Leslie Jordan was probably best-known for his recurring, Emmy-winning role on the NBC series Will & Grace. Another chapter in his long, creative career arc: music. “It’s so unexpected just to happen in my 60s — I'm a country music singer now," the late actor, writer, and singer told CBS reporter Anthony Mason in one of the last interviews Jordan would give.

The 67-year-old Jordan died in a car crash on Oct. 24 in Los Angeles. He was on his way to filming scenes for the FOX series Call Me Kat, in which he was a regular cast member. Jordan leaves not only an extensive acting résumé, but two published memoirs, a critically acclaimed 2021 album, and a deep archive of Instagram activity that found an audience of 6 million followers.

Related:

• From MPR News: Actor and comedian Leslie Jordan dead at 67
• From NPR: Take a look at Leslie Jordan's best moments of dancing, singing and storytelling

In fact, Jordan’s recent career surge and musical awakening can be credited to the series of honest, humorous, and homespun Instagram posts the actor created during the early months of the pandemic. "Give me a good pandemic and I flourish,” Jordan joked with Mason.

Scattered among extemporaneous Instagram observations about pop culture, fashion, food, hobbies, and more, the music project first took root. Jordan, along with Nashville- and Los Angeles-based musician and producer Travis Howard, sang hymns the two recalled from their childhoods attending Baptist churches in the South. From there, an idea blossomed.

“My dear friend Travis Howard and I would get together on Sundays to sing these old hymns just because we loved them,” Jordan explained in a press release. “Somewhere along the way, my business partner, Mike Lotus, took a real interest in what we were doing and started looking up and learning about every old Baptist hymn he could find. I think he realized, like we did, that the songs held something brilliant about the human condition and were a deep comfort to anyone who heard them, religious or not. He started posting our performances online, and the response was just incredible.”

The result was Company’s Comin’, an album of Americana-tinged gospel tunes co-produced by Howard and Danny Myrick. On the album, Jordan performs duets with country stars Dolly Parton, TJ Osborne, Tanya Tucker, and Chris Stapleton; Americana dynamo Brandi Carlile; rocker Eddie Vedder; and emerging artist Katie Pruitt. Americana magazine No Depression described the album as “a warm, enticing listen from start to finish,” and said its best track was Jordan and Carlile’s uplifting, upbeat version of “Angel Band.”

Jordan, who was gay, felt abandoned by the church of his youth. Later in life, he came back to the songs. “One of the things I love most about this album is the kinship I feel with everyone who sings on it,” Jordan said in the press release about the album. “Everyone has a similar story to me in some sense. Maybe they didn’t all grow up gay in the South, but they know what it feels like to not be accepted for who you are.”

Poignantly, Jordan sings with other LGBTQ+ artists on the album — notably Carlile, Pruitt and Osborne — who, like Jordan, left behind religion but not faith. Not that Jordan et al are hitting people over the heads with an evangelical message. “You take away from it whatever you want,” Jordan told NPR’s Ari Shapiro in 2021, “because these are old, old hymns ... they've been around since the 1800s, some of them. I'm hoping no matter how you were raised — Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, whatever — you know that you can still listen and enjoy this music.”

As No Depression put it, Company’s Comin’ “highlights the communal nature of gospel and music in general, reminding listeners of the pleasure that comes in singing a familiar, treasured song with another person.”

Company’s Comin’ was released on June 11, 2021, and it was celebrated with a show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on November 30 of that year. Joining Leslie Jordan on stage were such artists as TJ Osborne, Holly Williams, and The War and Treaty. 

“I love Nashville and the way that Nashville embraced me,” Jordan told Mason. “I worried a little bit, you know? I left Tennessee; I kind of got ran out of Tennessee for being gay — chased out of Tennessee, in my head. But to come back and be just fully embraced by people in the industry and to be taken kind of serious and to have made an album with Dolly Parton, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile… you know, that’s something. And it happened so quickly that I didn’t really think it through and now when I look back, I think — whoa! That’s an accomplishment.”

So said by a man who not only achieved success in his many creative pursuits, but also overcame substance use disorder in the 1990s, having been sober since age 42.

Jordan remained open to possibilities and surprises throughout his life, and when it ended, he was actively creative, inspiringly confident and perfectly comfortable in his own skin. “I'm 65 years old, I'm perfectly happy with — and comfortable — [with] who I am, what I am,” Jordan told Shapiro in 2021. “And that's, like, quite a journey.”

On Sunday, Oct. 30, at 1 p.m. Central, Leslie Jordan’s longtime musical collaborator Travis Howard will host a Company’s Comin’ Sunday Hymn Singin’ session on Instagram to celebrate the life and music of Leslie Jordan.

Artist Tributes to Leslie Jordan

See also: Brandi Carlile’s post on Instagram

See also: Katie Pruitt’s post on Instagram

See also: Amanda Shires’s post on Instagram