Leon Timbo Bio

Some write music as a creative release. Others feel compelled to perform. For country-soul singer-songwriter Leon Timbo, music is used as a form of growth and healing. Timbo has long regarded music as an indispensable aspect of his life for as long as he can remember. Growing up the son of two pastors in Jacksonville, FL, music was integrated into his life from the very start, as a way to communicate spiritual experience. Along with his parents, his grandmother Virginia was one of the first to introduce him to music by singing Ray Charles styled songs to him as a kid and later buying him his first guitar at the age of 17. From there, his musical aspirations took flight.

 At sixteen, Timbo began singing and by age twenty, he began playing the guitar and performing in a serious way, inspired by artists Bill Withers, James Taylor and Tim Miner. By 2005, after cutting his independently released album Soul Sessions, Timbo was successfully touring across the U.S. on an almost non-stop small venue circuit, building a loyal fanbase from coast to coast. Today, Timbo is gearing up to release his EP, Lovers and Fools, with themes of love, loss and letting go. “My upcoming album came from my hardest relationship process, and it came about as a result of handling my grief,” Timbo says of the record. “I recorded this album in Chicago, LA, and Nashville. This musical experience was like a coming of age. This album gave me the freedom to authentically be me,” he continues.

Timbo’s country roots sound incorporates equal measures of vintage soul, gospel, folk, R&B and even modern blues making for a unique experience that some have described as "transparent soul." From grieving the loss of a great love in the album title track “Lovers and Fools” to touching on the heavy topic of being a Black man in today’s political climate in “Loves Not Supposed to Hurt,” and the whimsical take on the fact that life can be lonely as seen in “With A Kiss,” Timbo holds nothing back in his delivery of Lovers and Fools.