Arleigh Kincheloe

For nearly two decades, the Catskill Mountains hid one of rock ‘n’ roll’s best kept secret. Then one day, singer and songwriter Arleigh Kincheloe said goodbye to her hometown hideaway of Halcottsville and moved to New York City to start the hard soul collective, Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds with her brother and cousin.

On the Bandname Arleigh, in 2015 in an interview with "I’m Music Magazine", said:

Sister Sparrow is a nickname that my sister gave me while we were on a road trip together many years ago before the band was really together.
I was calling her Mama Quail for some reason and she just came out with Sister Sparrow and I thought it was so cool.
My brother Jackson has been using the terms dirt birds a lot because of a run-in that he had with some pigeons in port authority in New York City, so the two of those phrases seem to fit together really well and they kind of clicked.

Born on May 23, 1987 as the youngest of four kids Arleig Kincheloe was raised in upstate New York by musician parents John (drummer) and Kate (singer) Kincheloe who played in a rock 'n' roll band in the weekends.

After graduating from high school, both Arleigh and brother Jackson Kincheloe tried college (their father is a high school history teacher), but decided it wasn't for them.

They traveled around the country a bit before deciding to try their luck in New York City. Their cousin, Bram Kincheloe, who had attended the Manhattan School of Music, was living in California but decided to move back to New York.

When Bram did that, they decided that this seemed like a golden opportunity to get a band together and around 2008 the three of them started Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds.

As the saying goes: The rest is history.