Up close and personal with Tommy Lepson By Michael Macey

What I thought was going to be a short "on the run interview" with Tommy Lepson as he passed through Annapolis on his way to a gig in Delaware, turned into almost three hours of conversation after his gig was canceled at the last minute. Obviously I won't be able to include the entire conversation in this article, but I will tell you it was a real pleasure getting to know the man who has been connected with some of the music that has touched my life. Those of you unfamiliar with Tommy Lepson should know he's a premier musician in the area. Besides leading his own bands, his keyboard, guitar and vocal work have graced some of my favorite albums of the past 30 years. He's a musician's musician who's very much in demand as a sideman, studio musician, engineer and producer.

Tommy was very candid and forthright as we touched on just about every aspect of his life, past and present. As far as his varied musical career is concerned, he told me "I've done a lot of things musically in my life. It seems like I've gotten close to some major stuff and then not so close. I've kind of been on the fringe for a long time." There's the passion for the music he plays and the uncompromising quality of his work. "Years ago when I was playing in top 40 bands you had to play certain songs in order to get work, whether you liked them or not, you had to know them. I play stuff now that I like. If I sing something, I have to be convincing. Singers, to be successful I think, have to be believable. You listen to somebody singing about something and you go, that guy's been through that or that guy's been there, that's really believable. I want to convince people that I'm singing about something that I believe in." As well as being a musician, he's been a mechanic and still likes to tinker around with cars. When our conversation turned to that topic he started spouting off terms that only a gear head would know. Things like "289 with two fours, solid lifter cam and kit, three angle valve job and Quadra jet aluminum high-rise." He told me that he used to drag race and had won a couple of trophies with a Ford falcon that had "a screamin' Ford small block in it." He has a collection of classic keyboards like the Hammond B3 and we talked about some of the great keyboard players and keyboard-driven songs in rock. I asked him about House of the Rising Sun by The Animals and Alan Price, keyboard player in that band, he told me" Any guy that ends House of the Rising Sun with a major seventh chord has to be a screwball. Here's this nasty gritty song, and he ends it with this..." (imitates a major seventh chord, and then bursts out in laughter). The conversation turned to Brian Auger, another great keyboard player who was not only an influence on Lepson, but later became his friend. We listened to one of Auger's Oblivion Express albums as background music to our conversation and it triggered some reminiscing by him about when the album was released and that period in his life. "This is such a cool album. It came out at a very cool point in my life (1973) when I was very positive about music, when things were wide open, when anything could happen." Although he grew up in the College Park area, and that's where he considers his roots to be, he's lived in many different regions of the country, because that's where the music was. "I was all over the place. I was in San Diego. I went out on the road and ended up in Portland, Oregon. I was in San Francisco, and Alabama, I lived in Denver, Colorado. I've been all over the place." He has played with and appeared on the albums of some of the best in the business. Root Boy Slim and Nils Lofgren (see below), Danny Gatton, Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the Nighthawks, Jerry Portnoy who plays in Eric Clapton's band, and Jimmy Thackery.

He worked at the legendary Muscle Shoals in the late 60s and now has his own studio, where he produces, mixes and records some of the area's top musicians. Some of his recent works include Melanie Mason's Live at Blues Alley, Tom Principato's Guitar Gumbo and his own Live at Sweet Caroline's. His other recordings are available at his web site, tommylepson.com, and they include The Tommy Lepson Band Are You Ready for This???!!???, Tommy Lepson And the Lazy Boys, Live and Durty and AM 53. You can also listen to sound clips and check out Tommy's itinerary.

Though most people know him for his keyboard work, he actually started out playing the guitar. His other project, The Soul Crackers, is a band he fronts as the guitar player and lead vocalist. They've been called "the best unknown dance/bar band in the Washington area." The conversation turned serious when we talked about a brush with mortality that Tommy had a few years ago. With his usual low-key sense of humor, he told me with a laugh. "If I knew I was going to last this long, I would've taken better care of myself." All kidding aside, Tommy seems to be going stronger than ever. He can be found playing most every weekend with either his own bands or sitting in with somebody else. If you like good music with a soulful twist, then you owe it to yourself to check out Tommy Lepson.

