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. “I grew up listening to the blues while splitting time between low-income spaces and those defined by people living in abundance. I’ve balanced those spaces, plus how they made me emotionally feel, in my creativity,” Timbo says. 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.