John Leventhal

Born in New York in 1952, John Leventhal has built a career since the 1980s as a musician, songwriter, arranger and producer associated with American roots music — spanning country, Americana, folk-rock and soul. A guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, Leventhal first made his mark behind the scenes, both as an accompanist and as a studio architect, working with artists such as Shawn Colvin, Marc Cohn, Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell, Joan Osborne and William Bell. Career milestones include producing and co-writing Shawn Colvin’s Steady On (1988), contributing to the arrangements of “Walking in Memphis” (1991), and co-writing and producing “Sunny Came Home” (1997). His work with Rosanne Cash has been especially enduring, notably on The River & the Thread (2014), characterized by a writing style attentive to narrative, acoustic textures and forms of American songwriting. He also produced William Bell’s This Is Where I Live (2016) and Sarah Jarosz’s World on the Ground (2020). In parallel, Leventhal composes for film, notably Winter Solstice (2004) and Big Stone Gap (2014). After a long career as a sideman and producer, he released the album Rumble Strip under his own name in 2024.