Leland first encountered Woodrush at an outdoor festival in Spring, 2003 in one of those six-degrees-of-separation sort of situations, except there were really only three degrees of separation. After developing a great friendship with Woodrush founders Jim and Kelly, Leland began to occasionally sit in with the duo, and eventually began to co-produce tracks with them.

By the end of 2008, Leland had sat in with the band at well over half of the shows they'd played during the previous year, and they invited him to officially join the band.

Visit www.WoodrushMusic.com

In the early years of the 21^st Century, Leland co-founded Sunflower Sutra with guitarist Jose Simonet and singer Hannah Rames. Jose was forced to return to Spain when he completed his Masters Degree and was unable to find an American Company to help pay to keep him in the country. Jose had been the glue that held the band together, and within a year of his departure, the band dissolved.

During their three-year run, Sunflower Sutra released an EP, One Little Bite, which is still available for sale and download.

In 2001, Leland joined The Janeways, a band fronted by his good friend Laura Pautler. He joined them on stage at the Pike Market Summer Festival less than 48-hours after joining the band and being shown the songs, and he had to play the set with cheat-sheets taped to the stage floor next to his effect pedals.

Before leaving the band, Leland joined them in the studio to record a four-song EP.

(All Janeways songs © Laura Pautler)

• Sick & Twisted:
  
• Murder:
  
• Hanging Tree:
  
• Enough:
  

In the late 90s, Leland self-produced a recording of his original songs under the moniker Poster Nutbag. It was recorded on a little sony 4-track, using cheap 2nd-hand instruments and old out-of-date drum machines.  It still sounds both awesome and cheap.  Mid-Fi at its finest!

These songs were written over the course of about a decade of Leland's life... from the beginning of high school ('87) through the end of the 90's.  Nowhere is the oldest song on this set of tracks; it was written when Leland was 15, in the 10th grade.  A lot of these songs were also a regular part of the old Plum Loco repertoire.

It was never mass-produced. It is available streaming here for you to enjoy

(songs © Leland Hirschman, all rights reserved)

• All I Ever Needed to Do:
  
• Pass It On:
  
• Nowhere:
  
• I Can't Understand:
  
• Tamarind Sauce:
  
• Earthbound:
  
• Hawking's Suite:
  
• Losin' Time:
  
  (note: Losin' Time is a re-working of a song that was co-written w/ former bandmate Dave Krassner, who wrote the original music; the lyrics were re-written by Leland, but the original version had been written by the entire band Plum Loco.)
• Mexico:
  
• Mantra:
  
• Flump:
  
• Tonight:
  

When he first moved to the Seattle area, Leland joined a long-established Grateful Dead cover band called Cheaper Than Therapy. The band, which never played actual gigs, was more like a weekly poker night... but for hobbyist musicians who were into The Dead. Leland was 24. The next youngest member had just turned 40.

Leland continued to play with the band on and off for over five years, whenever he wasn't playing in a gigging band.

From 1994 thru 1996, Leland was in the band Plum Loco, part of a thriving local music scene in Flagstaff, Arizona at the time. The band was originally co-founded by Leland along with Ron Bergman, Dave Krassner, and Daniel Daniel (aka Dan²). Dan² left the band when he got married shortly after the band was formed. The band also had several different percussionists over time, but the two main ones were Paul (???) and Chris Weber.

Some day, Leland hopes to go through his old tapes of Plum Loco, and then find an actual tape player that he can connect to a computer, and will digitize some of their music for archival purposes, and you!

Leland co-founded his very first band way way back in high-school, in the late '80s. His band-mates were also some of his best friends, Paul Olmer and Ranson Kennedy. He occasionally wonders whatever happened to those guys? This first nameless band also had a really cool Danish exchange student as the drummer, but his name was lost to the memory-gods long ago.

Sorry, no known recordings exist.

From 2004 - 2006, Leland produced and mixed nearly all of the tracks for Drink to Bones That Turn to Dust: a Toast to Oingo Boingo, which was released by Dep't of Records, an independent record label that Leland co-founded with Matt Robesh, and eventually merged with Mars Sound, a production-for-hire company that Leland co-founded with Skot Gilbert and former Sunflower Sutra bandmate Jeff Zipfel.

Most notably among the artists appearing on the album was Brett Dennen, whose cover of Danny Elfman's Private Life was simply sublime, and was recorded remotely by Leland and Skot in a spare bedroom in a house.

Visit Dep't of Records for more information on the album.

Prior to joining Woodrush, Leland worked with them on several recordings, including a new version of I'll Be Home for Christmas, at the request of the producers of the Christmas in the Northwest series of albums. The track didn't make the final cut of the album, so Woodrush began sending it out each year to its email list. Leland also produced and animated the Flash animated video.

When Leland's former band Sunflower Sutra recorded its EP, Leland produced and mixed the album, and created the Graphic Design from a concept by bandmate Hannah Rames.