Baylen Leonard

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CMA award-winning broadcaster and presenter originally from Bristol, Tennessee, Baylen is the UK’s go-to music specialist on all things Americana and Country, hosting Bauer’s Absolute Radio Country since 2021.

Baylen’s weekday show Monday-Thursday from 10am-1pm is followed by his hugely popular Sunday show The Front Porch from 1pm-3pm, which he brought to the station from his days presenting at Chris Country radio.

From 2003-2012, Baylen sharpened his broadcasting skills co-presenting and producing The Danny Baker Show on BBC Radio London. He has presented multiple specialist programmes for Radio 2 including Tennessee Boy Meets Tennessee Girl, The Grand Ole Opry and Baylen Leonard’s Country Christmas. He was part of the station’s presenting team for their coverage of the C2C: Country to Country festival and hosted A Beginner’s Guide to Country and Celebrating C2C for their pop up station Radio 2 Country.

On TV, he was a regular presenter and contributor for Sky’s Total Country channel and was awarded the coveted ‘International Country Broadcaster Award’ by the Country Music Association.

In the digital space, Baylen is the Head of Music for the online Country, Americana & Roots magazine Holler, drawing in over 600K visitors to the site every month. In 2021, he co-hosted their in-house podcast Holler Weekly.

With a passion to provide platforms for Country, Americana, Bluegrass and Roots live music to thrive, Baylen has previously been the Artistic Programmer and Host of the free festival Nashville Meets London and Host of NBC Universal’s online Unlock Festival for The Princes Trust. Now, he is an Executive Board Member of the Americana Music Association UK and Artistic Director of The Long Road, the UK’s largest outdoor festival of it’s kind.

It’s also not uncommon to find Baylen hosting and DJ’ing at some of the UK’s biggest venues and festivals including the likes of VFestival, Bestival, The Southbank Centre, Tate Museums, Country2Country, The Royal Court Theatre, Science Museum, Brooklyn Bowl, Nashville Nights and Cardiff’s The Millennium Centre.