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"A new Lease on life"
BY TOM LOUNGES/
Times Correspondent .........
This story ran on nwitimes.com on Saturday, October 30, 2004.......
Guitarist Larry Lease has a dedication to music that exceeds that of the casual player. To hear Lease speak, music to him is almost a religion.
"Every night, unless I'm out playing somewhere, I am in my basement recording and writing," he said.
Lease has been following his muse this way for many, many years. He has admittedly gone through several phases -- from hard rock, to dance music, to alternative.
Though he got his start in a series of regional nightclub bands, for the last 15 years, Lease has been performing strictly as a one-man band, gigging at a variety of small clubs, coffeehouses and restaurants.
"I'm really all about writing and recording my own stuff. I do the live shows to keep out there and keep sharp," he said, noting that three-quarters of his current live show consists of cover material, which runs the gamut of classic rock standards to new tunes by the likes of Nickleback, Creed, Pearl Jam and even Godsmack.
"I just got everything done for Godsmack's song Awake,' and I'll be doing that one live for the first time at Wild Goat's on Halloween," he said.
"I understand that people want to hear songs they know, so I try to play a variety of songs that I enjoy playing and that they will enjoy hearing."
Naturally, Lease slips a few of his own into the set at each show.
Lease once carried keyboards and what seemed like miles of wires to gigs, when he would play guitar and sing to midi-triggered synthetic accompaniment.
"I got rid of all that," he said.
"Some songs sounded too thin and just horrible using fake bass and all that stuff. Today, I accompany myself on everything. I record all the backing accompaniment using a real bass, real drums and real everything. I do the backing vocals, then mix it all down and burn it to CD."
Lease was a high school senior when this writer first saw him bend a guitar string at a musical convocation. He was then leader of a power rock trio called Eternal Flame and he channeled Jimi Hendrix remarkably. After that band split up, the guitarist embraced a new wave sound with the regional groups X-Dreams and Innocent Eyes.
"At this point in my life, I would love to play with a band again, because sometimes it gets a little lonely sitting in that basement and being up on stage all by yourself," he said.
Lease hopes to launch a Web site soon, where he can put up some of his songs for downloading, while also recording a cache of new ones for both Internet listening and to release as a physical CD.
"It's not about getting rich and famous. It's about people hearing my music. I have put a lot of time into these songs, and I at least want people to hear them," he said.
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