Ten years have whipped past since Leon Bridges made his major label debut with Coming Home.
In that span of time, the humble, soft-spoken, dazzlingly talented man who once sang at open mics in small clubs and washed dishes in a steakhouse on the edge of Sundance Square in Fort Worth has become an international recording star, a Grammy winner and taken his place in the pop music firmament.
Bridges’ ascent dovetails with the near-wholesale rewiring of Fort Worth’s image as a creative mecca and a music-forward city of consequence, so much so the two feel almost inextricably bound together.
But while the city of Fort Worth has undoubtedly benefited from the reflected glory of Leon Bridges, it has also remained home for the now 35-year-old singer-songwriter, who has continued to evolve and expand his sound with each subsequent record, even if, for a great many fans, that first LP remains their favorite.
I spoke with Bridges in May 2015 for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, just a few weeks before he’d appear on The Tonight Show for the first time.
“It’s still very surreal, all the things that’ve been happening,” Bridges told me. “It’s kind of hard to grasp at all. I’m just trying to take it all in.”
Moreover, his rise, while sudden, felt like a natural growth to Bridges.
“It was kind of a slow progression,” Bridges told me in 2015. “It started out at Stay Wired coffee shop in Fort Worth, playing one or two songs. It went further when the Where House open mic started — that was on an actual stage — [and then I] got my first gig at the Live Oak on a Sunday. I just got more comfortable — going to the open mics really helped me find my voice and get comfortable on stage.”
Now, he’s marking this moment with a handful of tributes. Bridges released a song left over from the Coming Home sessions, titled “Hold On,” which he’d never officially dropped until now.
“‘Hold On’ is one I used to play in small rooms and have returned to many times over the years,” Bridges said in a statement. “It has that same soulful, stripped-down energy that defined those early days. Letting it out into the world now feels like coming home all over again.”
Bridges also signed vinyl copies of Home and made them available for sale on his website, and on the actual 10th anniversary of its release — June 23, 2025 — he dropped the most poignant clip of all: A decade-long supercut of him singing “Coming Home” live in venues as raw as a Deep Ellum street corner and as massive as Lollapalooza.
“[Coming Home] was my first real statement as an artist, and in many ways informed who I wanted to be as a man and what I wanted to say as a writer and singer,” Bridges said in a statement. “In some ways, it’s hard to believe that a full decade has passed, but in others it’s easy. I’m proud of where we’ve gone since then, and I wouldn’t have spent the years in between any other way.”
Preston Jones is a North Texas freelance writer and regular contributor to KXT. Email him at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky (@prestonjones.bsky.social).Our work is made possible by our generous, music-loving members. If you like how we lift up local music, consider becoming a KXT sustaining member right here.
