts* pushed her to write songs that sounded more like the current hits. She tried, but found that "writing to the market" wasn't for her. She continued to write in her own style, about topics relevant to her life and the lives of those around her.

In the early 90s, she teamed up with friend and guitarist Mike LeDoux, former session player for Phil Spector, as a coffeehouse duo. Later in the 90s, she became interested world religions. This expanded viewpoint led to the release of her non-denominational spiritual CD "Light" and the single "Sky Was Full of Angels", that she wrote in the immediate wake of 9-11.

By 2005, the music industry had changed. Indie artists emerged as a result of the Internet revolution and new access to marketing and distribution channels.

Armed with a strong portfolio of material, Leslie decided it was time to make the album she had always wanted to make. She spent a good deal of time in working out the flow of the album, and carefully chose the material from her catalog of work. Her CD Dream is the result. It is bookended by two newer songs, Hush, and Way Back Home. One is a soothing lullaby and the other a joyful ushering of the finished life to it's well deserved rest. In between are songs signifying a life spanning teenager-dom though the experiences of adulthood, and finally a more global outlook. "Dream" is used in the Sanskrit sense, translated from the word "Maya" which means that life is a Divine Dream or Play/Drama.

Leslie recently added a looping device into her live performances as a way to create the multi-vocal textures of "Dream". The looper (she uses the Boss RC-50 Loop Station) has become an essential part of her concerts. Watching Clark overdub her harmony vocals, sometimes in several independent patches of interweaving patterns is worth the price of the ticket no matter what genre of music you happen to be into.