CMG: I've seen you in a lot of different places with a lot of different musicians, what do you have going on right now?
T. L: Well, I've got my band, the Tommy Lepson Band, and I've got the January All-Stars coming up with Catfish Hodge and Tom Principato, that's the 16th of January and is going to be at Rams Head Onstage.
CMG: You seem to be playing a lot with the Rich Chorne'/Nadine Rae All-Stars, are you pretty much a member these days?
T. L: I do that whenever I can. I did their new CD for them. I engineered it and mixed it.
CMG: You told me earlier that you were recently in the studio with Nils Lofgren. What was happening with that?
T.L: Nils was in the studio making a new CD and he got me in to do some backup vocals.
CMG: Are you playing keyboard?
T.L: No, Just vocal stuff. I sort of fancy myself as a singer who just happens to play another instrument.
CMG: You have your own recording studio. What have you been doing with that lately?
T.L: I mixed my latest album, Live at Sweet Caroline's there.
CMG: I said in my review of that album, it was one of the best live albums I ever heard. I really liked the warm sound of that recording.
T.L: That's the analog in me coming out. I'm an old tape guy, the digital stuff scares me, but I am working with it. It was actually recorded on a 24 track hard drive recorder, and we did have pretty good separation because Sweet Caroline's is a good-sized room, and we had good mics and a good console, so my job was fairly easy. All I did was tweak a few knobs and there we were.
CMG: You're being modest, I'm sure.
CMG: What was your first band, and when did you first perform live?
T.L: My first performance as was at St. Andrews Episcopal Church Parish Hall, I think I was about 14 years old, and I had a band together. It was like 1962. We were doing Buddy Holly songs and stuff that was popular in the late 50s.
CMG: Was there a time in your life when you had an epiphany and said, "I just want to do this"?
T.L: I can't say I really had a moment like that. I just kind of fell into it. My parents wanted me to take piano lessons when I was a little kid; I took a couple lessons and quit, I couldn't stand it. I would rather play football. I was really into football. Johnny Unitas was my hero.
CMG: What were your parents and you listening to around the house when you were growing up?
T.L: My parents just listened to the radio. There was an upright piano in the house and after awhile I just started sitting down and banging away on it.
CMG: So after you gave up on the lessons, you just sat down and taught yourself?
T.L: Yes, I'm self-taught. I took lessons on guitar from this guy after I went to see his band that was really great. That was when I was around 14. I remember he had a Hot Rod and a good-looking girlfriend and I said, "gee, I want to be like that". And I did see a movie with Dick Dale and I thought "wow, that guy's really cool". He's playing a guitar on a surfboard with no amp. How's he doing that? Awesome. All these girls running around. Man, if I was in a band I could do that, so I'm going to do that. (See epiphany question above)
CMG: So who do you list as a major influence?
T.L: I have so many influences. Everybody from James Brown to Ray Charles to Bill Champlin from Sons of Champlin. I'm just a sponge; I am the result of listening to a lot of different people.
CMG: What do you listen to these days? Anything you hear on the radio that you'd like?
T.L: Radio today is a mess. I don't really listen to it, I listen to talk radio. I don't listen to music [radio] anymore. Different people turn me on to things. They'll say "hey, did you hear this guy's stuff, the piano player who plays with Bonnie Raitt, Jon Cleary, Or Slo Leak"?
CMG: So if I look in your CD player right now, I wouldn't find anything?
T.L: Probably. I listen to coast-to-coast A.M.
CMG: Are you in the studio now working on anything new with the Tommy Lepson Band?
T.L: Yeah, we're kicking around some tunes right now to record. I think we've settled on four or five right now. I go through spells when I don't write anything and I can't come up with any ideas and then all of a sudden stuff starts happening. I'm getting a little more inspired to come up with new things, but then I'm my own worst critic. I'll come up with three new songs, and I'll throw them in the trash and I'll say to myself "nobody likes this stuff".
CMG: So your songwriting process varies from sitting down by yourself to writing in the studio with other musicians?
T.L: Or somebody puts me under pressure and says "hey, you gotta come up with something right now."
CMG: Let's talk about Root Boy Slim. What years were you with him?
T.L: 1979 to 1981. Then I quit. I was with him about a year and a half. And then Slim got back in touch with me and said. "Tommy you gotta help me get the band back together again." I was working with a group called Soul Crackers, it was a soul band, and we played in Philly a lot. After I left them, I got back together with Slim again. He was a very intelligent man. I had some great conversations with him throughout the years. He graduated from Yale in the upper third of his class. He was a bit eccentric. He and I got along just fine. We were good friends. As a matter of fact, towards the end there, right before he died, he was calling me all the time with ideas for songs and wanted to know if I'd be interested in doing some more recording with him. He was talking about getting some of the old band guys back together and recording an album and I said sure Slim that's fine. There was a band I had together before I started working with Slim called "Cryin' out Loud." Stu Smith was the guitar player for that band; he's with the Eagles now. Stu had done some work with Slim, some studio stuff, so through him, Slim started coming out and hearing us play. And he fired his whole band and got us to play with him and Ron Holloway, so that was the new band.
CMG: What Root Boy albums do you appear on?
T.L: Don't Let This Happen to You and Dog Secrets
CMG: Are you in a position in life where you're comfortable?
T.L: No, I'm not really comfortable. I think if I get in the position where I am comfortable I'll retire, and I'm not going to retire, I can't do that. I reached one point when I had that surgery that I had, I could've given everything up right on the spot.
CMG: Surgery?
T.L: I had a brain aneurysm that I had to have surgery for. It was pretty serious. I was losing the use of my right side. They thought it was a tumor, because it was quite large and anything that large has to be a tumor. But once they got in there and figured it out, it wasn't a tumor after all, but a huge aneurysm. The doctor said he had never seen anything that large, so they cut it out and put me back together. What really got me going again, and what really inspired me was they put a show on for me at the Bayou. And there were a lot of people there, Nils Lofgren, Tom Principato, The Nighthawks, Jr. Cline, just about everybody I knew showed up. And I just felt real good and I had to prove that I could just get back up on the horse and start riding again, not give it up and get back in the swing of things. It was very inspiring, that incident inspired me to get back in shape, start playing and keep doing it. I tend to look at things different these days. I tend to be a bit more sensitive to things, more open. I was extremely lucky to say the least. Thanks to God and modern medicine, I'm sitting here talking to you today.