“When I first moved up to New York City, I was shocked to see how many people were living on the streets. It wasn’t until I heard stories of people freezing to death on park benches during the winter months that I was shaken up enough to write a song about it.
The video was born out of a day that we spent with Stanley Ellertson, a man who’s life had completely fallen apart due to the tragedy of losing his wife to cancer, followed by the death of his mother and father in a two-year span. Before that, he had a great job and a great life, but lost his footing when tragedy struck. This makes you realize that this can happen to just about anybody. I believe it’s important for people to hear Stanley’s story because there seems to be a common misconception in our society, where we feel as though people who are in that sort of situation are deserving of it in some way due to the choices they made throughout their life. We need to look out for one another…in the end, we’re all we got.”
Leon Majcen grew up in the town of Clearwater, Florida. He picked up the guitar at the age of nine and got his start playing open mics at local bars and coffee shops. Naturally inspired by the lyrical genius of artists like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zandt, Leon developed an affinity for songwriting and chose to live life with a pen and paper in hand.
In April of 2016, his single “Love and Misery” made its way onto SiriusXM’s The Coffee House Channel and captured the attention of folk music lovers across North America, helping him build a nationwide fan base. Following a couple of tours in 2018 and 2019, those long hours spent in a van on a cross country journey ended up being the fuel behind the lyrics of his upcoming album, Back ‘till I’m Gone, an artistic creation that was recorded with the help of a good friend and producer Andrew Boullianne at Lala Mansion Recording Studio in Tampa, FL.
In 2018 he decided to leave his hometown to pursue a music degree at New York University, completely absorbing himself in writing songs that capture the triumphs and heartaches that come with leaving home and hitting the road. In his own words, “songwriting is the only way to make sense of the world around me, especially when you’re thrown into a place like New York City where there’s so much going on. I was faced with the option to either go about the change by escaping my mind and troubles or using my troubles to create something worth sharing.
