When I saw you live you did two excellent covers: The Gourds cover of Snoop Doggy Dog's "Gin and Juice" and a Cars song. Do you often incorporate covers into your live shows?

Currently the band has over 40 original songs and about 15 covers we could play.  When we go into new markets where we don't already have a relationship with an audience we typically will play more covers just to keep the audience interested. We really prefer to play our own tunes, but occasionally we find a cover song that we sort of "make" our own.  Something that the audience might be caught off guard by which would be why “Gin and Juice” and “Just What I Needed” found there way into our set the night you caught us. 

We've done a mean cover of "Hey Joe" by Jimi Hendrix and have been known to play "Crazy Train" on a few occasions. We also have a couple songs that we play out of respect to the bands that did them originally.  We have a couple Old 97's tunes we know as well as a few Drive By Truckers tunes.  We play these songs because we ourselves are fans.  Since our inception we've opened every show with a version of "Folsom Prison" done in a minor key. It has just seemed to fit.  I'll try to get you an mp3 of it. 

You also sang one or two by Ol' 97s - am I right to assume you, like me, are fans of that band? 

Totally correct!

Now speaking of Texas bands... you are not a Texas band. Am I alone in assuming from your name that at least one member is from Texas. Was that accidental confusion? Also please explain the band name.

Leaving, TX was named out of respect for the great music and musicians coming out of Texas.  None of the members of the band are from Texas or have even lived there.  Chris has spent a great deal of time there thought in Dallas (former day job), Austin (music), and Mc Allen (Grandparents).  The band and the name was born in September of '04 on the runway of the Austin airport on a plane bound for Baltimore where Chris was, you guessed it..."Leaving Texas."

I had spent 10 days down in Austin watching and playing music. Totally absorbed in the music scene.  I had gone done about a week early for the Austin City Limits Festival to do some networking and some playing and then catch the festival on the tail end.  After the first day at the festival I sold my passes and ended up spending my nights in the clubs where all kinds of magic was going on with the musicians.  As I was leaving I decided it was time to put together the band that could play the songs that I had been writing and as I was thinking about what to call it I thought about how sad it was to be leaving Austin with such a fun music scene and heading back to DC.  Leaving Austin soon became Leaving Texas and then I decided to make the name look more like a city and LEAVING, TX was born.  When asked what part of Texas we are from I usually respond with "Mythical, Tx," a little town just outside of Austin.  No one has questioned me yet!